Fishing Reports

 Fishing Report - Tairua and Aldermen Islands

http://www.epicadventures.co.nz

Well the weather hasn't been all that conducive to fishing has it!  There haven't been that many boats out there doing it, but for those with some flexibility it has very much been a matter of finding the gaps in the weather and getting out there when the going is good.

The snapper are in great condition at the moment and you'll find them on pretty much every reef out from Tairua.  

Try and work the current swept side of the reef and you are almost guaranteed some great fishing. The Aldermen Islands have been on fire, with plenty of snapper in the 10-18 pound range, in 10-20m of water.  In this sort of depth we're almost solely using Pogy or Swimming Shad style softbaits, and they are working a treat by some of the photos you can see here!

With the Pogys, use a very light jig head, get your cast as far away from the boat as possible (in the direction of the drift), and slowly mend your line on the drop.  Use very fine twitches of the softbait, you don't need to work them as much as the Jerk Shad style baits. 

The inshore snapper went off the boil during the big week of rain that we had, but when the water finally cleared they came back in, and feed up in a big way.  Last Sunday night we had every cast hammered by big snapper.

The kingfish are in good condition as well, big and fat, and hard fighting.  We've been trying out a new Jigging Master rod from the www.jigsdirect.co.nz website, the Powerspell 400 which has been knocking over the big kingis.  These rods are perfectly designed for jigging, they are short, just over 5 foot, have a parabolic curve rather than a quick taper, allowing a great jigging action and maximum power without hurting the angler too much.  Matched to it is an Ocea Jigger 4000p, loaded with 37kg Jig Star multi coloured braid.  The multi coloured braid is another tool which helps with the jigging, allowing you to drop the jig to the same depth you have sighted fish on the sounder. 

Hot jigs have been the Zest curved slider in Purple and Katch1 spear jigs.

All the big fish we have been catching, including a lot of the nice snapper, have been put back in the water to fight another day.  We'd encourage you to do the same, to help ensure we have just as good a fishery in five years time as we do today.  Take some good quality scales with you on the boat to get an estimate of the fishes weight, get a good photo and pop them back in the drink (after some careful handling!).  A nice eating kingfish is around the 1m mark and that will go a long way, we think anything too much bigger than that is best left swimming in the ocean. We've released plenty of kings lately between 15 and 30kg's, included the two pics you can see in this report.

So what else has been biting?  Well, there have been plenty of other fish in on the action as well, Porae hitting softbaits, and trevally and snapper hitting 400gm jigs!!  The John Dory were a bit scarce for a week over the big fresh but that are back in good numbers in the shallows - keep a jack mackeral down as a livebait or trail a softbait behind the boat for a tasty feed of Johnnies.

So, all in all, the winer fishing is pretty good, and with spring and summer just around the corner it just gets better!  I can't wait for the big Albies to start showing up soon, and to get back into some shallow water livebaiting when the kings move back in over Spring.  Then there's the run of yellowfin in December.....

If you're keen to get out and amongst it get in touch with us through our site www.epicadventures.co.nz

All the best

Carl Muir

Epic Adventures, Tairua