So, on Thursday last week I got a phone call from a mate up in Whangaparaoa asking me if I was free for a fishing mission. I've checked with the boss and she gave me a free pass for Saturday and Sunday. Sweet.
Went to work on Friday and asked the work boss if I could have Monday off which was also not a problem. As I already had confirmed even without other approvals, now was time to start late planning.
Called my mate and the plan was a bit all over the show as the weather was supposed to be mint. So I got home, put 5 combos together (topwater, jigging/livebaiting, bottom fish, softbait/slowjig, and sabiki), put some bait and some groceries together, some beers and I was ready to leave Tauranga to Whagaparaoa on Saturday early morning to leave Gulf Harbour early noon.
Got to the bro's house, loaded up his lovely Whitepointer 7m hardtop with all the gear, food, beers, fuel (a lot of it), and we were in the water by 14.30hs.
2 minutes from the ramp and we were into the livies straight way. Loaded the live well and off to Shearer Rock where we caught 3 legal kingies in 10 min. All looked like the stars were aligned to what would turn into an epic unplanned trip.
From Shearer Rock we headed to Anchorite which was a bit disappointing. Stick baits, jigs nor livies were working in there.
Stretching a little bit and we were at Channel Island and livies were back in the drink. It didn't take too long til I was hooked up. Pretty quick I realised I have never had a kingy that big in the end of my line before. It was at the end of the arvo, beginning of the eve. Good decent fight and soon enough I could see colour. Wow, that was my PB right there, so close. Lucky enough the skipper secured my fish with a beautiful gaff shot. Just over 25kg.
As the sun was going down pretty quick, the skipper decided we should head to Port Jackson and overnight in there and be in to the fishing as soon as we got up.
Sunday we woke up to another beautiful day and we were still pumped from the good fish the night before so the fun began again.
Quick stop at Channel is for not much... from there we went to the Pigeons by Great Barrier which also didn't produce anything. From there we headed up to the Miners Head. Again, a lot of drifting for not a hell of a lot of action. We tried everything and everywhere the whole Sunday for not much at all.
So back to south east of Little Barrier, trolled livies all the way around the 10 ~ 15m around Little Barrier. Not much again. We made the decision to start cruising back home stopping at Flat Rock for another attempt.
We tried a couple of small work ups and a few snappers were placed in the bin. Flat Rock didn't help us either so back to Gulf Harbour Marine we went.
All in all, I had a blast cracking my Kingy PB, we covered a lot of ground, the weather helped us with nice flat waters and a good couple of days were had by all of us!
Here are a couple of pics of my new little beast!
Cheers,
FK