This is my first report in what seems like forever. With all the easterlies hanging around over Summer I spent my time finding dive spots on the West Coast instead which has resulted in some great success.
With all the talk about how on fire the Mokohinau Islands finally a day worked where Swellmap showed a weather window and I had enough people free. So the plan was made that we would try target some big Kingfish and whatever we encounter on the trip along with chucking my mate in work ups with his spearfishing gear to see what he could get.
The day started being meet by these conditions
It was all looking great for a trip out there. The first job was to get some livebaits, that was made easy and will managed to fill our bucket in 10 minutes. We then took off but once we got to the channel noticed it was North Westerlies not South Westerlies and predicted. This made the trip a bit more bumpy than planned but nothing to worry about. Halfway out my mate asked "did anybody put my weights in the boat" bugger nobody had done that so it was two things to go wrong really early on.
We then got out to Simpson Rock and saw some good sign but couldn't buy a bite on jigs or livebaits. Onto the next spot, we then saw some Trev workups but couldn't get any Kingfish underneath and having no weights made it next to impossible to dive down. While we were fishing we saw 2 massive Kingfish easily 30kg plus attacking some baitfish on the surface. Before we could do anything they were gone. We were really worried at this stage it was dea low tide and no Kingfish to show for all of our efforts on top of that all our livebaits were dead. After lunch we made the call to go in close to a rock we have known to hold Marlin and big Kingfish and give that a shot before thinking of heading any further. We were meet by workups this time they had blue Koheru and kahawai. After casting a weighted treble hook and stickbait we finally hooked into two blue Koheru. We quickly baited one up on our 50 wide set with our livebait marlin rig circle hook with 400lb maybe a bit of a overkill.
My mate then casted his stick bait into the school to try hook more baitfish. He then hooked into something which seemed to take forever to pull up. I think cut the motor to give him a chance. At this stage the blue Koheru which was hooked up went a bit deeper. Suddenly the reel started to scream and we were hooked up. Finally the stickbait came to the boat and had caught a 10kg Kingfish. Going back to the livebait whatever was hooked was just holding it's weight and proving to be a good fight for my mate. After 10-15 minutes of backwards and forwards the leader came to the surface which we grabbed and pulled the fish up. That is when we got the biggest surprise A massive 30kg Kingfish was there and had easily taken the 40cm blue Koheru. We were over the moon. The fact none of us had ever seen a Kingfish over 22kg and the fact our plan finally worked. Here is a photo which I feel really doesn't do the fish justice.
We then went back to trying to catch another blue Koheru. Instead we got a few Kahawai. What we noticed straight away they were only wanting to swim on the surface not like the blues who were happy to head down to 10m. No Kingfish were interested because of this. Finally we were able to catch a blue. It was my turn on the rod. Exactly the same thing happened as the fish before right on the edge of the work up it started to run. Mine was only 16kg but still happy to get my biggest Kingfish for the gulf.
So the plan came together in the end. Not how we expected. But that is fishing surprises come out of no where. That is what is special about Fishing anything can happen