Fishing the Hauraki Gulf in Late Summer and March

As we head into the tail end of the season, Nick Jones provides some helpful advice on how to keep the bin full for another month.

Even though our calendar summer ends in February, the Hauraki Gulf’s marine environs are still bang in the middle of their hottest time of the year. We had a somewhat slow start to typical summer fishing in the Gulf with a few weeks of strong winds from the SW after Christmas keeping water temperatures down. Fortunately, things have heated up, providing the fishing we’d all been waiting for...

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Snapper

High water temperatures create some good opportunities in the Gulf but can also make for challenging fishing. Hot, calm March days make for notoriously difficult snapper fishing. If you’re fishing with lures you cover little ground on such days, and the snapper are simply slow on the bite. A good tactic if you’re after snapper is to target the change of light periods when the fish are feeding harder. Also, drop down your leader and lure sizes – this can make a huge difference with finicky snapper. As a rule of thumb use the smallest lure or weight that the current or drift conditions allow.

Fishing the inner harbour or inner coastal zones can pay dividends also – plenty of snapper hang around in close this time of year, and the strong tidal flows and murkier water seem to offer assistance. Bait fishing or dragging/slowly working soft-baits or kaburas in areas such as Stanley Bay, the container wharves, Motuihe Channel, Rangitoto Channel, East Coast Bays and northern Whangaparaoa should yield good results.

Workup action is generally hit and miss out wider, although patches of fish will start congregating in the typical areas such as north of Gannet Rock, top of Coromandel, around Anchorite Rock and East of Kawau Island. Fishing the 40-50m depths on the western side of Great Barrier Island can be insane this time of year, with plenty of kingfish and dolphins rounding up the bait and hungry snapper hanging around underneath. All you need are a few gannets working or even sitting on the water and you should be in for a good session.

Kingfish

When people come aboard a charter this time of year, I always recommend chasing kingfish. Livebaits are generally easy to find in the morning, and the kingies are holding on all the inshore and offshore reefs. When there are big mackerel schools, we often catch a couple of nice kingfish over the bait grounds – so have a set ready to go if you see some big slugs on the sounder or baits start getting plucked from your sabikis. The next few months are generally when we catch our biggest fish of the season too. We love livebaiting – as a rule of thumb we slow troll or drift over reefs under 20m deep, while we sit on top of deeper pins and drop mackerel right onto the kingis heads. We generally use 80lb fluorocarbon leader, but as the water can be gin clear in March, occasionally we drop down to 60lb to entice more bites. Live mackerel are usually far more effective than small kahawai in the Gulf.

Fishing the Hauraki Gulf in Late Summer and March

A chunky topwater kingfish for the writer.

The beauty of livebaiting in the Gulf is the bycatch. Some deeper reefs such as the ones around Little Barrier and Horn Rock hold good numbers of john dory and big snapper. In fact, the three biggest snapper I’ve seen in the Hauraki were all caught on livies – the biggest on a live kahawai in the middle of a hot kingie bite at Channel Island in March!

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Early autumn is also a great time to get up early and bust out the topwater fishing kit, with plenty of kings holding over the shallower reefs, headlands and markers. Look for areas of current, terns and gannets working, or on calm mornings, fish boiling on the surface. Generally, after a few casts you’ll know whether there are kings around, and if you’re getting follows but no strikes try changing your lure, lure colour and/or action. If this doesn’t work, move onto the next spot!

Kahawai

Not many people target kahawai, but over the last few years, the Gulf has come alive with schools of big kahawai gorging on anchovy schools that move inshore in autumn. These fish are suckers for small lures or a fly, and provide great sport – especially for young players! Because the kahawai are so chunky at the moment, their high oil content makes great sashimi – just make sure to bleed them out.

Tuna

March is a great time of year to target a species not often associated with the Hauraki – skipjack tuna. These fish come in very close to the islands in autumn every year, and people often mistake them for kahawai when they’re feeding on the surface. The best technique is to use very small baitfish imitations because these fish are feeding on small prey and seem to ‘get their eye in’ only on similar size lures. These fish are arguably even better light sportfish than kahawai, with blistering runs and super-fast tail beats. They also make good eating if prepared well.

Fishing the Hauraki Gulf in Late Summer and March

A school of skipjack tuna break the surface.

As I write this article, schools of yellowfin tuna have taken up residence between the top of Great Barrier and the Mokohinaus. Hopefully, these fish hang around for a while or even follow the bait right into the Gulf. There have also been reports of a black marlin hanging around Simpsons Rock and Little Barrier – so opportunities really are endless this time of year in the Hauraki!


March - 2020 - Nick Jones

New Zealand Fishing News Magazine.
Copyright: NZ Fishing Media Ltd.
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