The snapper fishing has been just great, with fish up to 22lb being caught in 40 meters of water. It’s not taking long from the moment of deploying the burley bombs that the fish are biting.

The harbour is still fishing very well for trevally and snapper on the change of tide; no need to go much further than the harbour entrance general areas. We have been mainly fishing in about 18 to 21 meters  near the edge of the kelp areas at Motiti Island.

A pleasant ‘by-catch’ has seen a good number of trevally being caught, with plenty sighted swimming in the burley trail right under the boat. These fish to me are very under rated for their eating quality. In fact, my wife and I had a meal last Sunday with the trevally done in white sauce and parsley with spring onions – it was superb to say the least!

On the kingfish front: as we all know, every day (and every hour) can be different with these great fish, but there have been some great fish caught in the Tu Hua reef area on the steep drop offs there. The western side of the Island seemed to be a lot quieter but, as stated above, it can change at any moment.

Water temperature has dropped slightly to 19.4, but is still very clear with visibility to about 15 meters at least.

There has been a fair amount of effort on the broad bill fishing, but only a few hook-ups with plenty of effort and boats trying.

It is great to see large schools of skipjack tuna from five miles off the coast and around Karewa Island, with most fish appearing to be smaller sizes (but great for the bait supply).

Hopefully most of you locals would have seen Todd Muller’s select committee presentation on the Marine Protected Areas and the petition signed by nearly 3000 people. This whole process was totally undemocratic and lacked proper science, so hopefully down the track there may be a chance for a revision of this debacle.

Russ Hawkins
Fat Boy Charters

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