West Coast Fishing Report - October 16th, 2020

  • General Saltwater, North Island West Coast - Kaipara to New Plymouth

Top Catch Hamilton

Not only is it one of the nicest times of the year on shore, it is definitely the most productive if you like to target snapper out west.

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I’m happy to report that the big fish that travel from out on the shelf into the 50 metre zone have done so already, with the first of these fish already here.

We managed to pick a small weather window on Saturday and ventured out to 57 metres for a look and it only took a couple of hours to pluck a good feed of fat snapper for the bin. There were no monster sizes for us but we ended up with a bin of real nice 'pannies' from 3-8lb.

One crew I spoke to who were fishing south of us had their limit in an hour with four of their fish exceeding the 20lb mark – serious fishing for this early on. Personally, I think we were a little too deep for the bigger models; however, we were stoked with our lot.

It’s fair to say that it is go time for a chance at hooking into a bunch of nice snapper out west at the moment; the only worry now is the fickle spring weather. Even the dreaded spiny dogs have vacated early.

If you do get a patch of weather that allows a multi-day trip then it might pay to drop a couple of cray pots on the offshore reefs. A couple of crews who did this recently were rewarded with good numbers of bugs and some sizeable specimens to boot.

There isn’t much more to add other than get the gear sorted, your boat serviced and load up the bait freezer because it will be all on when that next weather window rolls around.

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