Fishing Reports

It has been without a doubt a pretty good season (and it's not over yet!) for most fishers. Inshore was a bit slow to get going but by jingos it fired up really well and with the calm conditions we experienced early on I would suggest that it would have been a good spawn for the snapper and other inshore fish. Game fishing too has been productive but more about that later.

Inshore snapper

They have infested the place and are in almost every bay, channel, around the reefs and broken bottom and although they may have finished spawning (who knows) they are still in large schools especially out in the Gulf. With the better weather we have been drift fishing the 50m areas and it has been pretty good although we are not seeing the bigger school fish (7-10kg) like we did in the early part of the season. These fish seem to be hiding or perhaps feeding at the change of light. Find a good work up out deeper and you may just luck into a bigger snapper though.

There has also been a lot of small kingfish on the inshore reefs this year. The rats are on all the major foul and seem to be in pretty good numbers. The bigger fish are there I'm sure but there are so many small ones lining up to bowl over a jig or livie that they don't get a look in. Persistence and patience will pay off though or if you get really fed up with the rats try towing or drifting a big livie around. You will catch less but it will be worthy. Just remember its the Hauraki Gulf and not White Island though and you can't transplant White into the Gulf. If you catch a kingfish over 20kg in the Gulf these days you're doing alright I reckon. This is about average....

Offshore Action

Our game season has been pretty action packed with a trip down to the Bay of Plenty chasing the elusive yellowfin tuna and elusive they were, in fact I would be interested to see the end of season stats so far as this declining species goes. Another trip had us out behind the Barrier tassling with  blue marlin and small tuna, another out of Tutakaka where on this charter we broke 2 ducks and secured a marlin each for our firts time game fishers. Here's the nice lady that takes your call when you book a trip with us....

and Pete Ansell with his first. Previously, Petes' biggest fish was a 10lb snapper....

These charters were a lot of fun especially for the new anglers with the more experienced guys offering advice and encouragement to the newbies and we will be doing a lot more trips next season back down to the BOP, out of Tutakaka, Great Barrier and like our next one in 14 sleeps, up to Whangaroa.

Upcoming season

A quick look at our website will show we have plenty going on with Barrier stay-aways, The Big Day Out ( 12 hours out wide), SP only days (soft plastic fishing), jigging trips and our usual fishing the Gulf and Outer Gulf. Have a nosey here

The SP days are a fun day with anglers working together to find the right colour, size, brand, technique and weight to get the fish to feed on the baits. Drifting in sometimes the most unfishy looking places has resulted in some really good size fish coming aboard and plenty of personal bests beaten.

Whats up at the mo

For the past few weeks we have been out in the Gulf chasing the schooling snapper and knocking over the odd kingfish, dory, trevally, terahiki and getting dusted by some big sharks. The drift fishing out here is good in a word and just about every rig will work but if your fishing with bait (you know the stinky stuff) then pilchards are the go. Cubed and on flasher rigs or ledger rigs, straylined whole and on running rigs they seem to be outfishing the other baits. Makes sense as there has been schools of pillies in the Gulf for months.

In the rough weather we have fished inshore and that too has been near as good as further out  and although it has taken some time for the fish to move in closer they are about in numbers but can be a little tide dependent. Get the tide flowing and you should be right. Kawau, Waiheke, Whangaparaoa and up the coast have been the usual windy day haunts.

Drifting when we can gives you guys more chance of a better fish rather than being stuck in 1 isolated spot waiting for the burley to kick in and even then you are only going to catch whats in that general area. Some of the drifts we have done in the Gulf have been miles long and this gets you onto the fish .Sometimes the school will even follow the "mobile burely trail" we become with baits going up and down as we drift along. I know this happens as on more than one occasion we have dropped a good fish with a rig still in only to pick the same fish up a 1/2 hour or so later!

Check out the website and give us a call if you think it's up your alley.

Damian(Damo)Clayton

The Charter Connection - Where fishing is catching!©

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