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In early January I was lucky enough to score a free trip out on Lance Magons’ new Whakatane based charter boat “Cova Rose”. Lance has obviously done his homework, and has chosen a boat very similar to the former Whakatane benchmark for charter boats, the Ocean Invader. The trip I was on had been arranged by the Editor, Keith, and Lance a while back, I was just along for the ride, the important folks on this trip were the paying Customers, a group of guys from Taranaki, Lance’s old stamping ground. We were to load up in the mid-afternoon in order to get away in good time to be where the fish were with enough light left to hunt them out. This time, the fish on everybody’s mind was Tuna-- the Yellowfin were here in very good numbers already, early in the season. So, after a round of introductions, the Skipper of Cova Rose, Mike Hindricks, pulled the Rose away from the wharf and headed us out across the bar for Tunaland, en route to White Island. We were not far off Whale Island when the first lures went out, and soon we were in the middle of some serious Gannet and Dolphin work-ups. Even better, we had seen a few Tuna splashing about as well, so Hopes were high for a result. We were heading pretty much straight for White, but a Yellowfin on the way would be a bonus. And the bonus came up! A nice 25 to 30 kilo Yellowfin belted one of the guys Daisy chain lures, and despite its best efforts, soon was brought boatside, Gaffed, spiked, bled and put on ice- a very slick procedure. Excellent, one good fish aboard, and it was only early days yet! We kept on trolling, but while we had been working this Tuna, the action had headed further inshore, the wrong direction for us, so we headed back on out to White to sort out a good anchorage for the night at Works Bay. Once the pick was down, Lance and our cook for the trip, Tammyleewow-wow (TLWW-Ican’t remember the guys name Keith!) set about sorting out a dinner for us. The cooking of the Sausages and Steaks was made much easier by the B-B-Q built into the central bait-station/Ice Hold pod (Made by Nautic Marines Arch McTainsh). By the time we had scoffed back all the eats available, it was getting dark enough to set up the big Spot light over the back to attract in the baitfish. Our next task was to “make Bait” for the next days fishing. For this we wanted Live Mackerel in the live-bait tank, and as many Flying fish as we could dip-net under the lights as possible in a fishbox as deadbaits. These are about the two best baits for Kingies around, and with a Sabiki rig for the Macks and a large, longhandled net for the flyers, these are usually easily attainable out here. It wasn’t long before we had a fair bait-pond developing around us, with plenty of Flying Fish cruising about, and occasionally flying ker-thunk into the side of the boat as the do, lots of mackerel falling to the Sabikis, and then at last some Kingfish cruising through the melee. At the sight of these kingies, thoughts of Bait faded in our minds, so we set out a couple of Live-baits for these Kings. It was a good move, as Chris “Snow” Mullins can attest-- his 20kilo Kingi being his first Kingi, and the best for the trip as it would turn out. To cut a very long story short, several of us were up until 4AM fooling around with these fish, it was a real hoot, but inevitably the call of the bunks became irresistible, so we finally hit the hay. After such a late night, the wake up call that morning seemed particularly cruel- 6-30! Ay Chihuahua! a whole two and a half hours sleep! Oh, Mummy! Still, the tantalizing aroma of frying bacon and assorted breakfast goodies soon rousted me out of the pit, the new day was about to begin. The guys paying for the trip, being Good Keen Taranaki Blokes, all were keen on Hapuku,so after a few fruitless Kingfish shots in the relatively shallow areas off White (around 60m or so), we cruised out to the deeper reefs to chase up some ‘Puka. This time of the year was all wrong for Hapuku, although maybe the Bluenose might be starting to gather, but as it turned out, this was to be a tough time for the fishos. For all the effort put in to this deepwater search for a feed, the results of half a dozen Grand-daddy Hapuku and one nice Gemfish seemed hardly to be worth it! Still, all those nice 1000 foot drops sure gave the guys a good work-out, winding in all that line. Heh, heh, and they wondered why I volunteered to give up fishing to help the others with their fishing. It’s far easier watching guys stuff themselves out cranking away on a reel than doing it yourself you know! Certainly we couldn’t fault the Skipper or the boat all day, we checked out all the spots you could think of, but everywhere the cupboard was bare, so defeated at last, we returned to works bay to have another good meal and for the most exhausted of the crew, an early night. There was still however the choice of some more fun in the Baitpond at night for those that wanted it, so several of us stayed up to have some more night-time fun. As with the previous nights fishing, the action started off pretty well, it was not long before we had a fair number of Flying Fish around the boat, and a few Macks here and there about the place. The Mackerel were very slow to get going though, and after the first couple of flying fish were netted, they too started to thin out in numbers. Hmm, this was odd, why were the fish not here tonight? As the action slowed down, most of the rest of the guys chucked it in for the evening, until there was only myself and Snow Mullins on deck still trying to find something worth waiting up for. We had seen a few smallish Kingfish early on , I had grabbed one small one for the folks at home, but we were still waiting for the big boys to arrive. This didn’t even look like happening-- now we could not se one flyer, and scarcely a Mackerel in sight. If things didn’t improve, we said, then it would soon be kip time for everyone. It was just about exactly then that far out on the circle of light we saw a huge splash, as something really quite large reared out of the water to nail one of the very few flying fish way out from the boat. Immediately after this we saw a large white something moving around about 30 metres from the boat- what was it? As it hadn’t surfaced to breath, it obviously wasn’t a Dolphin, so the smart money was of course on it being a Shark, but just in case we were very lucky and it was a huge Kingfish, Snow took one of our meager stock of Flying Fish and set it the back of the boat as a Dead bait. It wasn’t long until this attracted the attentions of our circling Something, we watched