Fishing Reports

What wonderful weather for a nice change and are we lapping (lapped by the time you read this) it up.  Fishing remains pretty decent on all fronts with some improvement and surprises scattered throughout each sector, read on ……….

Inshore
Despite cold (down to low 14’s in many coastal areas) and dirty water the snapper are making steady inroads.  More “pannies” are showing up all the while to augment the good terakihi fishing that was already in progress.  Some nicer fish are showing with the occasional 12-15 pounders reported.  One real bonus, especially if you like beating the oil companies, is a good snapper bite directly off Kohi Point – the entrance of the Whakatane Harbour! 

While evenings are the best, the fish are biting throughout the day.  While most are pan sized up to a couple kilos, there has been the odd real beauty mixed in.  30 metres of water (which equates to less than two miles offshore).  Gurnard is the usual standby in this region so some nice snapper is a real bonus here.  Talk about real fuel savings – the whopper of the inshore region fell to a kayaker.  The “Iceman” Paul Rough landed his personal best red not far from Kohi Point on a small bait and ledger rig.  Congratulations on your superb 10 ½ kilo snapper, Paul.

Offshore
With a couple days respite in the wind, there was resurgence in deepwater effort.  Early morning bluenose is still ones best bet although hapuka have shown little in the shallower (160-250m) environs.  Largest deepwater denizen was a 37 kilo bass taken in 400 metres by “Enchanter”  angler Scott Drinkwater.  Bluenose, while not monsters, have been a nice average size of around 8 kilos. 

Back at the island the kingis are still keen to punish their would be captors in pre-spawning form.  Let’s face it, if you were leading up to your single sexual experience of the year you wouldn’t want to miss out either!  Jigs, live bait and flying fish are all working – usual with equal effectiveness. 24 kilo tackle is still grossly inadequate for some of the fish with many breakages, even on 37!  With 25-30 kilo fish landed every day the mind boggles as to the size of some of these lost fish.  To put some refreshing perspective on the matter, one hog was landed – just to show what is there for the taking. 

After a full half hour pulling on 37 kilo tackle, west Aucklander Scott Drinkwater (again!) boated a splendid 46.2k kingfish!  At less than two kilos off the world record, this was the largest kingi landed out of Whakatane (or anywhere else) for some years.  Well done Scott, you had yourself a couple of great days fishing.  Closer to White the reef fishing is only fair and quite sporadic.  Some sessions yield good quantities of terakihi, XOS pink mao mao, and red snapper while others are most disappointing.  Water quality and temps also vary from day to day with over 17 and azure blue to 16 and clear green. 

Some talk by surface longliners off Cape Runaway about a large body of 18 degree water with some bigeye tuna – bring it on, or in this case in.

Ranfurly Bank
Continued great fishing down here but very little effort from visiting boats.  The 70 foot “Oracle” is on who experienced generally pleasing and productive fishing.  While bluenose proved difficult in the depths, hapuka were again seemingly everywhere.  Size was lacking however with few over 20k’s and many “pups”.  In an interesting turnabout, many and good sized trumpeter have moved into the mid depths (80-120m). 

They were a welcome addition to the catch with some whoppers to 15 kilos.  Snapper still available in good numbers over a side area including East Cape, East Island, the “Bluffs” and the shallows of the bank itself.  As always, weather conditions play a huge part in any trip to that part of the world.

Summary
Although water temps (and often air) are still well down, we’ve got a lot of good fishing on virtually all fronts.  While pelagic gamefish are but a pipedream at this stage we are kept too busy to worry about them too much.  With westerly wind flows predicted to be our destiny for the foreseeable future, it’s just a case of hanging in there and enjoy what we’ve got which is plenty.  Until next week…….