The weather forecast had been saying for a few days that today (Sunday) was on for a mission and so a plan was hatched. The low tide at 7:25am meant either getting out of bed at 5am - or launching at gentlemens' hours - so naturally we did the latter and were on the water by 9am. A mint day weather wise with little to no wind saw us headed northwards with the target of fishing the deeper water around the pins near Flat Rock. We stopped off about 2/3rds of the way north as there was quite a lot of gannet action in isolated clumps and some fast moving schools. Action was a bit patchy here although we did manage one fat kahawai which went in the bin and then we moved on.
As you can see from the pics, the weather and sea state were excellent. At one stage during the day I took an unusual pic of Little Barrier. The cloud formation made it look like it was erupting....
So we arrived at the Flat Rock area and started to drift near a pin that rises out of approx 50m. I decided to try sliders for the first time and that turned out to be a good decision.
The bite was very hot with multi hookups on both sliders and softbaits. The smelly stuff we took along largely stayed in the chilly bin. We threw back plenty of fish in the 40cm+ range including one that went larger than the 61cm red in the top of the bin below.
A magic day all round and to top it off the sea glassed over for the return trip. I hope all the other anglers out there on the Gulf today (and there sure were a lot of boats out) had a good day too. Can't beat the spring fishing.