AWOL in Tologa Bay August 2000

The Pacific Invader, a 50ft charter boat run by Mike and Sandy Richmond out of Gisborne, is probably one of the best known charter boats in New Zealand, having in her previous life operated out of Whakatane as the Ocean Invader.

However, three years ago, Mike and Sandy bought the “Invader” and moved her to her new home, Gisborne, and the chance to see how this lovely lady of the sea plied her trade in the Gisborne area, was one I was really looking forward to.

Along with me on this trip was my trusty sidekick, Denn Rasmussen, and that nationally renowned fishing Guru, Bill Hohepa and his TV crew (his wife Linda). To fill out a good bunch of keen fishos, Mike had invited along a few of his mates.

This was the first time Bill Hohepa had been on the Pacific Invader, and he was immediately impressed, as is anyone familiar with the boat. Dennis and I, who have probably between us logged up 50 or so trips on the girl, just settled back into her like an old glove.

With Gisborne being just that little bit further from the main recreational fishing market, the big cities, it has slightly less emphasis on the multi-day fishing trips usual for such boat as this, different from the days of the Invader in Whakatane.

For his day-charter trips, in which he carries up to 20 passengers (prefering 12 fishing) Mike targets the closer reefs around Gisborne, such as Ariel Reef and the South Rocks. The standard fare here are Groper, terakihi and Kingies.

For the over night trips, should it be only a 24 hour trip, Mike will head for the reefs and coastal rocks in the Tologa area, while more extended trips, 2-4 dayers, Mike tends to head for the Ranfurly Rise. For such extended trips, he only carries 8 pax.

We had chosen a nice, hopefully calm time to visit some of Mikes favourite reefs in this region. Mike soon had us steaming for his preferred overnighting area, Tologa Bay, and the inner marks he fishes in this area, over the Gable End reef..

After a few hours of sedate cruising at 10 knots, Mike had us nearing our first stop. Bill was wanting some good jig action for Kingies for his show, so Mike was aiming at putting us over some of the shallower grounds over the reef, while Dennis and I rigged up a few of our 150-200 gram Grim Reapers for the cameras.

Finding Kingies over deep foul or pinnacles is pretty easy really. If you have a colour sounder, Kingfish generally tend to show on the screen as a large, dense red splotch (that is a technical term, honest) in the middle of the screen. As soon as we saw the sounder on the Invader go solid red in 30 fathoms, we knew we were going to find some Kingfish!

I love it when a plan comes together ... We dropped our jigs, Bill started his “voice overs”, Linda started the camera, and Blam! Both Denn and I hooked up simultaneously on small, scrappy Kingies. Sure, they were only “rats”, small barely legal fish, but on lightish tackle they are a barrel of fun, and they performed brilliantly for the cameras!

There was certainly no shortage of fish. After spending half an hour or so jigging, we started bottom fishing with ledger rigs and flasher rigs. Our lines would be on the bottom for barely a minute, before the rod-tips would start the thrashing that announced the hookup of yet another fish.

However, although this fishing was very good indeed, it was not the big stuff Mike had in mind for us, so after a few rounds each of assorted fish, he had us pulling the gear in and heading off for his favoured Tologa Reef, where the Kingies and groper were, he assured us, bigger.

Well, the promise of bigger fish is after all the lure to catch any fisherman, so we all gladly cleared our gear away, stowed away the various fish we had caught, and relaxed for the couple of hours it would take us to get to the Tologa Reef.

The beauty of the Invader is the size and ease of access of her fish storage. The fish bins on the Pacific Invader are huge, fully lined, and with enough ice to keep fish fresh for days on end... up to a tonne each side! Even better, the room on top of these ice-holds makes for the best tackle box/rigging station you could ever want.

To aim for the larger fish we were expecting, we changed to heavier, 250lb ledger rigs. Onto the circle hooks the baits also grew, from the small cubes of squid to large chunks of squid, barracouta and some of the guys even went for live tarakihi as a live bait for a really big groper.

It may seem a little extreme to use such a superb table fish as a bait, but when you think about it, such deepwater predators as hapuku and Bass are bound to regard tarakihi as natural prey.  And if it takes a small 1 kilo fish to catch a large 15 kilo one, well who am I to argue!

Here on this deeper reef, in some 40-50 fathoms, the action was every bit as steady as earlier. Lines would seldom sit on the bottom for more than a minute or two before fish started hitting the baits.

