Fishing Reports

Well -its a case of too much fishing and not enough writing for me lately!!

Gamefishing

Gamefishing continued to get better here thru the middle of February and peaked right when our One Base and Classic tournaments were on.

 During these comps there were often 50 plus marlin strikes a day, culminating in 10 -15 marlin being tagged or landed a day - very good fishing by anyone's account.

Only a few Blues have been caught this season though as we really haven't ever got the 22 plus degree water that you need to get any number of these fish. The best blue for a very long time did make it here and was promptly caught by a very keen local angler called Steve Batt. It weighed 273 kg and is now the  Mens club record on 37 k and Mens all tackle-Top work Steve!!

 Yellowfin showed at the start of the season and slowly tapered off to be only an occasional catch now, and for the last 3 weeks.The bigger 50 -60 k fish showed very briefly at the start of the season, then another one day flush of them in mid-late Feb, then they largely disappeared.

 Now very poor water- green and 19- 20 degrees- has moved into our area in general and things have slowed further. We tagged a 95k est stripy yesterday in a local boat I was crewing on out in 700 m of water wide of Red mercury in very lousy water, so they are still there in limited numbers, and yet in beautiful blue water we found the day before, we saw nothing!!

Dont give up yet - these fish will tolerate the water colour and temp for a while yet as they do at the end of most seasons, and we have east 15-20 knots for the weekend, to push some better water back in.

Inshore

Snapper continue to be fairly hard work on the whole, but slowly getting better- Every thing has been late this year so their return to the reefs to feed up fro winter, may be also late.

Due to this,"Stingray" has been putting in a lot of time further out, jigging for kingis on the offshore foul off Red Merc and the Aldermans.This has been very productive with many days seeing 10 -15 or more kingfish coming to the boat, most being released and a few of the better fish up to 20 kilos being kept.

Also we have found snapper up to 6.2 kilos out there in 100m !!Who knows what they are still doing out there!!

Terakihi fishing is ok where and when you can find them, you just have to fish the weed edge in 15- 40 metres and be patient till they come on the bite.

Good Fishing

Andy Kerr- Stingray Charters, Whitianga