Fishing Reports

Officially, summer is over and in some ways it feels like it already. A real nip in the air can be felt, particularly overnight at the moment. Seems like only a week ago we were having difficulty sleeping at night in the sultry conditions. Now the covers feel comfy as they are pulled up around the neck. There’s still plenty of this game season left, or so we want to believe. Weather, read that inclement stuff, has made life difficult just lately.

Inshore

Really don’t have my finger on the pulse here and, quite honestly, don’t care much either just now! Lots of boats fishing near shore between Cape Runaway and the White Cliffs in Waihau Bay. Are they catching or seeking shelter?!? Will make a more concerted effort for next report, promise!

Offshore

White Island still has the mystique – and always will. Other than trevally and bluenose there’s still not anything terribly exciting just now. Sure, there’s kingis – there’s always kingis but the fishing isn’t particularly exciting just now. Other than rats they're still are shunning jigs. Give them a juicy bait and you’re in – some days. Anything over 20k’s is a rarity now with most still in lean post spawning recovery mode. As mentioned, the trevs are nearly suicidal at the moment. Not happy with the fish approaching your bait? Just pull it away and wait for another, more suitable one (read that larger – man over 5k’s) to show interest. A little like fishing in a barrel! Bluenose are fairly consistent but don’t bite every day – still need to get lucky.

Ranfurly Bank

Weather has been an issue here lately with most parties “paying” for their catches with a nasty ride (lengthy) back to shelter. Kingis are biting well but you just try to extract a trophy fish out of the rat to 12 kilo fish – very difficult. Surely they are there somewhere but the larger fish have mainly avoided capture (detection) this summer.

This is despite good hard looks in everywhere from 80 up to the shallows (20-30m). They do readily take jigs however. Where are the hogs? We caught them regularly in the spring but they’ve done a bunk of late. Bottomfishing is ok but nothing to get excited about. A nice mixture of hapuka, bass, king terakihi and terakihi but certainly anything but red hot.

If you care to slog away (often in wind, swells and chop) you get a catch but nothing comes easy now. A few decent bass with the “Enchanter” scoring a lovely 50 kilo bass among his catch of mainly 6-18 kilo fish. Nothing is particularly easy on the Bank just now.

Pelagics

Not a lot of effort so a little hard to judge just where the fish are and how many. A shame the recent Tauranga One Base was scrubbed due to poor weather for two of the four days as that could have answered some questions. An obvious focal point is Waihau Bay and for good reason. Only the odd day (one in three or four) shows promise with plenty of boats seeing/catching fish. Some beautiful water back along the coast between Te Kaha and Opotiki in less than 100 metres.

In fact a lovely (28 kilo) spearfish was landed here (Motu) in an unprecedented catch. Recent strong westerly winds have stirred up the water with patchy conditions now, even off Waihau. The odd blue still around amongst the more prevalent stripees. Tuna – what are they?!? Supposedly a few YFT down the west coast so maybe they’ll show on Ranfurly as they did last year at this time. A few mahis spice up the show, with most nice ones over 8-9 kilos. Will be interesting to see where we go after recent cooling winds. Would appear we’ve seen our warmest temps and will see slow deterioration now.

Summary

Another defining moment now with this game season as we’ve suffered severe westerly winds followed by soueasterlies – not a nice combination which we don’t need anytime but especially this late. Skippies are also lying low in the Bay, only being found in numbers in green soup 100 metres of water off Waihau. Despite a good day off Waihau (last Tuesday) water there lately doesn’t look flash. Till next week ……………