Hauraki Gulf Fishing and Scallops Report 271016

  • General Saltwater, Auckland and The Hauraki Gulf

Hauraki Hotspots.

Sitting in the cockpit of my good ship ‘Miss B Haven’ having a wee talk to my very good friend Captain Morgan was a golden opportunity to reflect on the fishing over the long weekend.
 
The weather window was generally good enabling anyone to go wide chasing work ups  from Kawau to the Coromandel with some interesting results. From those I have spoken to there were long periods of slow fishing on either bait or lures which didn’t surprise me due to the moon phase and wind chill factor.

Fishing the works up exhaust produced more snapper [but they were light on the bite] where as directly below the birds  the snapper were generally bigger and more aggressive. My mate that gave up rolling around and dropped the anchor for a fish with bait - the pilchards and squid got taken without him knowing but fresh kahawai got the best hook up rate as the snapper were just chewing at the bait and slowly sucking it down.  
 
The best fishing from all accounts was closer towards the top of the Coromandel over the foul in the stronger current where the average snapper was in the 2-3 kilo range.

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Scallops

Purely for the benefit of my fellow man I spent some of the weekend doing market research on the scallop beds from Onetangi to Pakatoa. What a lot of people do not realise is these tasty little suckers move around a lot which means they can be found in places that one would never think of looking such as small bays or coves just inside headlands where the current swirls and nutrients abound.

Overall the scallops are well spread across the whole Waiheke area and it is great to see they are back in the shallow water on the inside [western] of Pakatoa, this is a spot that I do not recommend dredging as the bottom is lumpy coral shell and  rock , in fact this perfect spot to teach the kids to free dive at low tide for them.  

Overall the scallops are in fairly good condition with a few having done an early spawn.

Naturally while steaming around looking for scallops I had a close eye on my Furuno TZ touch chart plotter/sounder the whole time and it was interesting to see where the fish were yet more importantly where they weren’t as again the moon phase and wind chill factor was having a great impact.

Hooks bay on the southern side near the entrance was showing a truckload of good sign yet  unless you had fresh bait they only mouthed the bait making hooking a fish very frustrating. There was a lack of fish showing from Hooks Bay right the way down and on the inside of Pakatoa but what really surprised me was there was very few schools of bait fish hence no kahawai work ups, in fact there was no bird life all of which told me to catch dinner it had to be in shallow water.

Anita Bay showed the best marks at the northern end where the bottom is rugged from the rocks out to around 16 meters, fresh trevally and kahawai baits were the only ones to hook up  but again the snapper had no aggression and just mouthed the baits. The whole head and gut of the trevally got stray lined out towards the foul and was eventually taken by a large snapper that gave the Fin-Nor a good work out till I pulled the hooks.

Generally it was not a weekend to write home about but we all got to eat snapper and scallops each day , where else in the world would you want to be but the fabulous Hauraki Gulf.

Captain Swish

 

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