Land-based Gamefishing

There are few keener land-based anglers than writer Andy Macleod, but even he thinks catching marlin off the rocks is a tall order. Here, he explains why…

A well-known Kiwi fishing identity (who shall remain nameless) once told me he was sick of reading wildly optimistic stories about catching land-based marlin in New Zealand. “Show me the money!” was his attitude, and as the years go by without our first verifiable landbased marlin capture, I’m inclined to join his school of thought.

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That said, there have been credible and well-documented hookups on marlin. Three Wellington-based LBG pioneers hooked up on marlin in the 1980s, and I’ve just finished reading an enjoyable book by Phil Walsh (Fur, Fish and Phantom Reds), where he recounts his grandfather getting a marlin strike on a kahawai he was playing at the mouth of the Mokihinui River on the South Island’s west coast.  

I’ve also enjoyed discussions with Brian Wood, former station owner at Lottin Point, where he described marlin cruising within metres of rock platforms around East Cape whilst paua diving. But, it must be said, none has been landed, few are ever hooked, and even land-based sightings are as rare as hen’s teeth.

Various tuna species have been caught land-based around New Zealand. I’m aware of the occasional catch of skipjack tuna, Pete Lamb’s 9.1kg yellowfin caught from Cape Brett in 1990, along with a handful of more dubious claims over the years.

Against this backdrop, it must be said that chasing these genuine pelagic gamefish species land-based in New Zealand looks like a proper needle-in-the-haystack scenario. So when I saw a Facebook post claiming that with a bit of ‘good old Kiwi knowhow’ a yellowfin tuna could be caught land-based this summer, I was a bit taken aback – but it did get me thinking about why marlin and tuna don’t get caught land-based around our shores…

For starters, let’s note that tuna and/or marlin get caught right around the New Zealand coastline, more or less. Okay, so marlin don’t take kindly to the South Island’s cooler waters, but plenty of tuna species do. These include albacore and slender tuna, which are of a size that can be readily landed if hooked from a landbased position. So we don’t have a fundamental latitude or water temperature problem – the fish are here and plenty are caught from boats throughout the year to prove it.

Let’s look at the possible fishing platforms themselves. To get amongst marlin or tuna, anglers need to fish into deep, clean water right out in the ocean currents – like the platforms in Jervis Bay, Australia, which drop into 40 metres of water with plenty of current. Nowhere in New Zealand has the natural pedigree of Jervis Bay, but those that come close are well known including Cape Brett, Cape Karikari, North Cape and Lottin Point. These locations have all produced land-based marlin hook-ups or tuna catches, but thousands of hours of fishing effort have been put into every one of them. I’ll come back to this later…

There are other areas that might produce pay dirt too, but our geography doesn’t do us many favours, and I’ve got some thoughts why. For a start, really deep, current-laden platforms are few and far between. In some regions – Canterbury, Taranaki and Wellington, for example – I can’t think of a single spot where anglers can realistically target tuna or marlin. These areas lack deep rock platforms and, moreover, the inshore water quality (think suspended sands and sediment from heavy seas) is generally not good enough to entice pelagic species with a preference for crystal-clear water in close enough.

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This is also a problem in another potential tuna-producing area – South Westland and Fiordland. Here, I’ve seen fishing boats bulging with freshly-caught albacore, but try finding a safe rock platform or a day when the sea is slight and the rivers are not pumping dirty water into the sea in huge volumes. If you can, you just might have a chance, but for some reason this is not an area where keen LBG fishermen put in time. Speaking of which, time is another key factor...

Given the challenges described above, I believe the serious land-based marlin/tuna fishermen in this country need to have plenty of it on their side. Even on the proven marlin- and tunaproducing platforms in Australia, some anglers put in huge hours over extended periods – six-week trips where they camp on the platform and fish from dawn until dusk. Interestingly, a recent article I read suggests that Australia’s keenest and best LBG anglers are in their mid-twenties – guys who are young and free enough to disappear fishing for weeks at a time.

The New Zealand equivalent of the above probably means doing the same at a location such as Lottin Point during February-March and being prepared to head home without bagging the target species.

I once fished with a group at Lottin over this period and was lucky to see the fabled warm blue water come in right to the rocks. Tuna of some description were surfacing agonisingly close, just out of casting range. This is perhaps the only time, over many years and thousands of hours, I’ve been in a position where I, or one of my mates, might have hooked one (with emphasis on the might!).

With a few exceptions, I’m also convinced that Kiwi anglers mostly use techniques that are unlikely to fool a marlin or tuna. These species are mostly caught on trolled lures from boats, and lure fishing is not something that Kiwi rock fishers do that often or well. Having snagged a kahawai live bait (for kingfish) on a sliver slice, we tend to revert to straylining and bottom fishing.

By comparison, land-based fishing in the Pacific Islands and in Australia owes much to sophisticated lure fishing rigs and techniques.

A few years back, I read with interest an article about Australian LBG anglers visiting East Cape, who had great success on kingfish using lures and techniques completely foreign to most Kiwi rock fishermen.  I’m convinced we still have much to learn in this department, but of course we’re pretty good at the techniques that count on popular and more available species such as snapper. And that’s fair enough: human nature dictates that most anglers use methods that regularly bring home the bacon.

Having pulled together this article, devoted plenty of time thinking about it, and spent a not-inconsiderable amount of time on the rocks trying to catch gamefish, I’m sure there are ways to improve the odds of catching marlin and tuna landbased in New Zealand. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that there has not been a single verified marlin capture yet, and even tuna catches remain few and far between.

Yet there are some extremely proficient LBG anglers who ply their trade, day in and day out, around our coast every year, some with the express purpose of catching marlin and tuna. Take the New Zealand Land Based Game Fishing Club. This club is full of seriously dedicated and skillful 
anglers who access some great headlands (and, in some cases, offshore islands) in search of our best land-based fishing. In the process they make catches that would make most boat fishermen’s eyes pop out. But it cannot be dumb luck that not one of these guys has ever successfully landed a marlin off the rocks.

The technological improvements in fishing gear (think casting distances, drag pressures, line diameters, to name a few) might raise the odds in the fisherman’s favour, but against that is the increasing pressure on the fishery. Take yellowfin tuna for example. These fish are under huge commercial pressure right around their migratory pathways. Although the catches of the last couple of seasons here have been an anomaly; internationally their numbers are getting lower every year.

I would dearly love for this article to be consigned to the scrap heap because future results prove I’m wrong, but history tells us catching marlin and tuna from the rocks in New Zealand is a really tough gig. The best learnings, of course, can come from boat anglers with many marlin and tuna under their belts, who are prepared to tell us about the right water temperatures, currents, live-bait techniques and rigging, trolling speeds – and, importantly, where and when they’ve caught them within throwing distance of the rocks! 

 

   This article is reproduced with permission of   
New Zealand Fishing News

October 2016 - By Andy Macleod
Re-publishing elsewhere is prohibited

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