Fishing Lessons

Learned a few fishing lessons the other day. Thought you might be interested. Weekend [1] 26-27 September, the fishing was like pulling teeth. Even nothing of any size lost to leave us three blokes wondering what had gotten away. Tried shallow fouls, mid-water tarakihi grounds and puka territory. Saturday - in the vicinity of The Needles, shallow foul fishing afternoon through dusk produced just a feed of deep magenta pan-size kelpies and moray eels at a ratio of two eels per snapper. Cavalli Island tarakihi ground next morning produced a couple of the target species and heaps of under size snapper. A couple of barracuda made their presence known.

After wasting our time on Taheke Rock, Puka territory further east produced half a dozen school sharks. Only one required a team effort to unravel and release. Even the usually reliable long line set adjacent the usually productive tarakihi and snapper grounds produced no more than a brace of medium snapper. The second evening, Back inside the Bay, snapper fishing in the Roberton Island/Capstan Rock region was even less productive:  baits left out over night remained un-touched. Weather and sea conditions were exceptionally user-friendly throughout.

Weekend [2] 01 & 02 October. Conditions not quite so user friendly but still pretty benign. Friday evening fishing was more of the same. Lion Rock eventually produced a couple of larger pan-size snapper along with several morays. Next morning, over breakfast, Cavalli Island snapper were asking to be caught. Several 3-4kg noddies required surgery to remove their hooks. They were seriously feeding. Then along came a lone extra-large blue cod in 20m of water. And the wind was from the south!

The sun shone so bright that day that fishing was cancelled ‘til about 6pm when both the tarakihi and snapper were most obliging. Fishing was ended before dark to ensure this man alone remained within his fin-fish limit for the day; same or similar places as last week – different results.

Analysis: Still the same number of fish in the ocean. The moon/tide situation had swapped from noon low with dawn/dusk high to noon high and dawn/dusk low tide. The moon had shrunk from around half full to near new. Wind directions trip one were predominantly SW and flukey. Wind directions trip 2 were predominantly S/SE and steady. On both trips, a blue sky and bright sun was the norm.

Baits: trip one locally netted sprat/yellow-eyed mullet and piper were standard fare. Trip two, baits included mullet, squid and pilchard with a couple of treasured jack mackerel landing the two best snapper for a while.