prawn fishing?

this is possibly the most random place i have ever visited.

during my trip to taupo a couple of weekends ago, mum, dad and i took a trip to the huka prawn park.

despite the fact that it was about 8 degrees, the weather was temperamental and the sky kept pouring torential patches of rain on us, dad and i took off on a tour of the park while mum took the sensible option and headed to the cafe.

to be honest, there really wasn't much to see. we first hit the trout pond which was huge but only had 12 trout in it...fail.

we then headed down to the river to apparently see more trout, but saw none...fail.

next we joined a guided tour and learnt lots of interesting (but useless) facts about prawns and participated in some hand feeding of the baby prawns. they eat like humans with two hands. this was probably the highlight of the whole park. and we were taught how to fish for prawns.

so off we went to the ponds to fish for prawns. dad and i love fishing and were super excited to catch hundreds of prawns and eat them...it was freezing cold, it kept raining and prawn fishing really is a big test of your patience. after about half an hour, not catching a thing, no one around us catching anything and little tiny fish constantly stealing our bait, we gave up...fail.

as prawns are up there in my top favourite foods, i couldn't leave without eating some. and a restaurant that has prawns on 99% of the menu was pretty exciting. 

what i learnt: fresh water prawns are nothing in comparison to ocean prawns AND huka prawn park was a major fail. don't go there.