Fun morn trolling live baits for Kings on the Gulf

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    Posted: 31 Jan 2019 at 4:42pm
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A fun few hours trolling live Mac's around for Green backs....

This time of year Pea and I love to chase a few King fish, Snapper fishing gets a little tedious sometimes and it's great to catch a few string pullers to get a bit of fun back into your fishing.

The plan was to catch a few livies off the bay and head out the back of Tiri to tow a few around the pins and reefs, I grabbed an anglers mate live bait tank from work to use and to see how well they worked - we drifted for a good 15-20mins with no results on the Mac's so plan B came into effect.

When we fish the bays for snapper we always catch live Mac's in the berley trail, so we dropped the pick and and set a berley for them. It's a great way to catch them if your finding it hard to get them. With in 3-4mins our first little bites started then the Mac's started to come aboard. I filled up the little PVC bucket while Pea fished on.

Soon we had 15-20 in the bucket with the little air pump going - the great thing with the bucket it has a zip up mesh top on it as well as a full see through plastic cover. This is great when you want to fully change the water, all you do is zip up the mesh tip out the old water for the new in one scoop.

We headed for Tiri and around half way we stopped and changed the water - the livies looked good but changing the water really helps to look after them, there's nothing worse catching them for an hour then arrive to your spot with dead baits. Once we arrived we changed the water again, but this time floated for a few mins with the zipped up bin in the water to get them swimming forward as well as replenishing the water. Pea set his first live bait out and we started our first troll - first pass of a pin Pea had interest and then line started to peel, bail wire over rod loaded up and we were into our first King of the morning.

It's wasn't big but it was a good little string puller and that's what we were here for, the inner Gulf holds plenty of 10-15kilo fish to catch. Pea got it under control, boarded then released - it was a nice fish to around 85cm. Our second pass Pea had set up another and going pass the pin he had another pick up, most times when trolling and smaller fish about they fight over it and mouth it a few times. This time the Kings won and Pea wound in to hook up another Mac, the bin was working perfectly for us but we kept changing the water after each pass of the reef.

This time I set up a live bait as well and passing once again Pea hooked up again - it was another nice string puller and another nice King around 90cm. We passed a few times with the Kings playing and pinching our baits, they are very cunning and hard to catch sometimes but that's what fishing is all about and keeps you interested. This time on another pass I hooked up to a nice fish, they weren't big fish but for the Gulf there not to bad.

Fight with it for a good 5-10mins I boated a nice fish around 95cm, Pea got smashed while his rod was in the holder (he hates filming sometimes LOL We lost a few more and caught a couple more until we ran out of baits, with our morning excitement done we finished of the day trolling a few lures among the birds with Pea hooking into another little King.

It was a fun day with a great plan coming together - we kept just the one as they have plenty of meat and you don't always have to take home your quote to have a magic day out on the water with a mate....

Tight lines


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Post Options Post Options   Likes (0) Likes(0)   Quote Muppet Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 31 Jan 2019 at 4:47pm
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Awesome I love trolling a live.
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (0) Likes(0)   Quote brmbrm Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 31 Jan 2019 at 6:30pm
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Looks fantastic.  Must try it.  What sort of trolling speed?  Dead slow I guess?
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Post Options Post Options   Likes (0) Likes(0)   Quote nzfishwhisperer Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02 Feb 2019 at 9:17pm
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Originally posted by brmbrm brmbrm wrote:

Looks fantastic.  Must try it.  What sort of trolling speed?  Dead slow I guess?
Was a pretty cool day alright - Yip what I like to do is just kick it into gear and just idle - I don't use much throttle so prob 3-4knts  
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