But, of course, regularly hooking big snapper and trevs on softbaits, and the decent chance of tangling with kingfish bycatch is a very thick icing on the Far North angling cake.

This trip, my best snapper was just shy of the 80cm benchmark for a ’20 pounder’ in old money, the best trevally nearly 60cm, and I got dusted by two good kingies – one in 35m, which left me with a chafed leader after dragging me through bottom foul, and one in the Moturoa Islands shallows which very quickly buried me in rocks. On softbait gear, it's knife to a gunfight, basically.

At this time of the year, it’s a bit of a lottery in terms of weather. The week before I went up was light winds for days, but I’d not picked it because of the midweek full moon; the week I was there featured one day of light winds, but strong south-easterlies dominated; the week after would have been a depressing blowout.

But the fish seem to be hungry in autumn, packing on condition for the winter ahead. Even the 40-55cm pannies – which were a fish a cast at change of light out in 16-20m in Rangaunu Bay – hit and pull hard, seemingly more aggressive and with proportionally wider tails than their cousins around Auckland. As soon as my 1/2oz jighead reached the bottom, the line usually pulled tight. Sometimes my dragged bait out the back – usually a Z Man curly tail – went off at the same time.

After a day's fishing, my jigheads were pockmarked with craters from being chomped by predatory snapper.

The prevalence of trevally up north is a real bonus. The telltale throbbing fight of a good-sized trev is a regular occurrence out over the sand. Fresh sashimi and ceviche is a much-anticipated highlight of my northern trips.

I was able to head north to Great Exhibition Bay for one day, which is real horse snapper territory. It seems to have low numbers of often exceptionally big reds that like scoffing a big Z Man grub or 7" jerk shad. There are miles of coast where you can do long drifts in 20-40m across the rubbly ground, with passing bait balls and other schools of fish raising confidence levels.

Heading in the opposite direction, the western arc of Karikari Peninsula provided good shelter from the brisk SE winds, so I was able to cruise along the coast in my little FC465 and then duck across to the Motuora group. The place just looks and feels so fishy, with endless small islands and rocky outcrops awash with the easterly swells, and fish taking softbaits anywhere from 4m to 20m. Staying on the move and peppering likely looking spots is the key, and I was rewarded with snapper up to 70cm, and lots of powerful kahawai.

Three times, I had kingies chase my Bait Junkie softbaits on the retrieve – once, a large silver mass down at the edge of my visibility morphed into three rat greenbacks; another was a much larger kingfish that stormed out of the 20m depths, hot on the tail of my pilchard-coloured softie, but turned away at the last second – probably for the best, given I would have been massively outgunned and had earlier been reefed by a likely much smaller one.

There was a tinge of sadness when I pointed Te Korora homeward on the last day of the trip, but my weary back and cut up fingers were a sign of another great week in fishing paradise. Though that being said, I was feeling a lot better than the tiny dried-up snapper I found on the bottom of my boat when I gave it a big clean up. It bore the tooth marks of a large cannibal snapper I'd landed at some point during the week - only the strong survive in the Far North.