Anyone had experience floundering, either spearing or netting in the Tauranga harbour?

I'm thinking of getting a flounder light and spear, I just want to first make sure the flounder are there.

Had a sad session on the channel edges And quiet water to find 3 brutes (nailed and next seen hanging out with eggs in my pan) sitting in a inch of water at the car park under the lights! 

Happy hunting 😁

taurangatroutmaster wrote: Maketu is better. Tauranga habour around the city is hard work and mainly small flounder. Up towards Kati Kati is better

That is depressing.  I was expecting massive amounts of flounder in TGA harbour because I assumed not many people go floundering there.

In Ohiwa harbour we average 20-25 flounder per session set/drag netting. 

Why is floundering in TGA harbour so hard going?

My favourite YouTube fishing channel, a local guy from my area (Whakatane/Ohope) does some flounder cooking starting at 13:50

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSjaHKT2l5w&t=649s" rel="nofollow - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSjaHKT2l5w&t=649s

He loves eggs with his flounder as well:)

Reel Deal wrote: blue Marlin you got me hooked on that YouTube channel. Haha. Great fishing off Whakatane mouth clip

Yeah it's an entertaining channel.  That video of him fishing the Whakatane mouth and catching two snapper and a kahawai and losing what was probably another snapper was a good day at the mouth. 

It probably helped that he was fishing the Whakatane mouth during the weekday when there is less boat activity to scare the fish away. 

During the lock down when no boats were allowed out to sea there was snapper, trevally and kingfish coming into the Whakatane harbour which they don't do under normal conditions because of all the boat activity . 

Everyone was catching good bags of fish when we went from level 4 lock down to level 3 and land based fishing was allowed again.

I missed this post yesterday.  I only revisited this thread to look over old posts.

Commercial floundering eh? That will explain the lack of flounder in TGA harbour. I don't own a boat so Matakana island is not an option but Omokoroa sounds good.

Thanks

Not too sure about that Brian.

The commercial guys net for trevally, kahawai & piper but flounder catch would be pretty minimal.

I'll make some inquiries.

 

Could you let us know the outcome of your inquiries here please. I'm interested to know.

taurangatroutmaster wrote: Maketu is better. Tauranga habour around the city is hard work and mainly small flounder. Up towards Kati Kati is better

Are you going at low tide?

kitno wrote: I broke down not far from the Omokoroa ramp a while ago. While dragging the boat back by hand through the shallows I spotted a few. Managed to gaff a couple also

Gaffing flounders, that's impressive!! 

I'm happy with just two flounder per floundering session.  It's more to do with getting out and about and finding outdoorish things to do.

taurangatroutmaster wrote: I'd usually go incoming tide at any stage if spearing. Netting would be more around low so you could put the net in the channels

I think our floundering styles differ. This is how we do it in Ohiwa Harbour...

For spearing we hit em at dead low because the flounder are more concentrated into a smaller area of water. As the tide comes in the flounder become more spread out due to an increasingly more expanded area of water.

For netting we set the net from a boat across relatively small channels on the second half of the out going and as the flounder come off the mud flats where they are feeding and back into the smaller channels to move out into the main harbour channel, we cut them off.  We average 15-20 flounder in single sets doing this, but we usually set it twice and on the second set we "splash chase them" into the net for an extra 5-10 flounder.