Fishing Reports

Finally the gamefish have graced the Eastern Bay with their presence!  After an incredibly frustrating and painful game season that was so full of early promise, things seem to have turned the corner.  More about this later. 

Everywhere else isn’t too bad either as most everyone is pretty content with their efforts on all fronts.  Weather has become warm again after our temporary cold snap – hard to sleep again.

Inshore

This easily accessible arena has had a fair old thrashing just lately, accentuated by good weather and the Whakatane SFC’s annual three day ladies tournament again, east is best as the Rurima Rocks have been strangely but decidedly quiet. If you do fish around this expansive area of foul then go deeper rather than shallow. 

Straylining and softbaiting has been a waste of effort in anything less than 30-35 metres.  From Ohiwa east has been a different story however, if not in depth than certainly in productivity.  Lots of nice snapper (3-5kgs) are succumbing on the sand but, if you fancy a big one, then the foul off Te kaha Point beckons in the evenings. 

This area has always seemed to be a pm fishery and it appears nothing has changed.  Terakihi have finally become more difficult in the shallows, perhaps the warm water has driven them deep (80-140 metres).  Gurnard, trevally, kahawai and kingis round out the options with some of the latter decent fish of 15 kilos and more.  Water slowly clearing up with a clean green predominating – real snapper water!

Offshore

Again, the smokey isle has had a good effort thrown at it compliments of good weather and busy tournament schedules.  As a result, there are few secrets out there at the moment.  Deepwater has received the best effort with bluenose, gemfish and hapuka appearing in that order.  With spawning eminent, bluenose should progressively show in better numbers in coming months.  Large females, some over 30 kilos, will showcase this event. 

Kingis are still hanging in well although most are very lean fish in need of more condition.  Still some excellent sessions available but with far less degrees of frequency lately.  To compound this has been the reappearance of ravenous bronze dogs, particularly at the piece of Volkner Rocks Marine Reserve that we can still fish. 

A few nice fish over 25 kilos have been landed with the vast majority under 20 and needing a good feed.  Bait has been more productive than artificials of late.  Shallows are full of surface feeding trevally that are reasonably cooperative, most between four (4) and (5) kilos.  Reef fish, however, are playing coy with few decent catches recorded recently.

Ranfurly Bank

A steady string of visits here lately with seemingly one or more boats plying those waters most days.  They are having to share the area with an inordinate amount of commercial boats, mostly longliners.  Bottomfishing has been rather slow times but, if you persevere, you should get rewarded and come away with a decent catch.  A smattering of hapuka, trumpeter, king terakihi and bass make things interesting and diversified lately. 

Few big fish with most in the 10-18 kilo category.  Waihi veteran angler Ian hay countered the philosophy with a 42 kilo bass followed closely by good mate, Auckland master brewer Nigel Shaw with a beaut 41 kilo puka. Kingis are playing the game, reveling in the strong current that the shallows are commonly associated with.

All manner of enticements have been accepted with equal relish.  Live and dead bait, jigs, poppers and stickbaits have produced the goods with the latter two undoubtedly the most exciting due to the visual aspect involved.  They range in all sizes imaginable from rats (numerous) through to lunkers and everything in between. 

“Whopper of the week” was shared by mates Ken Fagan and Rex Collins with their matching 32 kilo personal bests.  Extra sweet for Rex as this was his only second ever kingfish landed!  There are a lot of medium sized makos extracting a toll in the shallows.  These fish range between 35-90kgs and are quite voracious.  Good snapper and pup hapuka abound near East Island/East Cape.

Pelagics

As stated initially, we’ve finally got something of substance to get excited about – or at least Waihou Bay does!  More than a statement about the recent fishing than the quality of the entire season to date, last Thursday saw more action (hookups and landings) than the entire season previously! 

The “White Pointer” competition certainly got lucky with their three (3) days perfectly coinciding with the impending action.  With no other bycatch whatsoever, blues and stripees were encountered with equal rapidity.  Amazing that some anglers/teams still insist on trolling with 24 kilo tackle with blues in the mix. 

The outcome is near certain!  There were several spool jobs followed by other deaths on the bottom.  If you can’t/won’t fish 37 at this time of year at a place like Waihou Bay don’t bother!!  All you’re likely to do is “waste” an apex gamefish!  Most of the blues were in the 200 plus kilo category topping out at 240.  Once nice stripee was boated (146k’s), otherwise most were in the 80-100k bracket. 

Fish were spread from Waikawa Point all the way through to Lottin with the Cape backbone seemingly the most reliable.  Hopefully this will be the start to what has been a slow season.  With a lot of boats at Waihou Bay for their annual run and the Nationals just around the corner we should see more great catches soon, it’s just a case of the consistency and regularity that we’ll see them.

Summary

Note an air of excitement in this report?  How observant of you!  Hope this is the way forward on the game scene; otherwise everything else is just fine.  Just to let you all know there are two (2) spots available on a northern trip in April onboard “PURSUIT”. 

The dates are April 10-15.  This is prime time and should be a great opportunity for anyone who wants a great experience as well as some exciting fishing possibilities.  If you’re interested please contact us and get all the information.   Till next week …………..