It is a true
privilege to be able to get up to the Far North once a year to experience the
incredible fishery on offer. This year, I managed to fluke four days of
excellent late autumn conditions – including two glass out mornings –
sandwiched between nasty storm fronts sweeping in courtesy of La Nina.
The trip was
the usual roller coaster of emotions, from the high of a nice kingie on softbait
gear while fishing solo early on, to having the sobering experience of what I can
confidently say is the biggest snapper I’ve ever hooked being devoured by what
must have been a scarily large shark in the open sea off Great Exhibition Bay. In
between, my mate – who joined me for two days – and I landed and released multiple
fish over 70cm on softbaits (the biggest, 76cm), and kept some lovely trevally
and snapper for fresh kai moana, and to vacuum pack for families back home.
At the start
of the trip, Rangaunu Bay was full of dirty water and weed – the legacy of the
previous week’s deluges flushing out from Rangaunu and Houhora harbours. But huge
flocks of shearwaters were working along the coast up towards Cape Karikari, where
the water seemed clearer. There were large numbers of hungry snapper and
trevally underneath that were keen to nail softbaits on the drop. At times, every
cast ripped up tight. In the quick, but memorable, late afternoon session I squeezed
in the day I arrived, I got six nice trevally and about 20 snapper to the boat –
mostly on Gulp Crazy Legs in various colours. Sometimes fish jolted lures hard as
they were wound back, and I had several double hook ups, with the dragging lure
in the holder nailed as I was playing a fish hooked on the drop.
In the following
days, the sea gradually cleared – returning to stunning blue visibility.
Fortunately, that coincided with my mate Chris joining me for a couple of days.
We saw something I haven’t seen before: huge schools of blue maomao and sweep 10m
down, well off the coast in 35m of water off the Houhora cliffs. We also saw a long-lasting
bust up of what I assume must have been decent tuna or potentially kingies well
out towards the horizon, and a big kingie exploding in circles right in on the
beach as it chased a panicking victim.
I was thrilled
to hook snapper on my home-tied squid imitation ‘skutes’ (on ½ oz jigheads tied
in the Avalon fly style, with rabbit fur strips alongside the main body); and
had a ghostly coloured john dory, an impressively bucket-mouthed granddaddy hapuku, and a red pig fish
smack large softbaits over broken foul.
While smaller
Z Man curly tails and Gulp Crazy Legs were the stars of the show over the sand,
my best weapon in the reefy country was the big Z Man Doormatadorz 6" grub in Atomic
Sunrise (with a Z Man skirt at the head), closely followed by the 7” jerk shadz
in Coral Trout and Bruised Banana. Away from the sand, anything Gulp got shredded in seconds.
MB wrote: Great write up. An epic area for fishing. Where do you launch? |
The Tamure Kid wrote:
Thanks mate, I appreciate the kind words. I launch off the beach at Rangiputa. There was quite a bit of storm damage around the usual access points, mainly from the cyclone I think. When it's an easterly blow I can still fish the harbour, which is an excellent fishery in its own right; when I'm able to, I venture further afield - while being sensible, filing trip reports with Coastguard etc. |
Redfinger wrote: Great trip mate - beats all the doom and gloom stories we keep hearing. Dont think it can get much better than that. |
MB wrote:
Thanks. We often stay on the Kaimaumau side. Beach launch can be tricky with lots of soft sand. |
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