Fishing Reports

Well  its nearly Christmas, and this always brings a change in Mercury Bay. Two things start to happen- Firstly the snapper fishing starts to get hard during the day and secondly people start going out to try for a gamefish.

We have been out on"Stingray" for 4 of the last 5 days, doing both of the things mentioned above.

Out wide for gamefish exploratory missions, two things are evident. One is that there is reasonable temperature now in the high 18's, but secondly, poor colour to the water. This is not the true oceanic water that we need to herald the arrival of the yellowfin Tuna.

Gamefishing

We caught Albacore out wide in 600-800 metres behind the Aldermans,  but even they were scarce, although 2 new NZ Junior Smallfry Albacore records were set on 4 and 8 kilo tackle, congrats  to 7 year old James Kerr !. The best of these fish were around 7-8 kilos, quite small for this time in the season, but still great sport on the right tackle.   But as I mentioned before we need better water colour before things take off, maybe this weeks N/Ne winds will get it going.

Inshore/Bottom Fishing

Bottom fishing for Snapper continues to get harder during the day as the fish become more and more interested in spawning.Terakihi are showing well as they have been the last few months and are welcome anytime, especially when the snapper won't feed during the day.We are having no problem getting 10 -20 terakihi most days, with some snapper in the mix as well up to a couple of kilos each.

But on the whole you have to be snapper fishing at dawn or dusk(or later) to really do well. 30 -40 metres continues to be a good depth, on sand or edge of foul.

This is more important than tide etc at present. Rod from RNR charters pulled a 14 lber yesterday, but its hard on the whole and those better fish are few and far between during the day. Kingfish are moving inshore in better numbers now and are a good option during the middle of day. Lots of boats coming into the area over Xmas won't help things snapper wise , so get deep, or go somewhere a bit quieter , or stay late, to catch a wary summer snapper.!!

Merry Christmas and Good Luck!

Andy Kerr- Stingray Charters Whitianga