Fishing Reports

 

Usually, the winter for me signifies a period of hermit like isolation, depression and hibernation. Game fishing season is over! Even my boat starts crying, or is that me? when I hook it up for the long journey south from Waitangi, after the April season final run, out off Cape Brett. Yes - it's a depressing time. The water temps plummet - and the only things to stave off the boredom and help me through this trying time is perhaps an LBG trip to Lottin Point, or a return to the big bottom bouncing Mecca - the Ranfurly Banks. But even those do little to fill the void. Having moved to Auckland from Wellington a year ago to be closer to the rich gamefishing waters of the far north, all I could think about was my four target species - marlin, yellowfin, mako and XOS kingis. Sweet, sweet dreams of the warm Northland sun, wispy light winds and glass-like mirror pond conditions trolling blissfully through the "garden patch" waiting for that double strike of grander blues..... Wasn't quite like my dream in reality. A hard season of relentless 1-2.5m easterly swells - complemented by 25-30kt's of E or SE winds. Loved it just the same however and still managing to pull some good fish from the slop. Adverse conditions disappear when you're staring at 40kg's of quivering yellowfin at your feet! I think however, I took for granted the amazing variety and accessibility to excellent fishing grounds that Wellington and the Kapiti coast had given me over the previous years. During the winter I used to just "whip out" to the Nicholson trench, barely 6nm from the Wellington heads, for a fantastic bonanza of big hoki & bluenose. Hapuku off the 78m mark, and kingis off Kapiti’s Boulder Bank, barely 4nm from the beach. There was also the lure of XOS sharks around the back of the island. When I went into my local Auckland tackle shop and said how far to the nearest Hapuku hole? I was shocked as I firstly watched his face wince, and then his finger tracing a line from Auckland some 50nm's out to the back of Great Barrier!! So last weekend - I decided that rather than just sit depressed around the house, I could sit depressed out in my boat in the "shallow" barren gamefishless waters of the gulf - and wait for the summer. So I did, and I even took a rod - probably my smallest - a 10-15kg outfit with 10kg line for catching baitfish. So there I was, anchored up in amongst a swarm of sad and sorry Auckland boats just north of the Noises. The mighty "Great White" usually proudly ploughing fathomless cobalt blue trenches - outriggers gleaming, 5 tournament pattern lures bubbling, twin flying gaffs at the ready.... was sitting there, with a solitary 10kg line drooping hopelessly with a running rig complete with a lifeless chunk of squid impaled. As I looked to the left and the right, other boaties were pulling in small undersized and pan-sized snapper, which reminded me horribly of the dreaded Wellington scarpies that would sometimes devour whole squid, set on a hook meant for a 40 kg Bass, not a 500gm large mouthed nuisance! What disturbed me more was that they (the Aucklanders) seemed to be "enjoying" catching these insignificant morsels - or maybe they were just mocking me, knowing how miserable I was. After about 10 minutes I felt a small tug on the line and after a few sighs, some eye-rolling and a small bit of winding (not much is required from only 30.5m depth) I bring in this slightly larger scarpie-like snapper in. From the comments coming from the boats around me - you'd think they had never seen a 17 pound snapper before. Oh well, I'll get a couple of small fillets off this I suppose, and decided that I needed to be depressed away from people - so I headed for the tip of the Coromandel and anchored up off Blairs Point - just West of Port Jackson. This was better and worse - less boaties - but plenty of dive-bombing gannets, dolphins and baitfish everywhere - great summer symbols of game fish, but I knew that there would be none today. So out again, goes my tiny 10kg line with a whole pilchard on it. This time in only 15m of water over some nasty foul ground and a swift current. Again, the "plague of the scarpie like snapper" seemed to hit - taunting me. Every 1-2 minutes a nasty 3-4kg specimen. Damn this eternal throwing back - won't they leave me in peace! So I thought I'd outsmart them - and put a pillie sandwich on the hook - too big hopefully for these small sprat like critters. At last... peace. 5 minutes had gone by without a petty disturbance. Or so I thought. Was I never to be left alone?! With more sighs, an eye roll and even less of a wind-in I brought in the greedy 8.5kg trevally who had decided to interrupt my melancholy. Well, I thought - if there's not enough meat on the wee 17 pounder in the bin, I might be able to get enough of a feed if I supplement it with the small strips off this little silver morsel. With that I headed home - a hard lesson learnt. As a game fisherman, it's probably better to mope around the house till the "bigger" fish show up. But for those that don't mind the humiliation of fish of this size and type, the deeper water amongst and north of the Noises and Ahaaha's (30m) or swift current over foul (with a little berley) should reap some rewards. The north west tip of the Coromandel and Channel Island are holding some good wee fish at the moment if you take the time to get out there - but watch the Easterly and NE winds and swells in the channel.

 

From

Report type: Saltwater

Report date: 14 September 01