Fishing Reports

We seem to be falling into a steady weather pattern over the past three weeks.  Not a bad deal – lousy early week becoming fine and clam later on and through the weekend.  Gratifying to see so many boats getting out during these beautiful days.  Reading the correct weather windows has been relatively easy recently with most reaping rewards for their efforts.

Inshore

Still the bastion of angling effort, receiving the bulk of angler attention.  This is for good reason as the near shore arena continues to reward most.  Snapper continue to be the apple of most eyes with productive fishing for NZ’s favourite.  While the vast majority are the pan sized variety, there are a few beauts mixed in with the also-rans.  Limits, or near limits, are common with still a wide variety of depths and locales kicking out the goods. 

Will be interesting to see how long this last, but, right now, we aren’t looking too hard into the gift horses’ mouth.  Expect to see an exodus into the depths soon.  Backing up the crimsons are good numbers of gurnard, kahawai and terakihi.  Expect the latter to become far more important as time advances.  Water green but not cold.  Expect this to also change despite being well past the shortest day of the year.

Offshore

Finally, a reasonable number of boats getting out for a look – see.  Generally the results were rewarding if not exceptional – more of a case of steady as she goes.  Kingis cooperated well with some boats landing big numbers – that’s the good news.  On the downside was size.  Most were rats to around 12 kilos, hungry they were – large they aren’t.  The exceptions to this is some very nice (to 30k’s) fish in deep (220 metres) water at the Volkner Rocks. 

The problem here is the same as we’ve had for sometime now – bronze whalers.  Several boats recently hooked quality fish there, only to be ravaged by the toothy mongrels.  Unusual to see them in the colder water, not a good omen for the season ahead.  Otherwise the bottomfishing has been decent, not great but again steady.  The deep has produced a sprinkling of bluenose (pups), hapuka, gemfish, rubyfish and bass (one on 40k’s on a jig). 

The shallows (50-100m) have been kicking out some very nice lines of terakihi with the promise of more the come as we dig deeper into winter.  Water looks pretty good (bluish and nearly 16 degrees C) but no trollers to test the waters for XOS albacore.  All in all reasonably vibrant out yonder.

Ranfurly Bank

Two recent visits have yielded pay dirt as we suspected might be the case after so little effort over such a long period of dormancy.  Hapuka are literally biting their heads off as they lead into spawning.  These fat fish are over running the bank at present, most being mid sized (8-14 kgs) males ready to go.  The few females landed were very nice sized (20-35k’s) with predictably ripe roes.  Bass bit well at only one location, all being in the mid range (15-25k’s) with one exception, that being a 45k fish landed by Wellington angler Peter Rasul. 

At present the bass and puka are totally separate – true segregation!  Kingis are in near plague proportion with all spots “suffering” with an overabundance!  The bottomfishing was most difficult at times and in places because of the numbers and enthusiasm of these kingis, some of which are nice fish between 20-30k’s.  Relatively little bycatch (trumpeter, kingi terakihi) due to the quantity of puka on the ground.  Water a reasonable colour and temp with surface long liners doing well just north and northeast of the bank.

Summary

Despite cool temps there is still some very nice fishing to be had over a large area of water.  Getting most anglers away from the fire and laziboy can be an issue.  For those that make the effort there’s plenty of reward awaiting.  Till next week. ………….