Even with sudden decline in the weather, there are still enough good days in between to get out and wet a line. The fishing in general has been pretty damn good too, with fish starting to throw some condition on before they move to deeper water for the winter.
ORARAPAISLANDon the western side of the Noises has been fishing extremely well, in particular the shallow foul ~500mtrs to the west of the rock. Good numbers of school snapper and some big winter trevs are in this area.
Best bait seems to be fresh NZ pillies (Topcatch Bait and Tackle have a good supply currrently) rigged on a two hook stray line rig & tied to a light trace is the ticket at the moment. My preferred rig is two Mustad 7/0 penatrator hooks with a light 40lb supple leader with a small ball sinker of around ½ to an once-depending on current. Cast the pillie back into your burley trail, & it wont take long for the bait to picked up and scoffed by some of the hungry snaps inhabiting the area. For the trevs, fresh mussels wrapped in bait cotton to hold them on the hook will work a treat. Be prepared for the trevs to be schooling on the surface come slack water, so small Berkley soft baits attached to a spin rod will give you some pretty tough tussles on these little beasts.
The hole of the TIRITIRIMATANGIISLAND wharf has produced some excellent snapper over the last few weeks. Plenty of double figure fish taken on big fresh baits, a fresh supply of jack mackerel butterflied and floated down the burley trail have resulted in some excellent catches. The trick seems to be having a good constant burley trail with a big burley on the bottom and mid water; it seems to be bringing all the fish onto the bite with plenty of aggression.
If time is short and you are looking for something closer to home, TE TAMURAEPOINT (MotuiheIsland) has fished extremely well for good pan sized snapper, especially on the out-going tide. My favorite rig here is a very small sinker and a small 3/0 Mustad long red hook tied directly to the main line. I like to cut squid into long strips here and then thread on to the hook leaving a long dangly bit of the end. This rig has resulted into some out standing catches of 30 to 35cm fish from here; we had a particularly good session here on Saturday afternoon on the rising tide.
When the weather allows ANCHORITE ROCK has been fishing well for big fish on the change of light. There still seems to plenty of kings there but they have come well down in size, so you may struggle to get a legal king here. The snapper however have been more forthcoming and there's no shortage of hungry, angry snapper patrolling the reef. Big cut baits or big fillets of salted Bonito on stray line rigs have worked best here. You may have to check your baits regularly as there are plenty of small fish that will pick away, but patience will be well rewarded.
If you are fishing the shallows along the south western face of RANGITOTO ISLAND there are still plenty of schoolies coming and going with the tides. You will have to re-position yourself on the change of tide, but with persistence there has been some good numbers of snapper caught recently. Even though they may not be trophy fish, they sure do taste good.
Good luck and enjoy the fishing, for a great deal on NZ pillies call into TOPCATCHBAITAND TACKLE, Westhaven and Clevedon
Terry Williams-King
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