Water temp and fish activity on the rise

Things are looking up with the harbour entrance showing a temperature of 18.0 degrees which according to history is the ideal temperature for the snapper to start spawning in the harbours.

The reports I have from local fishers that fish the Bowentown areas have been catching some very nice snapper from 2 to 4 kgs along with some very decent sized trevally. Although I don’t have any direct reports at the moment from the Tauranga end, there should be no reason why it would not be the same at “our” end. So, get out there and fish on those channel edges and you should get some good results.

I was at Mayor Island in the last two weeks and again water temperature was at  16.8 degrees in some places and the water looked a damn nice blue for this time of the year.

The group on board were having their very first go at jigging and popper casting and as you know this  (the jigging ) part can be physical, but they put the effort and some unusual techniques were used and as I explained what we had learnt from past experiences with a wide variety of the public, if the lure/jig is at least moving then you might have a chance at a strike.

The action was just great when casting a popper/jig. There were numbers of kingfish on the surface all trying to get at the lure with some consistent hook ups with mostly average fish to about 85 cm.

One of the anglers using this popper also landed a nice snapper around 4kgs that took the lure right on the surface in 18 meters of water!

The guys were over the moon at the action until a very healthy mako shark decided that it also like a taste of kingfish and devoured a fair portion of a nice fish and then proceeded to attack the stern platform of the boat, which is luckily heavy aluminium. It left some impressive teeth marks in the alloy as the image shows.

There have been the odd albacore caught out wide but from what I could find out were not big fish but this could hopefully be a good omen for the coming game season

The trout fishing at Lake Rotorua has been great with a brown weighing 9.1/4 lbs being landed along with some nice rainbows to 6lbs.