The toughest thing about fishing at the moment is deciding just what to target. There are loads of kingis inshore, marlin not too far out, and plenty of snapper close to home. Mmmmm decisions decisions!
KINGFISH
The outer pins are pretty much devoid of kingis apart from the odd resident fish at the moment, pretty typical of February. Most of the schooling kingfish are haunting the inner islands like King and Slipper - even better!!!!!
Pretty much any reef in close is holding good sized kingfish, heaps around the 85-95 cm mark, but the odd good fish around 20kg if you put the time in. If you are day tripping perhaps the hardest part is catching livebait as they are getting pretty smashed up around the reefs.
Catching livies in the dark is the only dead cert to stock up on livies, but a good back up are dead piper fished under a sinker, which kingis have been snorting down like the flavour of the day. They are about the only dead bait you will catch kingfish on at the moment.
SNAPPER
The snapper are starting to move in around the closer reefs, and we've had some great snapper sessions lately, with plenty of double figure fish. Softbaits (especially POGY's) and fresh dead bait (forget the bought stuff, fresh mackeral, piper of kahawai is where it is at) have been producing the big fish, anything else will bring the pickers around.
GAMEFISH
For stripeys the 100m mark out from Whangamata towards Mayor seems to be the hotspot, and as far as Blues go, the Hook and the back of Cuvier, as well as the middle ground near the Alderman Islands have been the hotspots this season. The next two weeks will see the peak of the gamefishing season and from there on in we are into prime kingish and snapper fishing, in close and out wide, it is all on!!!
Epic Adventures - Coromandel,NZ
