Hi guys!!

January is a good time for Kingi's, BUT it is also our main holiday season here so everyman and his dog will be at all the camping areas and fishing spots.  If you can delay it until February then the kids would have gone back to school and parents back to work so it will be alot quieter and easier to find good spots that are not crowded out.

Kingi's can be caught all year around but the beginning of Dec until April-May see a large population close to shore.  Personally I think Feb / March is the best time to get into them.   December can be hit or miss some years.

Coromandel, Far North, West & East coast harbours, are all good and should give you some action.   

East Cape - middle of winter big kings

Fished top of Coro heaps of times, stay at Fletchers bay campground, the walk to the grounds about an hr, time it right as you can get stuck at high tide on the way back or going there
Feb onwards is best, you want new moon to full moon, best is first quarter or at any moon phase when a low comes thru
Best tides last 2hrs of outgoing tide going into change of light
Careful with any northerly or east wind as the ground swell can be unsafe
Fishing at the top of Coro can be hot and very cold, very bloody cold
You do not want calm sea conditions, west to sou west 15kt plus is good
Read thru the entire land based forum, what you need to know about Coro is all there
Good luck

Shilo wrote: January is a good time for Kingi's, BUT it is also our main holiday season here so everyman and his dog will be at all the camping areas and fishing spots.  If you can delay it until February then the kids would have gone back to school and parents back to work so it will be alot quieter and easier to find good spots that are not crowded out. Kingi's can be caught all year around but the beginning of Dec until April-May see a large population close to shore.  Personally I think Feb / March is the best time to get into them.   December can be hit or miss some years. Coromandel, Far North, West & East coast harbours, are all good and should give you some action.

BananaBoat wrote: Fished top of Coro heaps of times, stay at Fletchers bay campground, the walk to the grounds about an hr, time it right as you can get stuck at high tide on the way back or going there Feb onwards is best, you want new moon to full moon, best is first quarter or at any moon phase when a low comes thru Best tides last 2hrs of outgoing tide going into change of light Careful with any northerly or east wind as the ground swell can be unsafe Fishing at the top of Coro can be hot and very cold, very bloody cold You do not want calm sea conditions, west to sou west 15kt plus is good Read thru the entire land based forum, what you need to know about Coro is all there Good luck

I had never heard of amberjacks, so I did some searching on Youtube. Found a cool vid where a fisho takes a world champ weightlifter, NFL Linebacker and Worlds strongest man out to fish them on full drag. They are a lot like kingies. It just goes to show that technique and stamina beats strength. World's strongest man couldn't land it.

MB wrote: Pedrotms wrote: First of all, thanks so much for the answer. About the gear, no need to worry. People don't really know about some of the crazy fishing that can be done in europe for big fish because the few that know about it try to keep it hidden! I mostly target greater amberjack from the rocks, biggest I've landed (and properly weighted) was 31kg, but hooked much bigger ones that were simply wreck trains! AJs around 50kg have haunted me on my fishing spots, I'm yet to try to land one above 35kg or so. I mostly go with PE8 and PE10, so no need to worry. It's not my first time going after big fish from the rocks, be it kings, gts, AJs or tuna. That's cool and certainly not typical of my experience in the Mediterranean, but I see you mentioned the Azores, so that makes sense. As you probably know, kingfish are a type of amberjack, so you should be fine.

I can't help much further because I don't do land based fishing, but I would recommend using FATMAP (free web app) to help with trip planning. It shows 3D topography which is so much better than 2D when trying to find spots. I use it for hunting and it's proven very useful.

Where you go could be very weather dependant so I would recommend leaving your options open until you arrive in the country.  But if you have 2 weeks (14 days) then you could easily do both the Coromandel and the Far North if you wanted to.  With travel time taken into account you could end up with 5 days in each area (assuming you have a rental car).
Personally I would do what you are doing:  Research and make a list of all the likely spots in both areas, then when you arrive here look at the weather forecasts and plan it from there.  It is a long drive but it is possibe to travel from the top of the Coromandel to the top of the Far North in a day (9hrs)

It is correct that trying to fish as many spots as possible in a limited time is a mistake,  it takes time to learn a spot and one may fish well at a certain tide etc and there is a chance you can get it wrong at every spot.   With fishing the grass is not always greener somewhere else.  But by having a list of spots and not planning to fish Spot A on a certain day then moving to Spot B the next one will keep your options open.