Had a couple of days off last week and got up to the Kari Kari peninsula. Only managaed one day's fishing (friday) since I was up there with the girlfriend...
A strong Northeasterly ruled out Matai bay, looked like some nice spots up there though!Did a bit of scoping on the Thursday and found a reasonably sheltered spot on the
Didn't get off to the best start on Friday. Stayed in bed too long so missed the change of light. Once I got to the spot I got the berley going, live bait rig set up, baited up my spinning set and was ready to go...when I discovered the handle was missing from my Penn 850ssm!!! Retraced my steps back to the car (luckily not too long to walk) and couldn't find it..so grabbed my spare reel and back out to the rocks.
Finally got a line in the water and caught a perfect live bait sized kahawai and got him out under a balloon. Proceeded to catch more small kahawai, put one in the rock pool for livebaiting for later...and threw the rest back...
By about half past one I'd only caught a couple of just legal snapper, which went back in the water. Not a trace of a Kingfish and I would have packed it in if I wasn't trapped by the tide...
I had read a book recently that said a whole skipjack tuna head is a good bait for big snapper...so I thought what the hell...let my livebait go, took the balloon off and threaded my hook into the skipjack head. I was thinking I should have changed from the livebait hook but couldn't be bothered...and my expectations were pretty low considering how slow the fishing had been.
I can't cast with the tld25 so I stripped some line out and thew the bait out by hand (pretty gumby I know!)
Went back to fishing down the end of the rocks with the spin set up....Was just reeling in a tiny snapper when line started screaming from my other reel.... Dumped the little snapper into a rock pool still on the hook and scrambled up to my other rod.
The line had stopped by the time I got there, and cursing my luck I pushed the lever up to strike and started winding in...just as I was giving up hope a big thumping weight came on the line and the rod bent over...
It wasn't exactly a fair fight on 24kg tackle...but I wasn't complaining when a the 83cm moocher came to the surface. Had quite a job landing the bugger by myself without a gaff but got him on to the rocks... a personal best by a long long way.
Had to wait for another couple of hours for the tide to go out until I could get off the rock…
The girlfriend came to meet me to help carry the gear..and on her way found the reel handle!!! A very happy ending to the day…
Got out this arvo and in to the night with Fisher and Kenshin for a fish slowly mossied over to Saddel isld and fished of the southern bay not big fish caught but a feed taken home with the odd surprise fish catching most of us out .Was great to be able to put name's to face's .top shot is kenshin then him running to stop his rod disapaering down the bch, even the small ones(30cm) put up good fights , then the odd one come's through with that WOW factor,and the last is Fisher back from his jaunt around the isld .
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