Heavy Metal 2009

Heavy Metal 2009

Once again we gathered at Enchanter on Monday evening and loaded up. The anglers for the trip this year were Sid Fishus, Chris Wong, Chopsticks, StellaMoon, The Rod Baron and Kojak (our decky).

So anyways we loaded up with all the gear, rods to stake out every tomato plant in the Bay of Plenty, so many rods that some got stowed into the flybridge seat cause the good ship Enchanter was looking like a Porcupine. Lots of awesome food and amazing fruit and veggies from Biggear (cheers).

With Kojak and Chris Wong here we had gear to test for Africa, JM reels, kojak/jigstar acidwrap rods, jigstar spin rods etc etc etc.  A quick roundtable with the skipper and away we went. Driving through the night and hitting Hicks Bay for some quiet shut eye at 2am.

Day 1

We get out on the banks pretty early cause the forecast tomorrow is looking ****house. Excellent sunny day today with 15kts ish and some excellent Kingy fishing. Our first drop turned in a 28kg fish for Mr Wong. Plenty of 20’s  kilo fish, with some up to 28kg, 29kg and Kojak topping things off with his 35kg model.

The fish I mean.

Incident for the day with me was hooking a probable bass on a PE4 set up. We drifted half a mile but I just couldn’t get the head up and ended up breaking the line. Bugger but that’s what ya get for fishing the banks with PE4….. 

Ya cant always bag em on the lighter line. Nor on the heavy gear for that matter….

 There was so much gear to test even these fullas picked up spin rods briefly.

Day 2

We got 40kts blowing over the banks today so off to the south tucked in behind East Cape out of the worst of the weather, on one of Lance’s reefs for lay days. We got into an awesome run of kings.

It started off with quite a few rats (under 20kg = rats out here), I was just starting to think of a sneaky drop on my PE3 set up and was about to get it down from the racks, when Chris hooks into something SOLID.

41kg King – JM Power Spell 300g rod, JM PE5 reel,  Zest Curved Slider Silver jig

This was the end result and we were all stunned to see 41kg on the scales.

Bugger the light gear I’m using PE8. What jig was Chris using? Curved slider in silver, I got a 300gm silver chartreuse curved slider that’ll do.  

My lil Saltiga with the drag knob a quarter turn from max squealing and squealing.

Unfortunately **** luck comes in threes and Mr Mako takes his motor out about 10m from the surface.  Amazingly this fish weighed in at 41kg with no tail….. and a fair bit of meat loss.  Bitter Sweet fish for me.

Kojak kept us all entertained with some top class deckying while the real decky had a fish. I think it is gonna be his new career. Flicking kings back and taking **** from the skipper like a man.

Some of the fishing on this day was just awesome with six rods in the water and four or five hooked up at any one time. There were some other hook ups here where the fish could not be stopped and resulted in fast runs and bust offs for Kojak and Mat from memory.

Kojak putting the hurt on.

Not bad for a lay day I thought.

Day 3

Back to the banks with the wind dropping, we had a 5 hour steam so only got there after lunch. But excellent banks mixed bag puka and king fishing followed in a dying wind.

Trevor’s big hook up this afternoon resulted in him chasing a fish from bow to stern and pinging it off under the boat. He has threatened to bring a chainsaw next time to take off anything in his way next time, including the duckboard of Enchanter.

We had four excellent fish for the day 3 by 35kg ish kings and a 30kg bass to Kojak. Chris Jigstar 350 is in most of the photos of him with big fish and the ubiquitous JM PE5 and 6 reels. The big kings today were landed on Zest silver Hardy Longs and a JM rocket or two.

Check out Chris addition of the silver spoon on the tail end of the jigs, that really came into its own on day four.

It continued to calm off out at Jurassic park and we just turned the engines off and drifted for a night out on the banks. This was a cool experience, maybe 20 miles offshore surrounded by royal albatross eating piper and squid from our lights with a lazy sunfish rolling around as well.

Bent Jigstars.

Day 4

Was pretty much a day for the larder, mostly puka fishing. The JM rocket jigs were the killer jigs on this day and the PE5 and PE6 setups doing best in the fast current and building wind with fishing generally around the 150m depth.

Matt fishes for his tummy . Mind you most of us were trying to swipe some trumpeter later .

The best I could do on this day was get a big ass hook up and a big ass sheared leader on a rock……. Oh well some days….

We fished through till early afternoon, with the best result being a bass and puka around the 30 kg mark, until Anesh started grimacing beside the cabin. His smith rod had one hell of a load on for 20 minutes and you can see the effort by the expression on his face. 25minutes later and 55kg of BASSSSSSSSSS.

SMith WGJ with a load on.

Purple 400gm JM Rocket jig with a CW spoon addition, the jig for the deep on this day, practically every bass and big puka caught on them, in a few colours.

In conclusion there were no rod breakages despite Kojak and Chris doing their best to high stick their rods to breaking point, to see if they would break. All the Kojak/Jigstar stuff came through awesome including the neat lil spin stick we stuck the Saltiga on.

The JM PE5 and PE6 reels laded a heap of fish and were real nice even for someone like me who is leaning towards the spin side. Nice long handles, good balance, the double dog is gotta be one of the smoothest and quietest around.

Any other details I missed or the finer points of the gear I’ll leave to Kojak and Chris to comment.

PS        None of these fish were caught on mono, with bait or light drag settings. Though I do hear it can be done that way too.