Hi All, had yesterday morning off work, so a quick early call to my brother in New Plymouth and we had a fishing mission happening! The conditions were very good and we were out about 3km off-shore with our rods in bye 8am. Within half an hour we had a couple of good fish, 3-4 kg in boat. The Sabiki rod was catching plenty of big well conditioned kahawai. Great - heaps of bait.
The straylines were getting hammered bye smaller snaps, stripping bait, leaving a bit of skin on hooks. When this happens I fillet the kahawai, leave scales on, gut bones, chop a big hunk off with bones in it. This slows them up until a big one has a chance to sniff a bait out and smash it! This is exactly what happened at about 10.30 am.
The noise of a drag screaming off the real is something you can never get sick of! Once I adjusted the drag to play the fish, I felt good weight and knew it was over 20 lbs. Fish was 9.8 kgs. Went in 11.30am for cleanup and made it to work by 1pm. Six snaps in total and four more kahawai for bait stocks was the catch today. Here's a pic of me holding the best snap at sea. Cheers.