Fishing Reports

Well the fishing was good is October, with good  numbers of kingfish taken off the offshore reefs, and plentiful Hapuka, when you could get out wide.

The kings are responding well to the 400 grm Japanese style knife jigs. Any colour, but make sure you use at least 130 lb hard trace as the barracouta bycatch has been useful for the puka fishing, but with high jig losses. The kings tend to be well down on the structures, where they flatten to mud, most days.

The pukas have been around 20-25 kg, some on jigs, but most on baits- we areusing Blk Magic Groper grabbers or similar, and use BIG cut couta baits if you want the best ones.

Fishing got progressively harder in the later part of the month, but on poorer weather days, we still manged respectable catches of terakihi and smaller snapper inshore. The last 2 weeks have been really slow , particulary inshore, with the odd good snapper being taken right in shallow-i.e. sub 10 metres. One local nailed some big snapper (17-18lbs)in just 3 metres of water the other day, a limit bag and off home in 1 1/2 hours !!Even terakihi have got hard to get on the bite, but can be seen on the sounder under the boat !!!

Some that have lived here forever say this is typical of November, yet the local longliners always do well Nov-Dec. Maybe more effort out on the sand is the answer !!??? Put down a big burley trail and just stay all day and hope to intercept them ,as they definately have spawning on their minds, and all have  had developing roe inside then when filleted. Good luck !!