Catching Kingfish at North Cape

Will Lomas and Shaw Watson already know a thing or two about catching big fish, but one recent trip put their skills to the test. Will reports on the boys’ wild adventure to the top of the North Island...

It all started with an idea by two 16 year old boys. Taking a small boat to a big place sounded great to us. Shaw, the other crazy dude who loved the sound of this idea, quickly agreed that we had to do this. The plan was to take my little Tsunami 4.1 metre pontoon boat with a Honda BF15 to the top of New Zealand from Houhora!

We had been Facetiming and texting most nights trying to suss when we were both free and when the weather was variable five knots. School holidays were fast approaching so this was the perfect time to hit it we thought! Windy was predicting variable five knots for the first few days of the holidays, then the weather was turning to custard. So, this was really our only chance if we wanted to do it these holidays. We picked up Shaw from Taipa after school on Friday and all I was hearing from his mum was, “Shaw, I don’t know if this is a good idea. Make sure you have a life jacket on at all times, and what happens if it gets rough?” It was a bit like what I was hearing from my mum actually!

As soon as we got back to my place in Houhora, we started sorting the boat out. We went and got enough petrol for the trip, plus a spare 20 litres for safety, hooked the boat up and made lunch. We then spent about two hours hunkered down in my room tying new leaders for each rod, changing hooks on stickbaits and preparing the soft-baiting gear! Safety was a big part of this trip being in such a small boat. We had all the right equipment plus some: life jackets, a PLB, VHF (with which we let the Coastguard know the plan for the day), phones and chargers, spare petrol and a support boat.

We awoke at 5am to a frosty morning after a sleepless night of dreaming big. We didn’t even need our three alarms to get out of bed! We launched my boat first at the Houhora boat ramp, which is around 25 nautical miles away from our destination. As hanging onto my wee tiller for two hours was going to get quite uncomfortable, we decided to set designated times we both had to drive. After a couple half hour shifts each, we suddenly arrived about 30 mins after my dad and sis in his boat. The water was clear – our eyes were basically our depth finder! There was also loads of current, which is perfect for big kingfish, and loads of kahawai busting up. It looked promising!

We started off by casting 7” Z-Mans, but didn’t have a lot of luck on the snapper side of things. We tried everything from wash fishing right off to about 30 metres. But do you think we could find any snapper!? It was terrible! Shaw then started casting stickbaits up the front, and after over 100 casts he finally managed to raise one decent-sized king, but unfortunately it had one crack and didn’t come back. Meanwhile, I was down the back casting and dragging soft-baits – but there were still no snapper on board. Actually, we had no fish on board. By this stage it was pushing 12 o’clock and we hadn’t even had a bite, so we thought it was time for a feed.

While a red snapper that my sister had caught on the way up was cooking, we made the decision to head out a bit deeper as we were in eight meters and it was super clear. I had my two soft-bait rods dragging out the back, but as we were on the move I decided to wind up. I was just starting on the second when… zzzzz. We had hooked up on the retrieve! We thought it was only a kahawai before it did a massive run, and then we knew this was far bigger. I got on the helm and backed down before this unknown fish took us to ground as we didn’t have big gear to lock up – 15lb braid and 25lb trace is all we were using. The adrenaline had now kicked in for Shaw and I as we knew it was big. We knew we couldn’t afford to muck up or do anything wrong. I was controlling the helm, reversing up to keep the line angle straight up and down, while Shaw focused on fighting the fish. This was the first proper time I was in control of chasing a fish down. After around 30 minutes, we began to think it was a foul hooked shark. Maybe a thresher? Every time Shaw would lift the rod up to get a wind, the spool was still letting line out and we couldn’t put any more drag on or else the 7kg braid would snap!

Shortly after we began chasing, I saw that there was a slight leak at the transom just above sea level. Backing down means the stern digs down – and that’s when water started pouring in. I think this gave us the feeling of like, “Yeah the boys! This is rad!” And by god was there some water in the boat! We were getting towed out offshore and were now in about 40 metres. And, of course, we had forgotten about the gas cooker that was on high with the red snapper in it. Well by this time, the red snapper was black, the butter was in full splatter mode and the cooker was making some pretty scary noises – so scary that I thought we were going to blow. So yip, that went flying over board. I didn’t feel like blowing up that day! The boat donuts still continued until we finally got a glimpse at what it was. We were gutted!

Small boats aren't made for backing up - The Bloke Boat took on water as they chased the big kingfish hard in reverse.

“It’s a tail hooked bronzie, cut the line,” Shaw said.

“No no Shaw, it’s a massive kingie! There’s a yellow tail!”

I reached for the gaff – this was probably one of the tensest moments of my fishing career so far. This kingie was acting like a tuna and going in circles under the boat. Shaw and I gave each other the look of “We can’t stuff this up!” After watching this fish for about 30 minutes beneath the boat, the kingie finally came up. It went under the boat then did a loop and surfaced just a metre away. Shaw yelled at me to sink a shot now it was close enough – this was my chance. Bang! The gaff went right in the shoulder, and this kingfish went flying in the boat like it was 10kg. I didn’t leave it any time to try and escape the gaff. What adrenaline does to you! I was amazed. The relief and excitement was something I may never feel again – well, I hope I do!

We slowly made our way over to Dad and Lucie, and their smiles were just as big as ours! The first thing Dad said was, “Holy shit boys – you’re 80 metres here,” and the second comment was, “You guys better start bailing.” That took us about 20 minutes with my half petrol container bailer. After managing to get some memorable photos, we started the journey home. Glassy calm conditions made it that much more enjoyable. Staring at the fish wrapped up in towels the whole way home, we wondered what weight it would go. We were calling it in the early 20kg range.

Conditions could not have been better for the boys.

Two hours later we met Mum back at the Houhora Game Fishing Club boat ramp with the trailer. She could tell we had done something mischevious. We got the boat out of the water and headed straight for home. Mum took one look in the boat after parking up and said, “Sweet baby Jesus!” The scales came out and this big boy went 28kg! Not too bad for soft-baiting gear. We had the idea to go live on the Ocean Angler Facebook page while filleting it up – and yes... on Mum’s kitchen bench with a blunt knife. This went on to get around 480,000 views! We vacuum packed the steaks up and distributed them to friends and family.

Our trip was a bit of a mad dog idea but we had the right safety gear, another safety boat and extremely good weather. I would love to encourage anyone with a small safe boat to do the same.Don’t let having a small boat limit your boundaries, but be sensible about it. If you get it right, you’ll have much more fun than the people in the bigger boat, that’s for sure! 

October 2021 - Will Lomas
New Zealand Fishing News Magazine.
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