Fishing Reports

A great big-game fishing season has onfolded for the Bay of Islands, with striped marlin in close and some big blues out wide.Last week saw few boats fishing any deeper than 120M off the Nine Pin, with packs of stripeys breaking up schools of English mackerel, and one small fish caught at the Nine Pin itself after cruising past a visiting launch trying for kingfish.

 Fishing slowed a little over the weekend, with the bait moving on, but most boats had action during the Duke of Marlborough Small Boats Tournament . Many of the Bay launches have moved North for the duration of the Nationals, and reports came back on the first day  of some good action off Cape Karikari. Unfortunatly there has still been very little yellowfin action:- a worrying trend that suggests some fisheries research is justified.

 Kingfish are plentiful, but bronzies have been troublesome throughout. Small fish dominate around Bird Rock, but some big fish ahve been taken from Piercy Island and 71M reef. Most local boats tend to avoid Rocky Point at this time of year because of the sharks, but southwesters later in the week are likely to bring this prolific area back in to play. To avoid the sharks, the best option is to back off the drag to reduce the kingfishes panic and either follow or lead the fish well away from the reef. The system is not fool proff and is time consuming but sure beats boating a succession of half kingfish.

Snapper fishing has been hard, with the middle of the Bay holding lots of small fish,, but very few over 30cm. Best fishing is in the shallows, with good catches of bigger fish coming from Nobbies Point at the end of Te Wahapu Peninsula, but we always get funny looks from clients when we leave Russell and head towards Opua for a fishing charter.

As always drop me an email at MAJOR.TOM@xtra.co.nz if you have any queries