Ive been waiting for more time to post up with photos but so far this has not happened, but may do later.
I had been following a patch of water that originally was off Gisborne that held SBFT. It arrived up here a few weeks ago and yes there were SBFT NBFT and bigeye all being caught commercially.
The weather window did not arrive when the bulk of the fish were being caught and rumours were that the SBFT had all but departed when our window arrived.
We managed to get a decent SST a few days prior to our trip (many thanks Mat2) showing 17.4deg water where we wanted to be so we fulled up and went out with alot of pilchards and maccies for cubing.
We left quite late from Mangonui after a major overhaul on the outboard and boat and arrived at our grounds in the pitch black 830pm. The inshore water matched the maps really well but the wider stuff was pretty cold 15-16' with abot 10knotts of wind and we had been told this may be the case with no maps on the day due to cloud cover.
Alas we had some bait sign deep and alot of small temp breaks in the area .2-.3degress so we cubed. and boy did we cube.
We had one livie taken on a 50m behind the boat set 20m deep - my crew man left the drag way to high (his reel) so the bite happened balloon popped the rod bent and rachet made some noise and the livie was removed - with no hook up. The resulting inspection showed a clean circle hook with no trace damage.
With in 15-20 mins our first blue shark turned up in the cube trail and for the rest of the night till 3 am we had them to entertain us, including one getting stuck inside our drogue with its head out the small exit hole. Lol We also had some small bait fish hand out and a number of 30-50 cm fish (possibly small tuna) cruising back behind the droge at the edge of the light trail - none of which we could catch.
At 3 am I noticed alot of dense bait at 300m with the occasional big fish sitting on top so I set a deep bait with a live maccie and went to sleep. 4am and i was awoken by the rachet of the deep bait. slow steady prrrrrrr on the Makaira 30w. Waking up Aaron who was asleep on the deck with whispers of "the deeps bait the deep bait" the reel lever was pushed up slowly and weight came on... and then off. Upon winding up the bait was still there with no major injuries - just looks abit haggard. - long soft bite but it didnt stick.
We woke to a calming sea and good marks on the sounder 60-100m deep - nice arches of what we suspect was targe species. Cube trails, live bait and a jig was deployed for no imediate success. One cube was hit and rachet took off for a second but the hook never stuck.
We then did some trolling out over a 796m sea mount (out of 1800M) there was general bird life and on the upcurrent side of the sea mount 300m deep to 600m bait like never before with some large fish on the top and on the edges that were straight up and down. here we go we think.... after a few hours of dropping all manor of baits and lives and cubes we call it quits. The deep current on this sea mount was unBELIEVABLE, barely able to get anything close to the bottom.
We then made a long run home in silky smooth seas 3 hours or so seeing dolphins whales and some more birds teasing us diving at unseen fishes. We stopped in for a jig and caught a feed on the way in.
Fantastic amazing and blessed to be able to do this trip -
A special shout of to Paul from Ocean SSTs for his amazing service, Ben Mat2 and Aaron for an amazing trip.