Fishing Reports

Hi All

The first week of January saw the Mercury Bay / Tairua / Aldermen area as the early gamefishing hotspot of the country with good water and plenty of tuna and marlin rewarding those giving the gamefishing an early shot.

Most boats out giving it a go were rewarded with a constant line of albacore, not your average coke bottle sized alberts but good sized fish in the 8-10kg range - perfect eating size.

At least 2-4 yellowfin are being caught every day and a similar number of marlin with an early showing of a number of Blue Marlin around 200kg.

Most of the action has come from the predictable spots, the Hook off Red Merc, the middle ground south of the hook , the 300m line off the Aldermen Pins and at the Alderen Knoll itself. Basically anywhere within proximity to some structure near the good water.

We've put in a few days in so far on 'Epic Adventures' chasing tuna and after  wading through the constant stream of big albies for the first two days we were rewarded with a 44kg Yellowfin Tuna, which took a small green cockroach style pusher.  The hit came amongst an area we had seen a lot of action in the prior days, in 200m of water, with gannets and plenty of dolphins in on the action.  Sean Cummings was the angler and landed the fish on his Stella reel and popping rod.  After seeing the way this set up dealt to the yellowfin (most of the fight was in view of the boat) I'm sure this style of set up will be used more and more targeting both marlin and tuna in the future.

With a big easterly swell pushing in at the moment the water should be even better this week and hopefully the marlin fishing will be even better as a result.

So far the first Fishing.net.nz pinfish tuna (our yellowfin) and striped marlin (caught by Graham Lowe on Obsession) have come from very close promixity to the reefs we are jigging kingis on at this time of year so mixing up a days kingi fishing with the gamefishing is a good way to do it.  Both of these fish were caught within 5 minutes of putting the lures in after a jigging session, even if we did plane out a bit from the reefs to get in to the hotspot.

The kingi fishing itself is hot and cold at the moment, there are some big fish around and the week before Christmas and New Years we fish in the 20kg - 30kg range most days but since then it has gone a touch quiet as the blue water has come in and the fish are moving about a lot.  Again mixing it up a bit with some gamefishing and picking the times to target the kingis seems to be working well.

Heading out with a full tank of livebaits has often saved the day with the kingis a little hard to catch on the jigs in the real blue water but livebaits fished on flurocarbon turning up some good fish.

Any structure with good current flow and bait is a good place to start for kingis at present, they are spread out , moving around and showing up anywhere from the harbours, coastline, close in pins to the deep foul out wide.

Snapper fishing has been hard for many and while the crowds of boats have been around we've been sticking to fishing the deeper reefs around the Aldermen Islands.  If you're stuck to fishing in close, then a late fish on dusk is your best bet for targeting snapper out from Tairua at the moment.

The conditions so far have just been superb for summer fishing but it has also made the snapper fishing hard unless you're out deep or fishing low light conditions at the end of the day.   Nethertheless there are some very nice fish around in you put the time in.

Terahki are around in good numbers and are being caught in as water as shallow as 10metres close to Tairua, though the 30-40m mark is a good place to prospect up around Boat Harbour at the moment.

Anyway that's about in for now, hopefully we might have some snaps of a marlin or two for you next time!

Until then tight lines!!

All the best,

Carl Muir, Epic Adventures

www.epicadventures.co.nz