Fishing Reports

Well the weather has kept a lot of us land-locked over the few days but there has been a bit of a lull in the fishing in a lot of areas anyway. But its all about to fire up later this week (well at least that’s my prediction). Don’t forget to check out ‘The Fishing Show’ tonight – we catch big snapper out of a very small vessel.

Tonight’s show is scheduled to start at 8.30 pm because of the cricket  - well that’s if our boys are still batting!

Keep – em tight!

Snapper.
While the schoolies are still in and the spawners are around, they seemed to go off the bite for the last few days perhaps it was a combination of the moon phase and the weather. But what that does mean is that they will come on the bite shortly. I reckon the end of this week the moon and tides are going to be good and the weather should have sorted itself out by then and that should make for some frantic sessions.

The Firth of Thames has been fishing well out on the flats and good fish are being taken early in the morning on the edges of the gutters around the Clevedon flats so there are plenty of fish with in range of even the smallest boats.

Since the spawning fish and schoolies have been in I have had spoken to plenty of anglers who have told be “We’ve been catching our limit easy”. That’s great!, but I think we shouldn’t measure the success of our day on whether we catch our limit or not.

At this time of year there are plenty of fish around so catching a feed is made a little easier, but take just enough for a feed. Perhaps impose a few voluntary restrictions on your boat, for example on my boat there’s minimum size of 35cm for snapper, a limit of 5 snapper per person and every one is ‘encouraged’ to release the big breeding fish.

Gone are the days where the guy with the most fish in the fish bin wins the praise of his peers.

The Far North Mission.
Whilst I had to go to Auckland last week to toil over footage for ‘The Fishing Show’ a team of around 20 anglers from the Fishing.net.nz forums moved north with a fleet of boats and some help from a chopper courtesy of Kingsley at Heliops.

The boat fishing and Heli fishing produced some really nice fish for the guys with plenty of double figure snapper. I’m sure you’ll find more about the trip in the fishing reports forum in the discussion group.

Sharks.
The school sharks are in the harbours and inshore areas at this time of year. Rig (Dogfish) can become almost a plague but they do in fact taste really good. You’ve probably eaten them before as ‘Lemon Fish”. Just make sure you remove the head and guts as soon as you catch them. Thresher sharks are around in force in the Waitamata and they will readily take a live bait and put up an awesome fight that usually includes some aerial acrobatics. 

So get out there and put my predictions to the test. If you catch a few I will graciously accept a beer. If the fishing is a fizzer…..well that’s just fishing I guess. 

Keep ‘em tight and check out THE FISHING SHOW tonight.

Matt