as it homed in on the bait, then in a surge of white water it lunged across the surface to envelope the bait- Damn! A shark all right! A big Bronzie by the looks. So much for it being a good Kingfish. We had only used a nylon leader for a trace in the hope of a King, so I didn’t fancy our chances of landing this bitey fellow, but never mind, the hook was set, and the fight was on! The shark at no time displayed any particular alarm at the hook, it just kinda cruised on its way, while Snow watched his line peel off the reel. As the Shark moved forward, Snow too had top go forward, and before long the fish had Snow doing laps around the boat. This was sedate enough while the fish was out wide, but as Snow slowly gained line on the beast, the circles became correspondingly faster, and Snow was forced to first jog, and then run as the Bronzie circled the boat. It was about 40 minutes before Snow finally had the shark close enough to be able to keep the fight at the back of the boat, and shortly thereafter we were able to trace it. This was a good big fish, about 110 kilos or so I’d say, and luckily for us it had been hooked in the very corner of the jaw, so we were able to cut it off and release it totally unharmed. With that done, and the shark well and truly scared off, the baitfish returned with a vengeance, but it was now nearly 3-30 in the morning, and as Snow was stuffed from the battle, and I was stuffed from being his “support crew” we decided to call it a night. I wish I’d stayed up though, as when another hour or so, Keith got up to answer the call of nature (they don’t call it the Wee small hours for nothing!), the back of the boat was alive with fish- Flyers, Mackerel, and most importantly, lots of Big Kingies! Keith helped himself to a very nice 18kg King (on 10kg line), and Tiddlywiddlywoo the cook hooked up on, and sadly lost at the boatside, a thumping 25kilo fish. Ah, well, at least with a few hours sleep that night I wasn’t a total zombie the next morning, as I awoke to find we were on our way in to the Tuna work-ups for the day. Cool, lotsa nice relaxing trolling, the only prolonged winding to be done would be if we had a decent hook-up, much more satisfying than Summer hapuku fishing. The first action of the day didn’t take long in coming, with a nice Albacore of around 8 kgs or so being landed only a few miles in from White. We headed on to the Tuna action, which was still another ten kms towards Whale, now well primed for some further action. It didn’t take long in coming once we were in the hot area, although the strikes were not that fast and furious, we sill were picking up one fish an hour or so. One particularly good fish was lost boatside, as it surged away from the traceman (Lance). The angler had stepped back to allow the gaffs and tracing to be done, but was unprepared to have this green fish take off again, and when it did, the line was looped around the rod-tip-, Ping! Too bad, but a good lesson when handling gamefish at the boat- always slacken off the drag of your reel and be ready for the fish to take off again- and watch out for your line! We picked up several fish over the course of the morning, but for the numbers of fish we could see around, the hook-ups were pretty slow. The Tuna seemed to be fairly boat-shy, we didn’t know why as all the experienced boats were circling the most vigourous work-ups, seeking to pull fish from the edges of the mauls- until we spotted one chump in a large fizz-boat roaring at high speed- (trolling lures at 15 knots is not too productive guys!) right through the meat-balling Tuna. Result? Instant disappearance of the Tuna as they sounded to get away from this racing wally. No wonder they were getting boat shy! As the lures were not doing all we hoped they would, we decided to have a shot at casting jigs into the next meat-ball we came across. It wasn’t long before we were pulling close to a major Yellowfin boil-up, and on the bow Keith shot out a quick cast with his trusty 10kg snapper set- a Penn ????? on a Butterworth ?????? rod, landing it right in the sweet spot in the middle of the fish. Bam! Instant hook-up! Pulled way past its normal Snapper loading, Keiths rod described a parabola to satisfy they fussiest geometrically inclined mathematician, and the line hissed off the little reel in a way that suggested this fish was none to likely to be boatside for a fair while yet! And so it was. Before long the fish had moved off, the birds had disappeared, and still Keith was tied to the Tuna. He brought it several times up to the point where we could see colour, before it again stripped off line in further heart-stopping runs. This was a real scrap, please Lord let us win! With the line coming in and out so much, it wasn’t long before Salt started to build up in the rings of the rod, something not missed by Lance, who shot inside the cabin, returning with a bottle of fresh water, which he then poured over the rod to dissolve the salt. We had to do this several times, as well as run around the boat with the Gaffs as Keith repeatedly brought the fish almost to gaffable range. Enough already! Boat the damn thing! Keith finally turned the fish enough to bring it within gaff range, and with no messing about, we quickly slapped in two to secure his capture. Well done Keithy! Weighed in at the Game Club, this was a very Creditable 29.2 kg fish, which took an hour and ten minutes to land. It seemed like much longer! That was about it for the day then. We trolled on a while longer, but it seemed the fish had shut down for the day, so by mid-afternoon we were crossing the bar back into Whakatane. So, what did I think of Cova Rose as a charter boat operation? Excellent. Really top class. She has concentrated perhaps more on Angler Comfort in the Salon area than in Bunk Space, although this is still more than adequate for all but the very fussiest fisho, and really I cannot think of any faults with her general layout or handling unless I was to get really nit-picky. Actually, hardly even then! Last issue I wrote about what I looked for and liked in a Charter boat- things like the Size of the loo and Showers (Brilliant on Cova Rose, totally uncrowded and very user friendly, even for larger type users like me!), the crew worked together very well, very professionally seeing to the needs of the fishermen, and as far as creature comforts go, Cova Rose would have to be one of the best I’ve ever seen. If you want to see how I think a great Charter boat should be set out, see Cova Rose. Well done Lance Magon, you’ve got a real beauty there!. StuCawkerCapt.Asp@xtra.co.nz
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