Whangape or the river in mercer would be a good bet... just use a hair rig and fixed 2oz sinker ala the bolt rig and then keep it basic by throwing corn in every 15 mins or so. On the lake its trickier if you are fishing at range and in that case i would use a spod attached to a surf caster on a 60lb leader to hoof the bait out to where you are fishing. Ive made my own spod before out of half a shampoo bottle gluing some foam into the bottom so it floats and empties your ground bait. Also on the lakes use maize because if you use corn the small fish will strip it before the Carp get a chance to look at it. I buy a 25kg sack and do 3kgs at a time... you soak it for 1.5 days then boil it for 35 minutes or so starting from when it starts to boil. Then just empty it into a big bucket with a lid and let is soak overnight, make sure you put some more water in at that point because it will absorb more water while its cooling down. As long as there is water covering the maize it will keep for quite a long time, all you have to do is scape off any mould forming on the surface of the water.


This is what a spod looks like so you know what im talking about.

what i will do sometimes is put out a marker float and spod to it or like on the weekend just use a kayak to take bucket fulls of spod mix out :)

Got out there today, What the fish lacked in size they made up for in numbers, many many small kois, mixed with some large Goldfish, most of the goldfish were bigger than the kois. In the late afternoon a better koi started charging about sucking on leaves and everything else it could find on the surface, would be about as "worked up" as I've ever seen a koi. I'd foolishly put the last of my bread into the berly to make it a bit less soupy, Managed to get a 1/2 decent sized bit that floated and flicked it out on the 2kg gear with a hook and nothing else attached, The fish charged strait for it and here it is (pales in comparison to lemmy's shots but hey camera phones will be camera phones):


As it was getting close to pack up time I threw a few corn kernals I had droped onto the ground during the day into the water close by and a Rudd quickly came and swiped it. Seeing as I had loads of corn to spare I began feeding the rudd a kernal at a time, it wouldn't get all of them and remained just on the edge of my vision with polaroids. So I took to flicking another kernal as the last one left my sight, just like a tuna chink trail, well soon enough the rudd was joined by a larger orange shape, so I slid the split shots on my float rig up to near the float and slowly lowered a couple of kernals on a hook at the same rate the free ones were sinking, Instant take and hookup. Nice one I thaught, so I did the same again, slowly fed kernals out one by one, 1st the mosquito fish were there, then the rudd then finally koi (which were generally heralded by the mosquito fish jumping in unison) then I'd lower my bait at about the normal sink rate of a free kernal and I'd get a hook up right away, Repeated that 4 times and on the 4th A better fish took me into a snag and busted me off on the 2kg stuff. Because I was on my way out I didn't bother with a full float rig and just put a hook onto the main line and tried again, once again a quick hook up got another 2 kois and a couple of gold fish, then really had to go...

...now the question is, have you guys tried stray lining down a chunk trail for Koi before (perhaps with different terminology)? I guess it should be noted that this was at the end of the day in a patch of water where baits and berly had been going all day, but it was much more sucessfull than regular float fishing or using a bolt rig today...

...I may need to experiment further on my net trip.

These were definately not native Inanga:


They were the invasive Mosquito fish/gambusia:


i did see an excited yellow Koi start chasing the gambusia on the surface trying to suck them in, was going to ty livebaiting one but the koi soon buggered off..  might try that next time, I suspect I might wind up with an eel or catfish if fished on the bottom, might have to try keeping the livie on the surface to target koi. It'd be good if that helped to target the better ones.

Oh yeah i tried live baiting gambisia, hard to get the things without a net and it wasn't particularly lively, scored one of the catfish on it, and it was a better sized cat fish, but no koi interest that I could see.