Fishing Reports

After being lulled into a sense of security by weeks of brilliant weather, the harsh reality of inclemency has hit us between the eyes! While the direction of recent winds could be far worse and should only help gamefishing aspirations, it’s nasty at the moment and looks to be the same for days. Plenty of excitement and action to reflect on so here goes.

Inshore

While snapper still rule most anglers’ mindset in the near shore arena, more are turning to terakihi just lately. While snapper are patchy at best, the silversides have really turned on the goods. Limit or near limits fishing has been achieved with the fish of a pleasing size and in a hurry. As mentioned, snapper are very flighty of late with some anglers scoring well, others getting a feed and still others dipping out. Now that the Whakatane Tuna Tournament is over perhaps more attention will be put into this fishery.

Offshore

After some brilliant fishing over the past weeks, things have shut down to a large extent over the past week in a real turnaround. Kingis in particular and trevally to a lesser extent have suddenly decided to play hard to get. Despite temptations of all descriptions, mainly rats to 10 kilos are the only ones succumbing and then only sometimes. Some very discoloured water is coming out of Works Bay and enveloping the entire south side of the island, surely a hand in shutting down the trevs. Deepwater still productive for those turning their hand to this form of dredging but, with inky water everywhere, it’s hard to get too excited about these denizens.

Ranfurly Bank

Quite a few boats visiting here, all garnering success across the board. Bottomfish are very consistent with a nice mix of fish pleasing anglers in the predominantly 130-160 metre depths. “Invader” had a particular good run lately with skipper Dave Barraclough guiding his anglers to a 56 and two 60 kilo bass – great fishing for the Mark Kitteridge led team. Otherwise is a pretty steady diet of 10-20 kilo puka with a few trumpeter and kingi terakihi for spice. Kingis are certainly not red hot but infinitely better than the suddenly ice cold White Island. Jigs are working reasonably well in the hands of pros while bait does the business for the newbie’s.

Enough fish in the high 20’s to make things interesting but one beauty merits a mention. A Singapore based angler onboard “Enchanter” hooked the fish he had been trying for years to entice. After a real see saw battle in rough seas the fish finally capitulated. Just as it was nearing the surface a mako unceremoniously whipped its tail off to deprive the deserving angler of his complete trophy. Without its tail the lunker still went a solid 37 kilos – sure to have been 40 intact. Beautiful water here is begging to be plied with lures but few takers.

Pelagics

The prestigious Whakatane Tuna Tournament has been completed again in good conditions with competitors able to fish each of the four days. Would appear to be the last of the tradition steeped tourney, at least by name, as there were no tuna of any kind landed. On the other hand, billfish came to the party with the final day yielding the most marlin was the heaviest, a splendid 242k blue landed by “Windy Lee” team of Opotiki.

Outside the tourney, Waihou Bay continued its winning ways with some good action there. Most boats are getting at least a shot for their trouble, some several more. Whopper of the week went to “Back in Black” at 252 prime kilos of blue marlin. A few spearfish and mahis to spice things up along with the healthy population of stripees. This area can only improve with the current spate of easterlies we are experiencing.

Summary

A mixed bag this week with most everything deteriorating with the exception of gamefishing. The rest of this week should be a dry argument with few boats out till the end. From Friday on expect some superb action, especially with billfish leading the charge.