Hey mate I grew up in Te Atatu at the end where your house is. As a kid I caught heaps of sprats and piper at the sailing club. You can also net or spear flounder and grey mullet around the mangroves. Why not try catching a flounder on a baited hook?
We also used to take little boats and fish the channel edges and the flats for snapper and kahawai in the later summer months. I have caught trevs almost right up to the motorway bridge and for a long time we targeted parore on mussel baits in that same area. There are tons of them up there and they fight reasonably hard. We would stand on the mud / greywacke mid tide and use really light ledger rigs on spinning gear. Not the normal way people use to target them but was a deadly technique.
I have even seen kingfish chasing grey mullet on a cold winters morning too.
Thanks Jonny! I right at the end so the sailing club is only about 40 metres from home! Would you hit the mudflats further up from the sailing club to target the trevs/parore? I have definately looked out a couple of calm days and seen baitfish leaping in the channel, maybe Kahawai on the chase? Or one of those kingis you have spotted!
The northern end of Te Atatu has a mangrove forest that reaches out quite far. The council have built a track / board walk that goes around the top but doesn’t come close to the channel. On a side note we used to find heaps of Kauri gum at the end of beach road because they used to bring them down Henderson Creek. You can also see an old mansion on that walk. A friend of mine found an unexploded bomb once in the same area as there used to be a target range for the airforce just beyond the mangroves.
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