A good tarakihi bite

Great to have some very nice weather patterns lately and some good catches with a variety of fish.
The tarakihi size has been much better fishing in the 75 to 80-metre depths and the odd double or even triple hookup on these great-eating fish. We have also had some very nice snapper, not huge at around the 3kg mark, along with some good trevally. 

Bowentown is still producing great catches with kahawai and some big numbers of trevally, and so far, I have not heard of any shark problems down that way. On that note, I did have two large bronze whaler sharks behind the boat in only three meters of water on the main channel edge last week. One had a tag in it, probably from a previous event in the same area.

The skipjack tuna seem to be a bit scattered and small in size, which is perfect for bait or a whole dead bait for those marlin. The water temperature is still at 20.2 so never say never with a while to go before that May drop in temperature. As mentioned in previous reports, we have seen marlin in May chasing saury.

Snapper fishing in the harbour remains productive. From memory, this has been one of the longest runs of good harbour fishing for a few years, with the odd fish over 5kg gracing the ice bins. This run started last November and is still going well. Anglers have been fishing the channel edges, particularly the last two hours of the incoming and outgoing tides, often in shallow water.

The deeper waters out from Maketu have also been good with nice tarakihi and one or two snapper around the 9kg mark on ledger rigs coming aboard.

Kingfish have been okay, but I have not heard of any really big fish being landed, with most being around the 10-15kg mark. Overall, the fishing has been ‘patchy’. Spots that have fired one day can be dead the next, but that’s fishing!

Coming up to this weekend (March 25) the weather looks very settled in our BOP areas so make the most of it.

Finally, a launch around 32 feet in length sank somewhere near the Penguin Shoals last week. The good news is the crew were all rescued safely after they let off two rocket flares that alerted nearby vessels to their plight. Being well prepared and keeping your head in a pretty scary situation is easier said than done, but these guys did very well with a nasty scenario having as good of an outcome as possible.

Russ Hawkins

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