Refer trip report in Who's been fishing AKL for 21/1/17.
Thought I would add to this thread with what worked for me today. Keep in mind that today was my first kingi on fly and the first time I have had success off a marker.
I managed to land one 72cm Kingi from a channel marker, was busted by another (lost half my flyline) and had a rather large one follow my fly to the boat.
I was using a 10wt with a fast sinking shooting head initially. On this setup I had 2m of 25lb mono straight to the fly tied on with a loop knot.
I started in the dark and had no luck on the first marker which was more or less target practice. Once I moved on, it started to become light and the current dropped.
I think this was the key, slow current. Soon as it slowed the first one hit. I had cast directly behind the buoy on the down current side. It was short-lived unfortunately. Before I even had the boat in gear I was busted and only about 2m of my shooting head came back
I changed to my intermediate line, this time with a 1m hand tied furled leader of 20lb fluorocarbon followed by 1.5m of 20lb fluorocarbon to the fly, again with a loop knot.
The next take was on the up-current side and I could see the boils as my fly was chased down. This time I was quicker to get the boat in gear and headed as far away from the marker as quick as I could. Success!
Note to self, take a net next time, tailing a king from a boat on your own is hard.
By the time I had landed the kingi it was daylight and I only had one more follow, again from the down-current side. It was a much larger fish of probably around 1m. It may have been more of a casual investigative follow than real interest but it certainly jolted my heart into action.
The fly that worked was essentially one of the wig-hair flies that keep getting mentioned but tied with SF blend and large tungsten dumbbell eyes to get it down and give it a darting motion. I used some white egg yarn tied over the dumbbell as a makeshift pompom.
The first fly was bronze/white and the second mackerel/white, both in 2/0 gamagatsu SL12S.
Some photos