White Island Bay of Plenty

Last year, in early February, we enjoyed a spectacular twoday charter to White Island with Rick Pollock, catching heaps of king?sh to 35kg in shallow water. It was so good we signed up to do it again this year, and while the fishing for kings wasn’t quite up to last year’s standard, it was still good – and we were treated to a smorgasbord of other species, too. 

One of the beauties of ?shing with Rick aboard Pursuit is that you can ?sh all day and all night if you’ve got the stamina (I haven’t, but two members of our crew were insomniacs). Fishing all night is sometimes necessary to secure enough baitfish for the following day, but at other times the fishing after dark is so good it keeps you from your bunk. 

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Our ?rst night aboard Pursuit was spent in the shelter of Whale Island, where we hoped to ?ll up on live bait, which were reportedly scarce at White. However, by midnight we had barely a dozen decent-sized jack mackerel in the bait tank: every drop resulted in a string of mackerel, but they were too tiny to be useful as king?sh baits. So I left the night shift to it and went to bed.

When I got up at 5am, it was apparent the situation had changed. Jason Neute and Luuk Witteveen had stuck it out through most of the night and were ?nally into better-sized mackerel. Even better, they were boating koheru. Koheru can be tricky to catch, but these ?sh were readily taking bait ?ies from near the surface on the edges of the light.

I joined the boys at the rail, and pretty soon we began to ?ll the tank with prime koheru live baits. Our fishing prospects for the rest of the trip were suddenly looking much better.

Breakfast over, Pursuit was soon trailing a spread of lures on her way to White Island. Our journey was interrupted by an albacore of around 10kg, but by mid-morning we were setting up for our ?rst kingfish drift in 170 metres of water a few miles north of White Island. Three anglers fished baits and three jigged to reduce the likelihood of tangles.

The ?rst drop produced a couple of bent rods, but instead of the small kingfish I thought I’d hooked, a modest hapuku was brought on board, an unexpected bonus catch. The other fish was a kingfish, and subsequent drops produced several more – lean, post-spawn fish, none of which exceeded 20kg.

As the morning wore on, kingfish came to the rail in a steady stream, with a hapuku or two adding to the tally. Jigs were working as well as live baits, and I enjoyed giving the little Penn Fathom combo I’d borrowed a decent workout.

A change from a jig to a large soft-plastic produced more kingfish, but also a few golden snapper, while another change to small cut baits resulted in a couple of ruby fish, a rays bream and a mixed bag of deepwater species.

Always seeking larger kingfish, Rick re-positioned the boat, sometimes fishing a bit deeper and sometimes a bit shallower, but most of the kingfish we caught were of similar size: 16-18kg. With the morning coming to an end, we decided to fish the shallow reefs closer to the island, which had produced so well for us a year ago. So far, said Rick, they hadn’t been very productive, but he reckoned it was about time they ?red.

As is usual when travelling, we set a spread of trolling lures, and as we approached the Volkner Rocks, ?rst one reel and then another began to howl. We noted at least three impressive holes in the water where the lures had been, but only two hook-ups resulted, both on modest-sized pushers in lumo green.

Yellow?n were once the region’s signature species, but it has been 20 years since the last decent run of tuna in the Eastern Bay of Plenty. This summer has seen yellow? n featuring in anglers’ bags up and down the northeastern coast once more – a welcome return – but ours were the ?rst yellow? n Pursuit had hooked this season.

Unfortunately, one hard-running fish fell off, but the other stayed pinned, and 10 minutes or so after hooking up, Jason boated a 34kg yellow?n tuna.

Elated with our success, we spent another hour trolling the area, but eventually continued on our original course, closing on White Island late in the afternoon.

Rick positioned the boat for a drift over a shallow reef where we’d done so well the previous year, and as usual we dropped a mix of live bait and jigs to the bottom 40 metres below. Hook-ups were instantaneous, but every one of the kingfish we boated was 10kg or less. Where were the big boys?

We tried a couple of other shallow-water locations fairly close by to no avail, eventually anchoring to fish for trevally. White Island has some of the biggest trevally in New Zealand, and we could see schools of large fish on the surface, but they showed no interest in our baits. Eventually we gave it away – the only session where we drew a blank.

The weather was mint, with very little wind, and the forecast was for even less the next day. With moonset coming early, conditions were just right for a night fish, so Rick anchored us in a sandy bay and we waited for the sun to go down.

As soon as the light began to fade, the ? rst ? ying fish appeared. Rick Haywood and Scott Hyde’s special, long-handled ?ying-fish net, designed and built last winter over a few wines, was put to good use. We soon had a bin-full of ? iers, but the easy pickings were quickly over.

With the advent of full darkness, the ?ying fish converged around the ?oodlit boat in large numbers. Then the ?rst kingfish showed up. Before long there were packs of them – from 10kg to 30kg – cruising the edges of the light and crashing ?ying fish on the surface. Catching a kingfish was simply a matter of lobbing out a ?ying fish on a suitable out? t and hanging on.

The fishing was fast and furious – and exhausting. Most of the kingfish were of modest size, but every once in a while a much bigger shadow could be seen at the edges of the light. Jason was rewarded for staying up most of the night (again) with an estimated 30kg kingfish caught and boated solo at around 3am. The skipper helped him boat another large fish an hour later, and when I joined the guys just on dawn, the action was frenetic.

