Mako Charters, Salt Water Fly, World Record Attempt

The last weekend of March saw me off to the Bay of Islands, following a very generous invite from Graham Little (GL), his wife Lois, and Graeme (GM) and Jean McIntosh of Mako Charters. GL has his heart set on breaking the light tackle, Salt Water Fly (SWF) world records for kingfish and has been working closely with GM to achieve his dream for some time now.

I mentioned to him that a mate of mine Mark, had just picked up the new 3kg record with a fish of only 11lb, which shouldn't be to hard to knock off. Now I'll take any chance to get one up on Mark so he could definitely count me in, regardless of my aversion to competitive fishing. An 11lb kingfish is only just legal, and with all the 'rats' up in the Bay this year, I thought 'how hard could this be'. A formality. I should just call Mark and get him to forward his certificate to me.

I got up to Mako Lodge late on the Friday night in time to meet the team and discuss tactics over a couple of G&T's. The forecast was for 15knts from the NE and with plenty of fish about, so I was quietly confident that we were in for a big day.

In the morning we headed straight for a reef in 35m of water off Rocky Point where GM has been doing particularly well this year. The plan of attack was to attempt to berley the fish up off the reef to within casting range, hook them and lead them into deeper water, where we could put as much pressure as the light line would allow, onto the fish.

The first problem we encountered was that we couldn’t find any great masses of fish on the sounder. The area is renowned for lots of kings so we weren't to perturbed by this. With all the berley going into the water, something had to come up and have a look.

Sure enough, after about and hour GL called 'I'm in'. He was abruptly run straight under the boat and the line popped. I looked over the back of the boat and watched a good sized Mako lazily swim by with a large feathery mouthpiece decorating the side of its face. The shark was about the same length as the width of the boat so we called it for about 60-70kgs and I quickly got my expensive fly and leader out of the water. GL hastily grabbed his shark set up with wire trace and had another go. Before long he was hooked up again but the fight didn’t last long before the line departed again, leaving GL pondering his luck and a mako out there somewhere with a well adorned face.

The next problem that had become apparent was that with only a knot or so of current we still couldn’t get our flies down anywhere near deep enough to entice any of the kingies off the bottom. We flayed away with the fly gear while Lois dropped baits to the bottom and caught enough fish for us to take a few home. I tired after a few hours without any luck and decided she had the right idea, so put the fly gear away and dropped a livey to the bottom. It didn’t take long to hook up on what was obviously a small king. I bought it up slowly in the hope that a few others might come up with it and into range for GL’s fly gear, but no luck. We repeated this process over the next hour or so without any success and all the while the wind gradually picked up until it was blowing a good 20 knots and conditions became to unpleasant to continue.

We found a nice spot tucked away behind the nine pin and managed to catch a few snapper on the fly gear and grab a bite of lunch before heading home.

So unfortunately we missed out on setting any records and I had to avoid talking to Mark, as I knew he would just love the opportunity to rub it in. What a great weekend though. Graeme and Gene McIntosh run a great little business in Mako Lodge and Charters, that I would thoroughly recommend to anyone wanting to get away to an idyllic setting and catch a few fish. Their hospitality was first class and the lodge is quite stunning. Check out there website at www.makolodge.co.nz

In Graham Little, I met an angler singularly focused on achieving the ambitious goals he has set for himself. Catching a kingfish on fly gear is quite a feat and to do it on line less than 4kg is one of the toughest assignments in sport fishing. I was left with little doubt that in combination with Mako Charters, he will set the benchmark for light tackle world SWF records on kingfish and I wish him all the best on his quest.

Graham Little hooked up on SWF in the Bay of Islands