Fishing Reports

It was as if a switch had been thrown. A couple of slow trips and then it happened. Hundreds, and I mean hundreds, of snapper were jumping on baits out in the Gulf. The place was going off! The last 2 trips had the crews heading home with bins full and tails hanging out of bins and on one of the days it was a lumpy south east, wind generated sea that was not the most comfortable for the drift fishing.  At least DIVERSITY has plenty of boat in the water and is heavy, so has a good presence out there in a bit of slop. Traffic wasn't a problem either as we were the only boat we saw all day.

Some of the gannet work ups have been whoppas too. Find a well established one and you're in! The dolphins and whales have been in really good numbers out here as well , tracking down the bait, ripping into it from below, while the birds gate crash the party, along with us, from above. We watched a work up start with a single gannet diving 2 trips ago. Seemingly within seconds there were hundreds piling in from the heavens and within minutes we had tracked right on into snapper city. Oddly enough one of the first fish to come out of the action was a pup hapuka! On the sand? Yes on the sand. The do school up over the sand from time to time. 99 fat snapper later we left.

Whole and 1/2 pillies were getting the fish every drop and those who were clever enough to have a pack of Gulps on hand picked up the bigger fish. There were some quite nice fish in these trips too. Big red snapper with big wide tails, sharp as teeth and razor back fins the lot of them. The Gulp Crazylegs is going to be a winner this summer, in fact it has been catching fish along with most of the Gulp range all winter! The movement is good and the black and white one was doing the damage drop after drop after drop.

The water depth out here means you need to run a ball sinker in front of your worm hook when soft baiting. We typically use 2,3 and 4oz ball sinkers or bean sinkers. I tend to avoid the fluro colours at this time of year as there is still some 'couta and frostfish around and its just a waste of money giving them away to the snakes. I'm not convinced that fluro is all its cracked up to be either. Maybe they catch the eye of the fisherman and not always the fish.

Sorry for the short report but I got things to do, my book to write, the vid to make ,a list of chores on the boat as long as....well its not that long actually haha. Anyway get out there and get amoungst it!

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Cheers

Damo - www.charterconnection.co.nz - check out some of our vids on our webpage