Fishing Reports

 

After delaying and delaying and postponing again my week-long annual gamefishing safari to the far north because of the countless reports of "little to no activity" - I finally decided to put myself out of my misery and take the gamble on the last week of February. After many a furrowed brow and humming and haaing over nautical charts and taro cards with Steve from W.S. Laurie acting as surrogate Quality Assurance manager and chief pack-attack predictor, I decided to base myself out of Houhora and devote my time split between 3 known productive areas at this time of year. The Garden Patch, Parengaenga Canyons and the Canyon run up to the King Bank near the 3 Kings. Hopes were high as I sped out to the "505" area on the garden patch at 0500 hours. On the way, although I couldn't see - I'm sure I spooked a couple of "beakies" near me at two different times. Arriving at first light and fine tuning the lures - it took but 2 hours for a stripies sickle to appear behind my pattern - it sniffed the shotgun, and short rigger lures and veered off uninterested. With the adrenaline pumping from having spent a long hard winter and long hard summer waiting for these creatures to finally show up - I knew I couldn't take "lure rejection" lying down... so I circled back in a figure '8' and brought the juiciest of my lures enticingly back in front of the uninterested snobfish. Wham - hook-up. We were in business. One Hour later a beautiful 118kg stripey was boated and already being stashed out of the way destined for the smoking chamber. Now this was great - to land a fish day 1 in the first 2 hours, but also completely misleading as I was to find out for the rest of the week. I spent 2 days at the Parden Patch - the next 2 at the Parengaenga Canyons and 2 days between there and the King Bank. In that whole time - 3 strikes, 1 brief hook-up - a boatload of 18kg albacore as well as 5 close encounters with uninterested tailing marlin - 4 stripies and a massive blue that would have been something that Hemmingway would have drooled over! The interesting thing with all the distance that was covered that week was the sheer absence of kahawai or skipjack baitfish. Usually the North Cape is renouned for massive work-ups of kahawai or similar sized baitfish in close and with them - some well fed and contented marlin never too far away. Instead, the belly contents of my landed stripey had a few sad looking flying fish in it - and nothing else. Still, despite my dissapointment with not having hooked up more often - I was still amazed by the other sea life that frequents these waters. On day 2 for example, on the way back out to the "505", I stopped to see what these low hovering gannets were staring at - without them doing their usual impressive aerial fold-up dive-bomb routine... as I looked down underneath the boat in the beautifullly clear and turqoise / blue 22.6 degreee water I saw white spots that were just a little to round to be baitfish. Upon closer inspection I realised I was riding just 10 feet directly atop a magnificent slow moving Whale Shark! Fantastic. Once I left the behemouth filterface behind I cruised back up to 24 knots and sped back out to the "505". The sea had chopped up a little and barely a few minutes later I instinctively and instantly braced myself for a sudden impact, with no warning as a large long dark torpedo like object hurled itself clear out of the metre swell 15 feet from the bow and narrowly rushed past at a closing speed of 40 knots plus. It was gone in less than 3 seconds and then my mind finally registered the impressive pace and size of a pilot whale heading in opposite directions to me at full pace greyhounding across the water! Fantastic. It was these combined experiences, a good dose of betacaratine from 6 sunburned days at sea, and of course the amazing mega-sized "mixed Grill" feast at the cafe at the Houhora Heads camping grounds that made this week yet another week that reinforces time and time again why my obsessive compulsive disorder of Gamefishing and living life in the beautiful sea-scapes of this country will never be cured or even diagnosed successfully ever!

 

From

Report type: Saltwater

Report date: 04 March 02