Fishing Reports

We have mostly been concentrating our efforts behind the Barrier and over some of the deep reefs of the Gulf and Great Barrier over the past month...and with pretty good results. Snapper over 8kg are common along with the small kingfish, pup hapuka, G'daddy hapuka, hard pulling Trevs, sharks and a plethora of reef fish like wrasse and parrots.

Deepwater drifting is the best way to get onto the bigguns and the big baits have been getting scoffed along with alot of fish on correctly weighted soft plastics. The barracouta love these SPs and you can burn up some serious coin out here when the pack hunt the baits! We've had the 'coutas "leaping" from the water chasing a jig or a quickly retrieved scrap of bait! We keep the odd one for bait but most are returned to keep the tackle retailers happy.

Little Barrier has not really fired yet but it was like that a few years back where the winter was slow but the spring was red hot. Try getting in close for best results and get a good stinky burely trail happening. You may have to leave the 6 kg outfit at home though as geting some of these big moochers from the sahllows can be hard work and we opt for 10kg for that reason.

Keep in mind too that if you are going to be fishin g deep that you may need to up the line weight too. We had a chap using a  a 6-8kg rod last week in 70m of water and he hooked up on something big but wasn't able to get even close to getting it out of the coral  - the rod was fully loaded and the line was touching the blank and foregrip threatening to saw through the torque groove grip! PING! Don't turn up to a gun fight with a knife eh!

Closer has slowed down now with the back of Kawau still producing a feed but not much more. Flat Rock is its' usual "on again- off again" spot and I am pretty much leaving it alone. 'Couta are around the back of the island too. We had them harrassing bait fish in the burley trail the other day (6m of water) and used a few as bait to pick up a few snapper and trevs. Takatu may be worth a shot as the tides get bigger this week.

Tiri is pretty quiet but there's the chance - and a good one at that, of a feed from in close around the Whangaparaoa coast. The locals will shoot me if I say too much more but if you work the tides, change of light, some reefy structure and use good baits and burely you should be eating fish for tea.

There is alot of white bait around and the kahawai and dolphins are having a ball pushing it to the surface and pigging out. Just look out for the working birds especially the terns, shearwaters and gannets. SPs drifted around near the work ups have worked but overall the snapper numbers are just not there.  

Trawlers are still pretty active in the Gulf knocking over the last bits of quota for the season but from what I hear it's mostly gurnard and flats in the bag along with the odd bit of snapper here and there. Hardly see a longliner these days so I guess they are working deep on the by-catch or tied up.

For us though it's back to the Barrier and into the deepwater drifting and shallow water straylining - give us a holla if you want to get out there with us.

There's dates on the the webpage - www.charterconnection.co.nz and if you don't see a date that suits you just let us know and we'll see what we can do......

Cheers

Damian"Damo"Clayton

Charter Connection - Where fishing is catching!

MOB 021 2446346 - deepsea@clear.net.nz