The fishing is starting to fire with good numbers of good fish being caught The bite has changed a little with the full moon, but even with the short bite, the fish have been steadily coming aboard for many.
RANGI LIGHT The outer reef towards Tiri has been fishing well on the out going tide. The fish are fat and hungry but only seem to bite on the out going tide here. There are also plenty of small kahawhai in the area (which seems to be common right through the gulf at mo), and it is well worth put a livie out under a balloon while targeting the snaps. One lucky angler from Westhaven scored a beauty kingfish on Friday night, weighing in at healthy 78 1/2 pounds, an absolute monster of fish , so with the small spring kahawhai around a livie out can certainly have some big rewards.
WORM BEDS With the beds starting to really hold some good numbers of fish, the boat traffic has been heavy on these areas. Our recent excursion there resulted in nearly thirty boats sitting on the Tiri beads. A good way to utilise this is to fish a way down current from them, as often the bigger fish will be down current feeding on the berley and bits of bait drifting down current from the hordes of boats. This strategy resulted in some good fishing for us and also meant we were able to use our berley later in the day and let the others do all the berleying for us! Best baits seem to vary, with the fish changing their mind , often starting on pillies and squid then moving on to kahawhai and skippy. If the bite slows try a different flavour as the fish were certainly been very picky.
RANGI SHALLOWS Produced some great fish for us late in the evening. Lots of berley resulted on a hot dusk bite with good snapper up and over the double figure mark. Soft baits were also well worth the effort with the snaps devouring the plastic not long after it bounced along the bottom. The fish were aggressive and put up great scraps on the light string. The fish bite the soft baits even harder after they were sprayed with a bit of stimulate spray - it seemed to just make the bite even more aggressive so that's worth a try. Soft baits are a nice clean way of fishing and result in some hot action, so don’t be shy trying it, a bit of practice and your time will pay dividends for your chilly bin.
SHAKESPEARE POINT (GREAT BARRIER) The pins of the point are starting to hold some good snapper and up until late last week had been fishing very well. This area had slowed a little over the weekend, but with the passing of the full moon labour weekend could be the ideal time to berley the stink out of i, soak some XXXL baits or even a livie, and have some big fish battles. Light sinkers, big hooks and heavy leader will be needed to stop some of these big reds, but rewards will be had for those who go hard....
WHANGAPAROA BAY The fishing has been fantastic in the bay with the mudflats in the middle holding some good numbers of big fish now. There are plenty of snaps well over the 10lb mark, they are aggressive and hungry and will take any thing you drop to them. Best fishing seems to be on the drift with black magic XXXL snapper snatchers with big baits of mullet and squid,
With the spawning season approaching the snapper are starting to fill the shallows and mid water areas of the gulf. With so many good fish around a little bit of care in the quantity of fish taken will help to preserve the fishing for the future, so take enough for a good feed and there will plenty for us all in the years to come.
Terry Williams-King
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