Northland Fishing Report - September 18th, 2020

  • Northland

- TopCatch Whangarei

Spring is here! Although winter seems to be trying to hang on a bit weather and temp wise, things in the fishing realm are certainly on the up and up.

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Whangarei Harbor has been getting hit hard for scallops, and as usual is producing some good early season hauls. Kahawai and the odd snapper are also becoming a regular catch in certain areas. The early season snapper run tends to follow the whitebait up into the shallows producing some very good light line entertainment. Normally kingfish can also be found in water a foot deep but so far, I haven’t heard of much success but it’s early days. The entrance has been great, out around Fairway marker and the broken foul areas and gurnard have been an easy catch for many along with some decent Snapper.

Bream Bay. WOW!!!

Fishing in Bream bay has been outstanding over the past 2 weeks – essentially it’s been snapper fishing like most haven’t experienced. Massive work ups with pilchards and mackerel, whales, dolphins, big snapper and kingfish. Initially these fish were out at the 35m mark but over the last week seem to have moved in a bit. Theory has it that these are the work-ups normally seen out around Barrier but for some reason they have wandered in this wa y- it doesn’t matter though we will take it! Softbaits have been ruling the roost as far as catching them goes. Bruised Banana, Atomic sunrise, New Penny grubs, Nuke Chooks, Motor oil all seeming to do well, so it appears almost everything.

Generally the coastal inshore waters would start to die off from the rocky structured areas about now, but with water temps still very low the big in shore moochers are still there and most certainly catchable. A recent trip yielded some nice fish snapper with the biggest going 12kg and the bigger specimens handled well and released to be caught another day.

In short, it’s early but the fish are here, get out there and get them!!!

- Mike

 

  • TopCatch Mangawhai

The fishing has been going off up here with the best late winter fishing in memory. The big workup season started early with huge schools of pilchards in Bream Bay, Sail Rock and the Hen and Chicks. There were flotillas of boats competing with whales, dolphins and thousands of gannets and the hardest part of catching a fish even in midweek was finding a park at the boat ramp!

Generally, the workups started about mid to late morning and continued on until late afternoon, on some days these were kilometres across.

The fishing was an absolute blast with lures and soft baits getting smashed before they reached mid column. Good sized snapper were the norm and a lot of good kingfish were landed.

So far, we have had about 6 weeks of this action which has fired everyone up for the influx of snapper for the spawning season that will start as soon as the water begins to warm up.

Shore fishing has been just as good with the workups coming into less than a meter of water and some 10lb plus snapper being caught off the beach.

- Dave & Doug

 

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