Catchelot wrote: Hard day on the water for us yesterday, was a small tide and bite time, we worked the Waipu river reef close to the high, water temp not changed in a month 17 deg, as in, SW'ers. Anchored and berleyed as well over the tide, worked hard softeeing and dragging kaburas and straylined baits, 8 snaps and a gurnard. Purse Seiner seen at McGregors rock, coming in to off load Whg Hbr, boo!

Blue mackerel. Multiple purse seiners, spotter planes, the works. They get hammered. Very sad. Apart from the fact that we enjoy catching and eating them, knocking a link out of the bottom of the food chain cannot be a good thing for the fishery as a whole.

I am shocked the Greens ain't all over this.

Thanks MB . So its Blue mackeral. Explains alot. Used to catch them alot in the inner gulf. But no more ,havent seen one in a long time. Now i know why.

Pretty much.

One from the other day. I get more excited about them than snapper or kingfish! 

Ecko wrote: Launched from Marsden today and fished softies with advice from Catchelot. Mostly fished around Smugglers and Peach. Not a firing day on the water but first fish on board was a 13lb 65cm snapper, quickly followed by a 35cm pannie. The fish dropped off there until just before we headed back in and I was cleaning the fish and something made a run on Rod Holden's softy. Turned out to be a nice 60cm trev which was a great end to the day! Heading out first thing tomorrow too will report back!

Finally plucked up the courage to do the Friday night battle from Hamilton to the parents house in Whangarei. Had the boat on the water out of the OBC at 6am. Only boat out at that time of the morning.

Was in the water at 6.30am along the old woman. Not many small snapper seen for the 3hours spent in the water majority were good fish some too big to pluck from the ocean for my liking. But between my brother and I we had shot 3 snapper between 15-18lb being selective by 9.30am and thats us for fish for a while. Some interesting things to note.
Big schools of KY with kingfish chasing them underneath. (also snapper. Managed to pluck the 18lber mid water with a 1m gun while surrounded by a school of KY).
Lots of little mackies around and also came across a few squid up in the shallows that I could not be bothered shooting as the swim back to the boat was over 500m and Im lazy..

Water temp varied a lot. Dive watch was saying 19degrees on the surface in some places but at the 20metre mark it was 16degrees. Noticeable temperature differences when going up and down.

Thursday morning at 5am through to 7 was outstanding came home with 7 up to 52cms most were around 40cms small ones are starting to come around now though.

Went out yesterday. Rough. Couldn't really get on to the snapper, got a few though, best was about 8lb. Cleaned up on terakihi - yawn!