Fishing Reports

  A succession of cold south and southwest winds, has cooled off the waters in the Bay of Islands, but with water temps still above 19C, and likely to rise with the next  easterlies, well conditioned stripeys are still hanging around for their pre spawning feast.

 Most of the action is inside the 150M contour, and live baits are outfishing lures. Plenty of big kahawai are available as back ups if skippies are hard to catch, and a few extra will be needed throughout the day as we also have an influx of makos ,blue sharks and hammerheads.

 The shark influx extends to bronze whalers which are proving a huge nuisance around our usual kingfish hotspots. The only real solution if you are getting "sharked" is to move to another location. The bronzies only seem interested in the biggest kingfish, and there is little point in sacrificing our best kingfish stock to the toothed critters.

 The biggest snapper are in close to the rocks, but some good patches of pannies are available out past the 50M contour, and in the shallows. We had a good session in strong winds yesterday by creating a berley trail  out to one of the drop offs by the Poroporo Islands, and fishing straylines. Snapper up to 3kg and lots of kahawai despite the bitterly cold south westerly

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