Will be there next week and then again in February. Love the place and find it hard to go anywhere else. Managed to get a month house sitting at French Pass and then two weeks farm sitting at the Northern tip of Durville during this past year.

Yes that my position....apprentice local... in fact I recently sailed right around the north island with three of them on the Steadfast. Classic yacht you will have seen moored there.

Pretty easy to catch a feed out the QC at moment, infact the blue cod fishing at present is better than south Westland

I've been fishing the Motueka spat farms through December, plenty of kings about using topwater.

Jigged Frenchpass on an incoming couple weeks back, did well again. Drift line was pretty specific. Might give Tennyson a go tomorrow.

Just back from pass after a week, finally got out to Jags over 3 days, 3rd very lumpy.
For the first time in about 15 years the snapper were some of the biggest we have ever caught, We had to work for them. Strangely not a lot of terakihi or gurnard, i presume they're getting smashed because of the cod rules. the only time we didn't find cod was after the eartquake up north, very quiet day. it is everywhere in abundance.

What's sad is now there is so much kina there are no more kelp nurseries for bait or growing fish. Another great sight after years, was the return of the porpoises through the pass, up to twice a day big schools and very big units.
Very few seals about, consequently we saw no Orcas.
New operators at the shop, try and support them, if your up that way, good people.

There were a lot of charter boats every day too, they must have smashed all their normal areas, from jags to hell's gate, stephens, beef barrels. Even some sneaky wee spots that we soft bait in they were snooping around.

i must say though the ramp has been hammered was a bit interesting on the low spring tides, perhaps a couple of STRONG sighting poles at the top would also help, there were some unusual figure 8 backing manouvers by some.

Also some of the freedom campers seem to think its meant for them to sun themselves on their loungers, to the point that whilst backing trailer down i had to stop, to tell some to get off, too busy reading and texting, needless to say we didn't offer any a nice fish dinner.
look out next year, can't wait.

Kenepuru was doing ok in March for snapper and kingfish. Only managed the one trip though.

Went out for a quick spin on the Ski on Wednesday (16th). I haven't fished the sounds much (3 times) so there is a lot of exploring and experimenting to be done.

Yep - we spent a couple of days down there last year - bloody great fishery