These bites were no namby-pamby sissy snapper pecks either... oh no, the fish hitting our baits would come in at flank speed, hit hard, then kick up a mighty ruckus when they hooked up. Big 15lb trumpeter, smallish Bass of around 15-20lbs, and some nice hapuku to 30lbs were soon hitting the decks in good numbers. Among these was a smattering of decent sized Kingies, fish also in the 20-30lb range.

It wasn’t long before Bill and Linda had all the footage they could want for a day, and as our energy stocks drained away (next time I must take more “V” drink bottles with me!), we called it quits for the day, so we could anchor up in Tologa Bay in the last of the light.

Next morning, well rested and very well fed on crayfish sandwiches (for breakfast!), we headed back on out again to another spot, the Tokomaru Reef.  This reef, another huge area of deepwater foul ground, was to prove again to be a constant round of Hapuku, boss Trumpeter and Bass. A lot of people think of deep water fishing as being boring, hard work, but for me these days I must admit it to be one of my favourite forms of fishing.

Although not in the greater depths common around White Island, we were still fishing in water from 450-600ft of water. What has turned fishing in these depths into fun for me has been the use of the new, non-stretch spectra lines. My favourite without doubt is Berkley Fireline.

As we cruised from rock to rock on this reef, we were delighted to find around us soozing sneals, sorry, I mean snoozing seals...which would idly raise their heads to watch us as we cruised on by. By now, the seas were glassy calm, we could see for miles, and seals were scattered about us all over the ocean.

As the afternoon wore away, our last drop on the outermost reef latched us into some very hard fighting fish. Bill was labouring away at the stern, hard put to bring some large fish to heel, while I in turn was walloped by something heading in the general direction of Away. Then,  from nowhere, a small pod of Orcas cruised up.

With what looked like one big Bull (the high dorsal was the give-away there), a couple of cows and a couple of calves, it was a brilliant sight to see. However, a few nasty little bells starting ringing in the further reaches of my mind... what would these Orcas do if they saw some nice big groper hauling up past them?

Bill obviously had a similar thought, redoubling his efforts to get his fish boatside. Cranking as hard as he could , he was actually almost there, with only 40m or so of line to go, when the big bull disappeared from the pod some 200m distant.

Uh-oh. Wind faster Bill, wind faster! Too late, as his previously exhausted groper started to strip line from the reel at a huge rate of knots. Doing the drag up as hard as possible achieved little apart from hauling a very large, and now rather close, Orca to the surface, obviously puzzled at the behaviour of this surface swimming delicacy.

For several minutes the Orca would nudge the groper, pull a few metres off Bill's line, then let it go. Bill, trying his darnedest to avoid hooking these marvellous mammals was winding for all he was worth.... getting the groper..., now certainly an ex-groper, slightly closer to the boat each time. Finally, the big Orca tired of it’s game, let Bill have his groper head, and cruised off to re-join its pod.

OK, so Bill had been nailed, surely whatever I had would be safe enough now?  Nope. I too had my fish, which was pulling a lot more than a normal groper, near the boat when it began dancing about on the line. Now this was a pattern, a rhythm, I had felt before... I was getting “sharked”, I knew it, and I let the world know I knew it in no uncertain terms.

This was footage far too good to be missed though, so Bill and Linda were beside me as finally I managed to pop the semi Kingi out from under the boat. What had been a very nice Kingfish of some 60lbs or so, was now a far less inspiring sight of  about 20lbs.  Oh well, at least we should be able to get some sight of the shark, so by bobbing the remains of this fish in the water, we soon had the cobalt blue back of a hungry Mako shark cruising up out of the depths.

Makos are awesome fish to behold, especially when they are feeding only a couple of feet from your feet! Most certainly not a good time for a swim. I just hope it all comes out on tape OK!

Well, night was now drawing on, so it was time to head off, aiming to be back in Gisborne by the following morning. It was great to have the deckie, “Mudguard” (don’t ask) fillet all our fish for us, it certainly made loading our assorted catch into chilly bins for the trip home much much easier. Mike has found that donating the valued frames of these fish to some of the locals suddenly became an unpleasant issue, with several different groups seeking to claim their rights to this booty...so now they all go to the cray boats, who are always glad to have a heap of free cray baits!

I was amazed at the amount of fish action we had packed into just 2 days of fishing. What I find even more amazing is that Pacific Invader is the only large charter vessel fishing these prolific waters, so there is no reason to think that this enormous fishery is about to decline any time soon.

With a boat like the Pacific Invader, Mike has the perfect boat to work what is one of NZs under-sung fishing destinations. The service is great, the boat is great, the fishing is great.. what more is there to say?