Two really good weekends fishing in a row.
23rd we hit the south coast in the afternoon, didn't drop the anchor or a berley bomb all afternoon, just drifted over promising looking sign which produced a solid bin of medium sized Tarakihi and a couple of good Blue Cod too. Tried slow-jigging briefly but the South Coast Sailfish were around in plague numbers and I gave up with that after having a set of assist hooks snipped off the jig. Probably trashed another half a dozen flasher rigs too but they cost me $2 each instead of $20 like a good slow jig.
30th we went out West with most of Wellington, we got to the ramp at 6am and got the second to last trailer park at the bridges. Plan was a jig (me) and livebait (my old man, who is not so much of a jigger) mission to Hunters. Livies proved tricky to get, we had to move around a bit to get away from the 15cm juvenille Snapper. Macs were on the smaller side too but we eventually had 9 or 10 chilling out in the tank so cruised out to Hunters over the remaining swell.
First drop dad's livie got a fairly soft take in 35m that turned into a pup Hapuka. Couple of drifts later an initially firm hit on another livie that soon went a bit limp was initially called for a Barracouta but up popped a solid 50cm JD, yum. I somehow foul hooked a Warehou on the jig and followed that up with a good eating sized Kingfish around 90cm, leaving us with a very decent mixed bag. Shot into Pukerua Bay to see if the Snapper were around, slow fishing but a couple of hours scored us two pansized Snapper and a couple of Gurnard to round things out.
Paid some attention to the fuel flow for once - Suzuki DF70A on Stabi 1550, 7.8LPH @ 18kn gentle cruise 2-up with plenty of gear, giving us a range of right on 200km from 2x 23L tote tanks (or, being able to go Mana - Hunters - Puk - Mana on about half a tank...) Not bad, I reckon.