Sid fishus, Chris Wong, The Rod Baron, Chopsticks, Jigger Monster, Ray from Fishing Safaris all gathered in Whakatane on Sunday night.
Loaded all the gear by the end of this enchanter was bristling top jigging gear! A forest of rods from the holders and piles of belts, pliers, jig bags and paraphernalia. Down the club for a quick bite and onboard for a roundtable. Weather was looking pretty gnarly for the Monday so off to White for the night to fish it in the morning.
Arrived at White late evening to find a few flying fish gathering and a nice calm anchorage. No need for baits on this trip so we tottered off to bed for an early start!
Day 1
Fished the reefs and haunts around white and the Volkners for the morning, couple of good kings landed by Jigger Monster up to 26kg. But a reasonably quiet session. The forecast was looking better for Tuesday so we pulled pin from White around 1pm and began our long steam towards
We stopped in at
Hunkered down for the night in
Day 2
Woke to the clouds streaming fairly quickly over the hilltop in Hicks bay but a forecast of it gradually getting down to 20kts. We didn’t rush off hoping it would drop soon enough.
First stop on a rock bout halfway out to the banks near some real deep water. Within fairly short order a couple of kings landed and then Chris came up against something solid. Definitely a fish, but one that was more interested in pulling him out of the boat than coming up to see us!
“Oh my gosh” said Chris this is rather large.
Anyways after puffing and panting and straining for a while this guy pops up. Blown, he wasn’t going back down. Pulled the boats scales down to 55kg, smashing Chris PB on Bass which he set only recently at White (I think?). Taken on a Jigstar, silver, tail weighted jig, from memory
Another bass at around 35kg to The Rod Baron and a HUGE Puka to Chopsticks later, we abandoned this spot as the big bottom dwellers were not what we were after. We’re not here for the meat hunt lets go find some more kings! This moving on away from the Puka became a bit of a theme over the next few days!
We got into a good run of kings in the afternoon, My PB on kings got bettered several times with a king in the low twenties followed by a high twenties and ending up with an estimated 30kg fish. Fish hitting the jigs so hard they were coming back bent!
They seemed to like silver/blue jigs with a bit of pink hanging off them this day, the 6” GULP pink grubs working well for me off the assist hook (improvised coz I didn’t got any octopuses). Others using Slams and small squids to dress their hooks with great effect!
Ray from Fishing Safaris chipped in with a top Trumpeter which had been pre-ordered by a friend.
Day 3
Early start today with a forecast as good as it gets for the Banks, 15kts with a patch of variable winds in the afternoon. This was our day for
Catch of the day was Trevor (The Rod Barons) 38 kg estimated monster. He had to chase it from the bow down along the rail and end up pinned in the opposite transom corner.
Check out the bend in Kojaks’ custom master piece a bound, stiffened Powerspell 350 spiral blank which tackle hoes out there may have already seen pictures of. Nothing better than getting to put all this serious bling to the full test on a serious Fish. Trevor has thrown down the gauntlet for the Yeehaa jigging competition I reckon!
So this spot had the big kings…. But again we were pulling in a few too many Puka and the call was made to move on.
A quieter day for me but with still a few 20kg plus fish. We had a drift of the shallows around the bank and had a couple of shark encounters. A big Mako with a bronzie on its right shoulder came up and casually ate a 20kg plus kingy from my line, no weight came on the line just a casual chomp and nothing but sliced off fluoro carbon came back to me.
This shark was followed up though on the next drift by a FAT White pointer cruising under the boat, didn’t see it myself but some of the boys reckon 3ft in width.
Day 4
Last day on the banks! Weather is back up again, not as gnarly as Tuesday but 20-25kts was more than enough to toss around all 56ft of enchanter no probs.
We hit the spot Trev got his big boy at and targeted big bait columns of Ruby fish in 130- 140m depths. Lots of current today to struggle with. We had real fast drifts over the pins, heavy jigs, tail weighted jobbies and the PE5 and PE6 rods, probably had a bit better catch rate than the PE8 rods.
On one drift the jig was up so high on the return it brought in an albie.. Unusual catch for a 400 gm jig.
Get it right though, and the Fish were there! Four successive drops for me resulted in four Kings in the mid twenties with a big pink jig that must have been a dead ringer for a Ruby fish. Where else do you get four mid twenty kg kings in four drops?
Plenty of Puka pulled in today with some good specimens, and Jigger Monster chipped in with his first 30kg king! He is a dedicated spin jigger, were talking Stella and Saltiga’s and Smith rods and Hots spin rods. He bangs away all trip with the spin gear and then…..
What does he catch his PB on?????
JM Powerspell 350, OJ4000P! He may have seen the light now and come over to overheads! All the way over from Aus to find a big king!
3pm we pull the pin and start our travels back towards Waihau. On the way we just happened to be passing
The whisper goes round “be rude not to!” We yell out to the Skipper “JUST ONE MORE DROP!”
Out comes the gear and we’re back into it!
I get cheeky and pull out my power spell 150 with my Black Magic/Avet SX scored off trade me, loaded with 30lb Powerpro and pop over the side a 4 Oz Mahiman/Boulder red paddle tails special jobby charged up under the deck lights of Enchanter.
Not sure I had done the right thing the jiggers are hooking up, and I’m still phaffing about with a soft plastic, trying to work out whether I’m at the right depth and is there enough fall on it to get the tail going?................. then……………….. woo hoo hook up.! Oh its running,
Um………………..
Golly! Have I got enough drag here? There is only 50m of water…… Time for a little extra thumb pressure on the spool.
Chris can see a warranty claim he is gonna turn down, so I back off a little on the extra thumb drag……. Hows this for a fish on a JM150 and avet sx and soft plastic…..Measured at 130cm and estimated 30kg fish.
Reckon I might give the lumo jig heads, like the jigstar etc a few more bashes at the bewitching hour of dusk on a few spots over the summer, seemed to work!
Did my chips with the lads though cause it took so long to boat the fish by the time we got back to the mark, the bite had shut down.
Day 5
Woke up in sweet little bay on the last day with four or five hours run to home. We hit another reef for a quick fish in the morning. Looking for JD’s kings etc we tried a few different things here, softies etc.
Plenty of couta snaked off our gear and we were just about to pull the pin when Jigger Monster pulls out his Branzino 3000 and jigs up a 20kg king. Nice catch on a nice reel. Pretty much everyone onboard wanted to oursies this lil reel.
Big filleting session and on back to Whakatane.
Excellent trip, great fishing and crew work from Lance and Phil. Thoroughly enjoyed myself and will be back.
Also cannot speak highly enough of my Powerspell 350 and OJ4000 combo, which some doubted would be up to the banks. Thanks to the advice from Yeehaa and others I have talked to who helped me make the decision to buy. Thanks to chopsticks who was like having a reel maintenance shop on the boat for drag upgrades as we fried the standard drags in our reels.
All kings were released, fatties that could make it back down were also released.
thats the shizzle....gotta love that 150
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