Fishing Reports

Happy New Year to you all.

Im posting this report from my clunky old, salt encrusted laptop so I apologise for no photos...well if they dont turn out anyway.

WOW its been busy out there with the holidays being so calm and windless for the most part. Im sure it has been/is a good spawning season for the snapper population that moved into the Gulf too. This would explain the recent slow fishing during the daytime as well. The change of light has been pretty good both early in the morning and the evening fish. Getting out pre-dawn can be hard for some but winding up a hot summers day with a fishing trip has been popular and the evening fishing out behiond Tiri, up around Kawau and down around Waiheke has been pretty good although there have been no real monsters.

As most of you we seldom fish inshore in these areas as we prefer to try and get our crews into the work ups and bigger fish out deeper but even we have had to come back inshore to fish where the greater population of fish are. And its been worth it with good numbers of fish coming from sometimes very short bite times on most days. I say most as there have been a couple of very slow days where not a lot has been caught despite our efforts, long burley trails, and other cunning stunts. At least we're honest about it eh!

So here is what we have been finding as we started the end of last month out deeper and moved in with the fish.

Jimmies Foul/Horn Rock/Colville were all going really well with around 100 fish a day being landed. there was the raging barracouta population to deal with for the last part of the month but they were replaced by a smaller poulation of sharks. Threshers, hammers, makos, schoolies and bronzies have no respect for a humble snapper being wound up from the reef or out of a hungry school and many 1/2 fish were landed much to the disgust of the angler. Our tackle supplier was again rubbing his hands together as we purchased spools of trace, spools of nylon, hooks and all the other bits that we had just finished losing to the 'coutas! The fishing was good though so we put up with it for a few more weeks then started moving in to the 50m and 45m mark.

East of Kawau/Tiri was starting to fill up with the hungry school fish and we enjoyed sopme pretty easy fishing at varying distances from Tiri and to start with Kawau. Some days you'd run into some bird action early on and others youd end up 12 miles or so east of the islands. If it was a bit slow youd work your way and sure as fish have fins you'd bump into some kind of action. The fish seemed to get smaller at the big end if you know what I mean...instead of 7-10kg fish from outwide we were getting 4-7kg fish as the bigger ones. But the fishing outwide had slowed so thats how the cookie crumbles.

The last week has seen us fishing the Kawau area, in between Tiri and Rakino, a few miles off Tiri and down off Motutapu. Sadly there has been nothing really stunning to report but there are plenty of "pannies' in close if you are after a feed. Even in the marina the snapper have been coming up at the end of the day and feeding off the scraps washed from the boat! We have seen 1 quite large snapper lurking around with the stingrays in here but he's too cagey to get a good look at. I want to get a photo hand feeding it so Im going to have to make friends with him.

The Tiri - Kawau line has plenty of fish in the area although there are some stonking big kahawai amoung the pannies and getting a bit down was a problem on a couple of trips. Some of these kahawai are near as long as your arm and can bust out a good battle on the lighter soft bait gear. They can make one hell of a tangle too if the crew don't have the wits sharpened up!  A heavier lead will get you down quicker to the snapper but even then they bigger kahawai will chase the bait down.

The Auckland Channels are starting to fire up now and the couple of trips down have produced good numbers but again no real big fish. Great eating size fish are taking most baits including soft plastics but the good ole pillie doesnt really cut it in the high current areas. We swap over to squid and mullet on 2 different rigs. 1. the running rig which allows us to fish a lighter weight and 2. the dropper rig with a single or double hook. Both are pretty effective. The running rig rig allows a bigger bait to be used and it moves around in the current more while the dropper can use a couple of baits, is easy to control in the curremt although more weight is used. The bronze whalers have shown up down here and a few live baits we ahve set have been ripped away or picked and within seconds 1/2 the spool is empty. Seldom do we actually get 1 back to the boat as we run 10kg mono and some of the sharks are 100kg+

Whats the happs....Evening fishing trips are heading out most days - $80pp The day trips are mostly inshore but I know Chris and I are itching to get a bit wider again soon for a look but we know its a little pointless as most grouops want numbers not just a chance at a big fish. The day trips at the moment are running from 8am till 4pm as we are fishing closer in and the evening starts at 5pm with most of these trips coming back in at 9:30-10pm.

The Kingfish trips will start soon and these are limited to 6-7 spots so tjhat everyone can have a fair crack at them. Jigs, livebaits and every now and then slow trolling are the techniques we use. There are plenty around and even on the snapper trips we are getting fish to about 15kg as a by-catch.

A few terahiki, john dory, gurnard, porae and trevally have graced to ice box too. There were a few big squid on one evening trip as well...I know this cos the stain is still in the teak!

Anyway the lappie hasnt crashed yet but its getting warm so I'll split and catch you out there. Hook up with us at www.charterconnection.co.nz or flick us an email to deepsea@clear.net.nz. If you're trying to phone me I dont always have to thing handy(wet hands and noisey enviroment) so try a text message and I will always get back to you - 021 2446346