Fishing Reports

The aftermath of the strong westerlies plus big swell (ruminants of Cyclone Wilma) has had devastating effects on the Bay of Plenty (many are going back to the moniker of Bay of Empty) recently.  While the water is still warm, the clarity is shocking – like a bad cup of coffee in most areas!  The cobalt water we enjoyed for over two months was completely displaced in two days!  We were wondering why were weren’t catching gamefish before – now we know why!  Anyway alls not woe, unless of course you’re a game fisherman!

Inshore

Pretty sad or at best vastly mixed results.  While the snapper fishing (and everything else for that matter) should improve as the mud and silt of two floods settle, it’s certainly anything but flash at the moment.  Anglers are landing anything between little (nothing in some cases) to a decent feed but few stories of outstanding catches of late.  While the Rurimas are uncharacteristically quiet, seems like the further east one goes in the Bay the better.  A recent family competition run out of Opotiki proved this and was quite successful.  Winning snapper was a 10.2 kilo fish taken Te Kaha along with several in the seven to eight kg category.  Green water favours successful snapper fishing and there’s plenty of that currently!

Offshore

White Island waters just keep on producing, and well at that.  The recent injection of crummy green water with adverse currents didn’t seem to bother the kingis, or anything else for that matter.  Kingis remain very productive at a number of spots despite the spawn nearly over.  Many fish are understandably slabby now but don’t think you won’t get a fight out of them, on the contrary!  All methods are finding success although things are gravitating back to bait over artificials. 

Most fish remain in the 14-17 kilo bracket with the odd one eclipsing 20.  “Whopper of the week” easily went to Australian visiting angler Adrian Lewis with his tagged and released 28 kilo specimen.  Bottom fishing remains fair to good with bluenose taking centre stage.  Most are small fish of 4-8 kilos after quite a spirited battle out of nearly 400 metres of water.  As we approach their spawning season more of these females should appear all the while.

Ranfurly Bank

Despite cool (17-19 degrees) green water the proceedings continue.  Both bottomfish and kingis seem unaffected with water clarity and remain keen.  While few larger fish are coming out of the deep, many fine hapuka between 10-20 kilos form the backbone of the fishery.  Good support continues from trumpeter with a few real beauts.  An “Enchanter” angler scored a near 20 kilo specimen, the largest anyone can remember for many years.  Kingis are biting in many areas and depths. 

Good fish are coming out of reefs as deep as 180 metres and all the way up into the shallows with 50-80 seemingly the best.  Jigs are very productive but then so are all forms of bait.  All sizes are available from rats between 3-8 kilos all the way up to lunkers.  An “Enchanter” angler bested a beaut 38 kilo fish, the valiantly released the beast after weighing and photos.  Following back by a single kilo was Auckland angler Mike Bannister.  Two fine fish, which gives an indication of the quality available currently.

Pelagics

Two months of great water was displaced by two days of westerlies but the end result is largely the same.  Colour (nothing wrong with the temp) is clawing its way back and with it has come a few stripees.  They have been seen and caught in quite shallow water, no need to go out wide at present. 

Te Kaha snapper fishermen report seeing free jumping striped marlin sporadically around them throughout the day, sometimes two in the air at once and in less than 40 metres of water!  Things seem very much on the improve with a strong easterly current pushing some good water from the western Bay to the east.  We live in hope but still a lot of litres of fuel going toward naught.

Summary

Things are pretty good if you don’t consider gamefishing but who wants to do that in mid summer?!?  More next week ………