Fishing Reports

Inshore

Finally a change in the Snapper fishing situation!!! They have been spawning for a while now, since December in fact , and this has led to our typically tough Xmas/January snapper fishing. Well now some snapper are finished spawning, and others are almost done, so we are seeing the transition phase start now, where fish are coming back onto the reefs.

So now you can choose between fishing on the sand in 15-45 metres, drifting soft baits or anchoring up and berleying them to you, or getting on a reef edge in 5 -30 m or so and drawing the big boys out of their cover. These fish on the reef will feed voraciously now, deperately trying to put on as much condition as possible , before winter - Fat means insurance against hard times.

Good Terakihi have also been had  on"Stingray " the last 2 trips , at around 40 m on low rubble type foul, although we have sometimes had to spend 2-3 hrs and 4-8 kgs of burley to get both them and the snapper firing. Be patient, put in the time and the burley.  Things should only get better from now on, inshore snapper -wise.

Deep Reefs

Barracouta have really settled in now on the deep foul, so if you want to go jigging then take plenty of new jigs with you !!!I Not so bad Puka fishing, as you don't get hit by as many as you do jigging. If you can get through the Barras there are still good Kingis and Hapuka to be had, on most of the offshore deep foul, i.e Alderman pins, Cobra rock etc.

Gamefishing

Every week now our Striped marlin fishing improves, after a slow start to the season. The Stripy's are now moving in on the schools of Skipjack and other bait in 80-140 m. We found a Stripy tailing his way  into  Castle rock, which was just 300m ahead of him the other day, on our way home from a day's gamefishing. Tutukaka is enjoying awesome stripy fishing at present, so we hope some N/NE will send them our way in the next few weeks.

Still some excellent Blue Marlin fishing out past 160-170m, and best seems to be 300-500m at present, and someone hooks one up every other day, but they don't always get these highly strung rockets. Local Kev "ninja" Harvey had one the other day go past his boat from bow to stern to nail a lure from the front ,head on !!! Suffice to say things didn't go well , as its hard to hook up a blue marlin thats that naughty...!!

YellowfinTuna fishing is all but extinct, after years of surface longline plunder, so well done boys, the less said about that the better....

Good Fishing !

Andy Kerr-"Stingray ", Whitianga