Just a quick report for boxing day.

Headed out past Tiri for a look and there was a lot of sporadic bird activity approx 5 km out from tiri but nothing sustained and no snapper underneath that we could find.

Headed deeper and had more luck around short intense work ups or by the old trick of dropping a line by a group of gannets sitting on the surface.

Got into a very good patch of fish and just kept drifting for an hour at least.  Great times and snapper up to 9lb caught on softies, inchiku and lucanus.  For what its worth the lucanus caught the biggest.

With the bin as full as it needed to be we headed out to anchorite for a jig. 

Rats were there in huge numbers as many reports have suggested recently.  With several newbies to jigging on board we stuck at it for a while having a great time trying to find some bigger specimens.

With brilliant visibility in the water we could see the kingis chasing the jig up and mates following hooked rats up.  Then a bit of excitement when a big shadow showed up near a rat which was hooked up and at about 2 meters below the surface......a shark!!  Hard to say exactly how big as it was 6 feet deep but certainly the biggest I'd ever seen and definitely over 2 metres.

Well  he didn't muck around and smashed the rat hooked on the jig right in front of us and hooked himself in the process.  So here I was with a 2m + shark hooked up on my terminator 150g and daiwa lever drag 20 waiting for the trace to cut on his teeth.

Well that didn't happen and he was off....................line screaming.  After a good 60 seconds of line peeling and no breakage yet we thought "what the hell" lets chase him and see how this plays out, if for no other reason than to get as much braid back as possible!!!!

So off we went keeping the pressure on as much as possible and gaining line as much as we could by chasing with the boat. Rod spent a fair bit of time pointed slightly towards the water! haha (didn't want a snapped JM150).  Was actually good to have a go at chasing a fish while in effectively a practice situation because he was gonna bust us off at some stage.

Anyway after about 15 minutes of gaining line and trying to coax him to the surface with the little bit of pressure we could put on, we were really encouraged by the progress so became hopeful of getting him close enough for a photo (i.e metre or 2 below surface) before he had had enough mucking round and  he decides to get serious and snapped the line.

Got him to about 3 meters  under so we could see him with the polarised glasses but only really a dark shadow on the video my mate took on his phone.

Anyway he soon decided to run again and kicked into gear and this time the braid snapped.  Only lost about 5 meters in the end (and a jig or course) so good result and a lot of excitment too!!

Went back to try and find that elusive king for the smoker and managed to get 1.  12kg specimen which put up a good fight after dealing with so many 65-75cm during the day.

Very enjoyable day out!!

Cheers

I was there just before xmas too. Never seen so many kingies. Managed a couple of legal sized ones but hard work finding them.  Good fun watching that number of chasers on the stickbaits.