Fishing Reports

Overview:

Evil weather all winter, has made for very few days out on the water for most Fishos, here in Whitianga.

If my reports have seemed a bit spread out its because there has frequently been little to report.!

With the sun further up now, and some warmer days, the water temps should start moving up from the 12's and 13's we currently are enduring.

Scallop festival weekend is upon us, and lets hope it shows Whitianga at its best in every way.

Inshore

Typical late winter / early spring fishing here inshore, with a few snapper everywhere, both on foul and mud / sand. Its more a matter of where you can get to weather wise.

Not long ago I had to take some fishos out on a day the severely limited our options, to say the least.

One of the great things about this area is the shelter options behind headlands etc, and thats what we did, hiding under the headland at Opito bay, and we did well, with close to our limit of snapper , up to 2.8 kilos-good pot fishing on a tough day!

There are still some terrortorial big moochers parked up all around the coast in the shallows too, but if the weather allows, try to get out to the deeper low foul, in 40 metres or more , and ideally 50-80 metres.

This depth is holding a lot of the snapper who wintered over out there , due to the cold water temps.

I suggest a mixture or weighted running rigs and big snapper flashers, on ledger rigs. Never underestimate the ledgers ability to do well, especially in the deep, and/ or low foul.

As always take a mixture of baits, and have that mix down there all the time, so you can see whats doing the best job.

We did some testing recently on the new Shimano Lucanus jigs, on a school of burleyed up snapper, behind the boat-interesting to say the least - they guys on baits were nailing them, yet no fish would take the Lucanus- lets hope it was just a bad hair day for the Lucanus......Hmmm -Fresh is best !!

Offshore

A very tough time weather -wise, but good if you can get out there. Deep Terakihi are still in 80-100m if you put on small flasher rigs.

Both Hapuka and Kingfish are going well, with local charter operator John on "Requin", doing especially well on Hapuka recently in 150 m or so, in a narrow weather window, east of the main Island group.

There are quite a few reports of a poor average size to the kingfish coming off the Alderman Pins this winter.

Is this sign of things to come ???? Whilst a lot of Kingfish are released out there (don't handle them please!), they are a slow growing fish, and still a significant number are taken home.

We think very carefully now on our trips about how many kingfish we actually need to take, to satisfy the anglers food requirements.

"Stingray" has a boat limit of one per angler, and 95% of the time we don't even take that !!!, frequently returning with just one for a whole group- Crikey- How many people do you need to feed?

With that out of the way, the Orange Katch 420 spear did the business on our last trip out, on the Kingfish, and nothing else got a look in !!

Scallops

The new season is almost here- the commercial guys decided to hold off initially, as condition was poor when their season opened, but it has improved a bit now.

They struggled to get any where near their quota last year, and I am told that this year it has been raised further !!! Fisheries science-OH Yeah!!! Just wait till they get halfway thru their season, and lets see how the're doing.....

Divers -be careful with so many dredgers out there , that you don't got mowed over- it happens every year, so put a float on your scolly bag and you can be seen, as the flag on your boat won't save your butt when you surface in front of a launch full of gin swillers!!!

Good Fishing

Andy Kerr- Stingray Charters-Whtianga