Fishing Reports

Snapper feeding hard out!

You know the fish are feeding hard out when you're catching them coming up with a mouth full of feed and your bait! They are spewing out large worms, small crabs, whelks and other crustacea and in the work ups they are full of anchovies and pillies. The recent swell has exposed a lot of food for them and being the ravenous feeders they are, its getting eaten.

The work ups are not as frequent as they were in the early part of the season but they are still out there. One good thing too is that we are seeing a lot more kahawai action out in the Gulf as they round up the white bait, anchovies and pillie schools. SPs, baits and jigs are all picking up fish under the working birds and on a few occasions we haven't been able to get a bait to hit the bottom without it getting gobbled by a snapper or kahawai.

So where has it been happening...Well we have been fishing the same area for about 2 months and for good reason.....the fish are there and the fish are good ones with snapper to about 8kg so far out of the schools and the average size is a good pannie. Some days we find the bite a bit slower and have to move around trying different drifts, bait sizes, colours of soft plastics, jigs and the other day we seeded the area by drifting through, having a fish and dropping handfulls of chopped pillies over. I think we must have mimicked the left overs of a work up because after we went back up the line and started the drift again it was on! Fish after fish came to the boat after some epic battles on the silly string...2-4 kg braid and 7" Gulps. We had a ball (as you do) using just about every method there is and everything worked.

The deeper water out here in the middle Gulf ( between Tiri and Great Barrier) holds plenty of fish at this time of year but apparently you don't have to go that far. The Auckland Harbour and the channels have been fishing very well (typical for the time of year) with fishos getting into good snapper just off the naval base and ferry buildings. How lucky are we! Good fishing under the envious eye of CBD workers.

Waiheke has been going off too. Try along the coast between Matiatia and Park Point or along the northern side of island in 25m. Keep an eye out for birds along here too. The bottom end fishes most of the year and we are hearing good things from down here and out in the Firth.

Some good dory are showing up too. The SPs seem to get them pretty regularly as do livies but the most common hook up happens when the dory will take a small snapper that has been unlucky enough to get hooked on an unattended rod!