Fishing Reports

OVERVIEW

Hot daytime temperatures and frequent N/NE/E winds over the last few weeks have seen it go from an early season/cool water temp scenario, to now water that’s so warm that we almost have caught more Blue Marlin than Striped marlin- WEIRD !!!
INSHORE

Snapper are busy spawning, huge balls of fish being found all day out on the sand in 20-40 m, but trying to get them to bite is very difficult. Best to wait till dawn or dusk, and try to find schools that have gone back down to the bottom, a sign they could be interested in feeding again.If nothing has gone down , then all you can do is use soft baits, or run a small 100-200 grm jig through them, in the midwater.
Terakihi are helping to bridge the gap when the snapper won’t co- operate, so keep the burley going, go to 1/0-3/0 ledger rigs and get some of these in the bin, in case the snapper don’t ever come on the bite.

OFFSHORE REEFS

Still good Kingfish and Hapuka available if you get through the Barracouta, which are pretty thick now on the offshore reefs and pins. Our last official trip of the 08 year on “Stingray” saw Auckland regular corporate client Brian Cossar have a dream day he won’t forget for a while. First up he jigged a 43 kilo Hapuka on (yet again) the new “KING” jig from Sportfishing NZ. This jig is consistently getting our best fish, plus working when the other brands don’t , due to its different shape and action. Then to finish off on the way home we had a quick strayline inshore and he boated an 8.3 kilo snapper, on a whole straylined big squid. I suggested he go and buy a Lotto ticket when he got off the boat…..

GAMEFISHING

Things have very suddenly warmed up sea temp wise, so quickly in fact that we appear to have all but missed our annual tuna flush!! -Did we blink ??? We normally get a 2-5 week flush of Yellowfin around mid Dec, to mid January. Our Tuna Comp in early January was dismal (2 Yellowfin for 50 plus boats for 2 days-do the maths..), and Capt Rick Pollock on “Pursuit” reported seeing them off Hicks Bay weeks ago, so they have probably gone through us and off ‘round the corner down toward Gisborne-Time will tell…. Despite that, all but one of the few tuna we have got have been big fish, with the winning fish in our Tuna Comp being 54 kg, and our Game Club ex-president Penny Murray recently putting 2 fish of 58 kg each( a double strike) on the deck of their boat “Goin Deep”, a top pair of tuna in anyone’s books !! Marlin wise things are very weird!!! While we starve for Stripies, despite great temps and lots of small Albacore and Skipjack around the 130-150m mark, we are getting more Blue marlin than is usual for this time of year. Up till a couple of days ago the Club tally showed only one more Stripy than the Blue Marlin tally!!! The blues- 3 of them were 188, 200, and 210 kg. Also Tauranga has landed 3 blue Marlin that were reportedly caught off the Aldermans, along with a Bigeye Tuna of 80 kg, also off the Aldermans-so that’s 6 Blues for our area-there is some great water out there allright!!

So where are the Striped marlin?? Talking to a Tutukaka regular Trailcom Morry the other day, he said they had the dismal tally of only one Striped marlin so far-Grim for them too. Maybe they will go down the west coast again like they did a few years ago- I hope not!! So given the stats so far-there aren’t many marlin out there, but you are almost as likely to hook a Blue, as a Stripy, so make sure you’ve got some heavy artillery on board, to stop these Blue missiles, or you might just get skunked, leaving an empty spool as a momento….

Good Fishing

Andy Kerr-Stingray Charters-Whitianga