Fishing Reports

 Hey All!

Just when we thought the fishing couldn't get much better, we had the welcome arrival of some tropical guests off the coastline last week!

What more could a skipper ask for when he has got the editor of Fishing Coast to Coast magazine out for a fish than a huge school of 6-11kg mahimahi swimming underneath the boat! We're talking hundreds of them!

Mahimahi are pretty uncommon along the Coromandel at the peak of summer, let alone the middle of April, and the numbers of them were phenomenal!

The mahi's drifted in underneath a log while we were kingi jigging around the Aldermen Islands first thing in the morning and made for quite an exceptional day on the water. Andy Kerr on Stingray pulled up alongside as we caught the first fish on a jig, and from there on the two of our boats drifted side by side experiencing some amazing action on softbaits.

I'm sure Mike will have a great story, (on a days fishing I will never forget!), in the next issue of the Fishing Coast to Coast mag so keep your eyes peeled!

With the water still around 20 degrees, and mahimahi in the water you would have to think there will be marlin and other gamefish around for quite some time yet!

Several boats were hooked up on marlin around the Aldermen Islands last week, including Shaun Thomson on Souwester - he's had a number of marlin hooked up over the last few weeks south of the Aldermen Islands.

The king jigging around the Aldermen Islands has continued to fire over the last week, with the fish being very fat, well conditioned and if you pick the right tides - in abundance!    

However, you don't necessarily need to go out wide to hook into them.  Some of the reefs right at the back of Slipper have been jigging very well, and over the weekend we encountered a couple of monster kingis over 20kg inside Slipper Island in the shallows.  A good burley trail seems to be the way to draw the big cagey fish in over the shallows, with both fish ignoring livies we had out and one taking a small cube of fresh bait on flurocarbon leader - the other hitting a softbait, both intended for snapper but the kings didn't seem to care!

Everyone fishing in close over the last week has experienced the huge schools of kahawai which are now resident along the coastline and should be for the next few months.  There has been no shortage of pan sized snapper feeding underneath them but the lunkers that are usually here at this time of year in close are taking there time moving down the coast.

After the weekend we've just had, who knows what the next week on the 'Mandel will bring!

All the best

Carl Muir

Epic Adventures 

www.epicadventures.co.nz