Funny day on the harbour today, must be the moon phase as bite times were short and there was plenty of jack mac bait around.

Fished around the head of snappakura both on the foul and in the shallows. Both areas worked, but found a lot more undersized than in the past few trips. Today's biggest went 55cm but again overall numbers were down on previous trips.

I hit the Papakura channel early this morning.  It was going to be a short trip, as a gusty northeast wind was soon approaching.

There were a lot of mullet leaping out of the water.  Unfortunately they weren’t leaping into my kayak.  

I paddled beyond the mouth, anchored and deployed a running rig.  The outgoing tide seemed to produce the far better bite.   

A very fat Snapper measuring at 58cm was the biggest of the day.

By 8am, the NE wind arrived as forecast and the call was made to head to shore.  All done and dusted by 8:30am.  

Very fortunate to get a feed.  It sounded like all of the anglers at the boat ramp had a very tough morning.  One guy in particular fished all night and all morning throughout the harbour and didn’t catch anything.  

smudge wrote: Nice fish though F1. This time of year is really unpredictable I've found and it's common to have short bite times. It will sort itself out soon enough

Well..... how's this for luck
During a release of an undersize snapper out there on the muddy, for my troubles, the buggar stabs me with its spines on my left hand middle finger... a few minutes later I managed to stab myself with rusty hooks around the same location

Swollen infected finger a week later.
Its now holiday season, so have to line up at the 24hr doctors xmas eve.... 4 visits to the after hours doc at around 7.5hrs total waiting time, plus a visit yesterday to do an ultrasound sesh... she marked it with the trusty vivid


So yesterday at the doctors, a couple injections to numb the wounded finger, the doc brings out his own fillet knife to deal to the intruder.... the intruder showed itself in the ultrasound imagery as only 1.5mm in length
I'm quite the bleeder, always have been, so another injection directly into the wound to ease the bleeding
No stitches, just those sticky strap thingys, all done in an hr




Funnily enough, I had a similar fish spine injury 5yrs back.
It happened when scaling a fish for dinner....ouch.
Ultrasound image showed a 11mm spine stuck in my finger
I was ok with it for around 3 weeks, no swelling or infection, but sore when that location gets knocked by accident.... get it treated !!

Bloody hell BB!  That's not good mate.  That sure looks nasty.  Hoping you have a quick recovery.  When you're good to go, I'm still keen to head your way and fish your local.  

Wow, very cool Schecter!I don't think I've ever caught one that big in the Waiuku Channel

Far out, nice size fish out your ways there Schecter

FlawOne wrote: That's a great fish Schecter! I was always a bit to chicken to kayak in the Manukau. Something to do with Sharks and strong and relentless currents but good on you for getting out there and succeeding. Happy New Year all mighty muddy folk!

Cheers mate.  It’s a different body of water than where I use to fish.  It took me over a year to build the experience and courage just to paddle beyond the inlet.  It took me much longer to learn how to fish the harbour.  

The sharks don't concern me, but the currents do!

Nice fish being caught in amongst the smaller machine gun snapper by the looks.

Yes indeed, it will hot up soon I am sure