With just enough light on the water to see by, I grabbed my stick-bait rod and cast. Two sweeps later I was hooked up to a very decent kingfish, and in the next hour boated several more on various top-water baits. The rest of the crew eventually emerged from their bunks, and pretty soon we were enjoying multiple hook ups. But while it was all on for a while, as the sun climbed over the horizon the surface action died away. Breakfast was a welcome rest for tired arms and backs.

Our plan for the rest of the day was to head back to the deep reefs we’d fished the day before, this time armed with flying fish baits to supplement the koheru and mackerel livies.

We left the island basking in bright sunshine, busying ourselves setting trolling lures for the 60-minute run to the fishing grounds. But before we could get the second lure properly positioned in the wake, the purple and black Pacific Baitfish off the starboard long corner was eaten. The Penn International howled and a lively striped marlin began leaping against the backdrop of White Island a mile or two away.

Rick Haywood was the angler, and in conjunction with Rick Pollock’s boat work, he made relatively short work of bringing an estimated 90kg fish to the boat. Unfortunately for everyone but the marlin, we missed the first and the second opportunity to grab the trace. On the third attempt the lure simply fell out of the fish’s mouth, the swivel just out of reach. Never mind, Rick was going to release the fish anyway.

With that bit of excitement behind us, we proceeded on our way. No more yellowfin near the Volkners, but the first drop at the 170m spot produced multiple hook-ups on kingfish and another decent ’puka, one of three we caught that morning.

As was the case the day before, the fishing was good, but the size of the kingfish, while respectable, was unremarkable. A couple of fish probably pipped 20kg, but most were in the high teens.

Any fish over a metre long was tagged before being released. I caught a kingfish with a tag in it, so Rick recorded the tag number, along with the fish’s length, before releasing it again. A week or so later I received a smart polo shirt and a letter from the Gamefish Tagging Programme: the fish had originally been tagged two years and two months before by Hamish Gibbs, fishing from the same boat in the same location. Between captures it had grown from 106cm fork length and an estimated 14kg to 113cm and 18kg (est).

Fighting with kingfish is hard work. During a bit of a lull, one of the boys on the bow reported a school of skipjack tuna shadowing his live bait to the surface. So I grabbed a nearby rod rigged with a small jig and dropped the lure over the side, letting it flutter down 50 metres or so. I had barely started my retrieve when a tuna seized the micro-jig and sent the little reel’s spool unloading in overdrive.

The scrap lasted quite a few minutes and we got a good look at a large skipjack tuna as it circled the boat between diving runs. It was a tough battle on light tackle, and I doubt there’s a fish in the ocean of similar size that’s as tough or as fast. Eventually the little micro-jig hooks pulled and the skippy swam free, but it had been an entertaining few minutes of charging around Pursuit’s decks.

It’s fair to say everyone was pretty weary at the end of this trip, but we’d managed to squeeze a lot of fishing into two days (and nights). It was therefore a tired but satisfied bunch of anglers who disembarked at Whakatane that afternoon: White Island had produced memorable fishing yet again and I’ll wager the same crew will climb aboard Pursuit next February.

Travelling light

I’ve been doing multi-day charters in the Bay of Plenty for 30 years or more, but these days I’m taking much less tackle than I used to. Instead of packing a rod and reel for every conceivable fishing opportunity, I now bring rods and reels with multiple roles.

A good example is a modern mechanical-jigging outfit. Spooled with 300m of PE5-8 superbraid, it can be used for jigging and live-bait fishing, as well as bottom fishing, though if you are going to fish for bluenose in 400m of water, you’ll need a reel with more line capacity.

This trip I used a specialist micro-jig out?t for micro-jigging, but also to catch bait at night and fish for trevally. If we’d gone tarakihi fishing, I would have used it for that, too.

I took a soft-bait out?t and a limited selection of baits, but never used it.

A top-water combo was also packed, its spare spool ? lled with PE6 braid, along with a handful of stick-baits and poppers. All my top-water kingfish fell to the same Shimano Orca stick-bait, its treble hooks replaced with barbless inline singles.

One 24kg trolling out? t made the cut, too, as did a small selection of proven trolling lures, a couple of ball-bearing snap swivels and an AFTCO Roller-troller. Jason brought another 24kg trolling set and the boat supplied three 37kg sets. We ran with my lures.

Terminal tackle included: bait-? ies and sinkers; a selection of pre-tied hapuku dropper rigs; ball and teardrop sinkers from 5oz to 20oz; swivels and clips in assorted sizes; trace material (80-150lb); live bait and circle hooks; a few pre-tied ?asher and tarakihi rigs; soft-baits and jig heads; a few micro-jigs; a handful of knife and butter?y jigs, plus hooks, cord and split-rings (and split-ring pliers).

Of course there was other gear too: a Black Magic harness, jigging gloves, a bobbin, fishing pliers, trace material and a spare reel with 500m of PE8 braid with a 150lb mono wind-on top-shot, but everything except the rods ? tted into one tackle bag, including a rain jacket

   This article is reproduced with permission of   
New Zealand Fishing News

April 2016 - By John Eichelshiem
Re-publishing elsewhere is prohibited

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