We do see them occasionally right along the north east coast of Northland as far as Karikari but more common from BOP SOUTH. They do frequent similar habitat (shallow). Have never seen as many as Saturday at Aldermans.
In the north where we dive , we bluefin spearos tend to leave them alone. There eating qualities are only average and they are no challenge to spear. Very approachable and would make great photo opportunities.
Russ
smudge in the old days you could even get them behind Waiheke 12 to 14lb......
but alas they have all surcome spelling to the Gill nets...... and thats the big problem they have removed thousands of these slow growing fish from around our coasts.......
Apparently they all go to somewhere south of east cape to spawn, some kind of mass migration shagfest.
We seem to ONLY get big ones in the north, but around Wellingtron they are on average much smaller in my experience - ie, the juveniles head south then leave for the north when they are old enough to shag and get jobs.
Saw a program on this once.
This fish is quite weird, apparently all the big ones head up north to mate, thats why you hardly ever see a small moki up north, and they either travel back down south to have their babies or the eggs end up down south due to currents, cant remember which.
How many baby moki have you ever seen up past coromandle?
We have hundreds of them round wellington, just about every dive you will see some.
"Head north when they are old enough to shag and get jobs"
Sound like you Paul?
Biggest moke caught on rod an reel was where?
Wellington Harbour earlier this year close to 9kg no
Morning Guys
Blue Moki spawn right up along the East Coast from Gisborne to Cape Runaway they then travel back down south from where most of them come from. We used to gillnet them out to 20 miles of Tolaga Bay years ago as this was the prefered method to target them. Before I take a verbal bashing about the use of gillnets and their non selectiveness, during the spawning run Moki appear to displace resident fish on reefs they choose to go to. When targeting Moki we caught very little in the way of by catch in the nets opposed to other times of the year on these outer reefs. As far as size went we would catch a lot of fish averaging 5 kg's with many fish approaching 15kg and some even bigger makes you wonder where these fish are.
Cheers
Craig
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