Ranfurly Banks with Yee Haa

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Well lads we were all Ranfurly Bank virgins until a few days ago 

The Furley brother! as it is fondly referred to by Lance skipper of Enchanter
is a place like no other... New Zealands Cape Horn he says with a huge smile on
his face. and you can see why when you get there.

We met Lance and his two handsome deckies Phil and Steve at the at the wharf in
Whakatane, loaded the boat and set sail for Lottons Pt, east cape for our three
hour snooze before steaming out to the Banks for the next 4 hours. The Banks are huge, just to give you an idea, you could steam for 3 hours at 8knots and only just reach the other end so you've gotta know your stuff to find the goods

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These boys work really hard for you on the trip... making breakfast
lunch and dinner, poring cups of tea and juice and making sure your comfy. Hats
off to them because they do all this on just an few hours of sleep on a bumpy
sea! Lance can usually be found leaning on the these back rails offering angler support such as "if you wind that handle on the side of the reel the fish will come in" or "Com'n get stuck into it! this is the Furly boys lets go find some smaller fish these ones are dominating us 

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The call goes out to get the gear ready our
first drift is in sight. Phil fronts in the cabin door and musters us to the deck. 

It took a few laps to find the sign as we all waited
patiently for our chance to drop the first jig.

Young Ken hooks into the first King with the Captain with his head out the window yelling words of encouragement at him. "your at the Furly boys! you can't bring your pea shooters out here expecting to hunt elephants"  If you know Lance you'll understand

Nice one Ken but it's not going to make the grade mate! Ken later got the nick name of Puka wisperer because him ang anyone who stood near him at the bow came in with puka

Now that's a but better! now the funny thing was there was only .5 knots of current which is not usual at the Furly and although it shut the fishing down a tad there were still a few biggies that were keen to chew on the jigs. Justin (Gimp) from Shimano and Bonze of Bonze game lures get hooked up solid

The look on Bonze face says it all... pink jigs were the heat!

Justin begging me to get the shots quick before his legs give way and they both end up on the deck 

alright mate you can let him go now... check out the comdition of these hogs!

after things slowed up we headed for deeper water around the 130m mark and started picking up Puka on the Jigs blue Broken Arrow worked a treat as you will see from other pics

Graham Lowe had a ball on his new Stella 8000 PG (power gear) and JM 350 spin

Big Al (Alan) and me doing the shuffle as Al's fish smokes off toward East Cape and mine heads for the reef.

Another 20kg rat 

I can still hear that Stella sceaming, or was it Graham panting and weezing and his eyes popping out like this Bass? Graham got a PB 30kg King plus a first Puka and Bass on Jig!

Another first was Justins Puka on jig

Yee Haa!

Steve and Phil as I mentioned before did an awesome job of flicking those 20kg rats off into the water and helping the guys get good photos of the biggies. They were coming thick and fast out of between 40 - 80m depth

Luey gets nailed on his Saltiga 6500 Extreme and JM PS 400

Go Bonze... this fish went just over 35kg and was the only Kingi kept for trh whole trip... out of the 9 Kings that weighed over 30kg Bonze landed 3 of them. 
Notice the pink jig again this time a JM Alian 

Yo Ken!

Big Al's 15kg Trumpy caught on a green 400g Katch 1 King jig

Yum Hapuka for dina 

This kinda fishings the heat bonze recons 

Our faces hurt from smiling far more than we are used to and the ribs sore from laughter... we jigged hard from 9am until 8pm making a full day of it because the weather was packing it in over night.

This is the second day when we didn't make it out to the banks. The blue in the windows isn't sky! and the boat isn't rolling... this rogue wave clipped us across the stern filled the cockpit, the flying bridge and dumped a couple hundred litres into the cabin through the open door. needless to say I was ready to move out of my seat at lightening speed if needed. The deckies waded up to their nees for a while retreiving floating objects  All was well though time for a but of snapper fishing tucked in behind an island me recons

Our hard working deckies relaxing for their first time since the trip began as we steam into Hicks Bay

Luey 

Justin

Ken

Alan

Bonze

Graham

Well done guys we slayed them alright  

A Big Thanks to Team Enchanter "You Rock" 

Ranfurly Banks with Yee Haa

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