Fishing Reports

Despite some lousy and fortunately inaccurate marine forecasts over the past few days both the weather and fishing has been good overall.  Pleasing to see a few more boats out to enjoy the conditions and resultant bounty.

Doubtless Bay

By recent radio reports it would appear this easily accessible area is red hot for snapper.  Most boats reporting limit catches in a relatively short period of time.

Great Exhibition Bay

Ditto here with probably better quality.  The lower end of this expansive bay (Puheke, Rangiputa) is producing great and consistent results despite more population and effort.  Many fish in the double digits (lbs) are succumbing to stray lining in shallow (8-10m) water.  Kingis surprisingly absent but plenty of kahawai and trevally to spice up what has been brilliant fishing.

Garden Patch

Undoubtedly the bastion of marlin fishing along the coast.  A number of stripeys seen feeding on saury in pretty nice water (blue and 19 plus).  Two boats each had had marlin here recently with others seen and hooked.  Bottomfishing is also reasonable – not red hot but if you persevere you’ll land a feed of moderate sized bass, hapuka and bluenose.  Broadbill always remain a viable option, weather permitting.

North Cape – Tom Bowling Bay – Spirits Bay

A few marlin seen here with, also, not surprisingly, a few skippies as well.  Snapper fishing is generally good all through here with the 20-40 metre depths producing well.  Largest landed just lately was a lovely 26 pounder taken by veteran Auckland angler John Rae.  John has tried to land a 20 pounder for many years and finally succeeded in spades.

The Shelf

A few marlin hooked in this area over the past few days, particularly in 130-180 metres of water around “The Hook”.  Water quality remains good with bottomfishing being productive as well.  A nice mixture of hapuka and bass with some great fishing for XOS blue cod in the shallows (80m).

King Bank

In a flip flop, this remains the pick of the two banks.  Fishing and water quality is pretty consistent just lately.  While temps are remaining acceptable, quality has slipped a notch.  Few marlin are being landed but little pressure is being exerted by precious few boats.  Kingis have definitely picked up on both bait and jigs although not a huge amount of quality about – larger fish in the low 20’s but in very nice condition.  Some good bass sessions with fish of very mixed sizes – six to over 50 kilos.

Middlesex Bank

Would be great except for very aggressive sharks, worse than it’s been all season!  One, perhaps two drifts in any locale along the entire length of the bank is all you’ll get before getting monstered by mainly bronzies but a few makos have entered he fray as well.  A shame since there is some excellent quality here on all species.  A 14 ½ kilo kingi head was landed recently, a sad remainder of what was undoubtedly a 40 kilo specimen.

Summary

Finally looks like our great run of mild weather over “Indian summer” is drawing to a conclusion.  With souwesterlies coming along we’re bracing for an influx of cooler temps.  Can’t think this will do any good for any of the fine fisheries – we’ll see.  Unfortunately the record spearfish which was reported recently turned out to be a somewhat malformed small striped marlin.  After a lot of controversy and fact finding what is thought to be NZ’s smallest ever stripee is just that.  A shame for NZ and indeed the sportfishing fraternity.