Kingfish at White Island NZ

As a teen I was on a charter off Whale Island near Whakatane and White was on the horizon. I secretly hoped I would fish the waters around it someday, 
my hopes fuelled by the many stories of big fish caught there.

My dream finally became reality in mid-February of this year when fishing buddy Ronald Witteveen called. He was off to White Island for a long weekend aboard Pursuit and did I want to come? Well, who wouldn’t? Pursuit and its skipper Rick Pollock are so well known – Rick is one of the most successful skippers in the fishing game in New Zealand, chartering from the Bay of Plenty and East Cape right up to the Three Kings Islands. So you can imagine how stoked I was to be going, especially as I’d only done a couple of charters before.

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It was Monday and we were leaving on Friday, so I started to think about what gear I should take. I fish the Far North a lot in my own boat with a couple of mates and normally take around 15 rods and reels – but wasn’t too sure about turning up at the boat with that much gear! So instead I settled on a couple of new Penn live-bait and jig combos spooled with 24 and 37-kilo braid. 

Thursday came around quickly. I didn’t get to bed until about midnight and was up again at 5.00am (even though Ronald wasn’t picking me up till 10.00 – I was so excited!).

Finally he turned up, we packed the car quick-smart and picked up John Eichelsheim on the way, meeting up with the rest of the boys – Rick Haywood, Scott Hyde and Anthony Angle – in Clevedon before heading south.

Upon arriving, Pursuit was docked and unloading another group. I couldn’t believe it: after offloading, cleaning and reprovisioning, apparently Rick often has less than an hour on the dry before heading straight back out again – and he does this for 250-300 days of the year! No wonder every fisherman I know sings Rick’s praises, and the fact he has done this for nearly 40 years amazes me.

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Leaving Whakatane, we crossed the bar and headed toward White, reaching our destination an hour or so after dark. The plan was to fish through the night for live baits to use over the next day. 

As soon as Rick turned on the lights we had flying fish coming in around the boat. We took turns using a net to scoop them up; they seem to go into a kind of trance once they swim into the light. 

We also used sabikis to fish for jack mackerel, but they didn’t turn up until very late. However, after an hour my sabiki rig’s hooks had all been snapped off, so I decided to stray-line baits for those elusive mackerel instead for a while. 

My first few baits caught red snapper and other reef fish, but suddenly the rod buckled and line started to peel – and peel. I thought it could be a stingray, but it didn’t really run like one. Then, after fighting it for five minutes, it busted off. 

I had the same results with my second bait, so went to some heavier gear, but couldn’t get another big take. It was 2.30am when we finally hit the sack, but by 5am I had my first bait back in the water and was straight into the fish, hooking rat kings and reef fish. 

One by one the others rose, and after downing brekkie we set off, with Rick taking us to a spot that had been producing big kings the previous day. 

We dropped a few dead flying fish baits over while John threw his top-water gear amongst the school fish. Before our baits even hit the bottom John was hooked up, and the smile on his face told us it was an absolute donkey. We pulled our baits up to allow Rick to chase the fish, but halfway into the fight John got busted off.

Driving back up to the start of our drift, three of us dropped baits while the others tried jigs or top-water gear. My first flying fish was taken, so I slowly pushed the lever forward on my new Penn Fathom LD, loading up the rod and setting the hook. Fish on! 

After a few minutes hard fighting, the rod bucked even harder and the line started peeling even more quickly. My 20-kilo fish had just turned into a 200-kilo bronzie! Mark said there had been problems with sharks in the area, and of all the fishos on board it had to be me hooked up to one; this was going to be a good test for my new reel.

After a minute or two of the line peeling, it was time to really put the brakes on. So I slowly cranked the lever up to full sunset. The rod was on the rail, bent like a horseshoe, and the shark was still charging, but I wasn’t going to give it an inch. Then Rick started to back the boat up, enabling me to start cranking on the reel, and after about 20 minutes we had colour.

The beast was huge (Rick couldn’t believe I’d managed to get something this size up already); Mark got hold of the leader and cut the line as close as possible to the hook, releasing the big bronzie.

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Rick decided to pull the plug: “It’s not worth fishing here with things like that around,” he said. 

I was amazed how quickly he was on the side of the fish. “Although there are good kingfish here, it’s not worth letting the sharks kill another,” he said. 

I was so impressed a skipper would just up and go, even knowing there were big kings around.

We headed off to Spot X. Rick said they normally start off small here, then get bigger as the day goes on. Sure enough, we started off with a few ‘small kings’ around 15 kilos on jigs, but the jigging was pretty slow. Then some bigger fish started hitting the baits, resulting in some solid kings to 20-odd kilos, right through the morning.

Around midday we decided to change it up a bit, so trolled while eating lunch, ending up 30-odd nautical miles north of White Island in 500m of water – bluenose country – so we finished the day off with a few deep drops. By the third drop, with a solitary gemfish to show for our efforts and the wind picking up to around 20 knots, Rick pulled the plug.

It was lucky he did, as the winds reached 30-35 knots over the following hour, the resulting swells giving us a hiding all the way back to White. We lost daylight halfway back, and by the time we got into a bay it was around 11.00pm. 

After a quick dinner the boys called it a night, but I stayed up for another stray-line session. I only had about five hours’ sleep for the whole trip!

On our last morning we wanted to finish the trip by chasing kings back at Spot X. It was an excellent decision, as our first baits produced solid captures, and before the end of the morning most of us had caught new personal bests. (Rick and John had caught some donkeys in the past, so their 30-plus and 35-kilo fish weren’t PBs, but they were still stoked as hell!). Anthony was a novice, but by the end of the trip he was pulling up kingfish to 33 kilos. My PB weighed 36kg and Rick said it would have been 40-kilos before spawning. It was the highlight of my trip.

In two days of fishing we caught half-a-dozen kings over 30 kilos and plenty around the 20-kilo mark, releasing all but two deeply-hooked fish, which were kept for the table. 

I couldn’t believe how well these dead flying fish worked on such huge fish, so lucky we’d caught 170 of them the first night, as they were like lollipops to the kingfish! 

The other thing that surprised me was how gently the kingfish took them. I’m not sure about the other guys, but most of my baits were repeatedly rattled and banged before being taken more firmly, enabling the hook to be set.

Being aboard Pursuit with a bunch of great guys, an expert skipper and excellent deckie made my first trip to White Island memorable and amazing, really living up to my teenage dream 
and more!

   This article is reproduced with permission of   
New Zealand Fishing News

July 2015 - by Jason Neute
Re-publishing elsewhere is prohibited

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