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Bob Hather (Windfall)
Moderator
Username: Windfall
Post Number: 258
Registered: 8-2003
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 24, 2007 - 6:40 am: | |
Hi Everyone,
our latest fishing report, as posted at www.fishing.net.nz follows.
As you will read the season has shown a bit of a wag in it's tail, and has us all waiting for the next anticyclone to move onto the country in anticipation of getting some more broadbill action.
Geoff
Bay of Islands "Major Tom II"
May has provided a real bonus to game fishos in the Bay of Islands with a late patch of marlin moving into the area from Cape Brett to the Poor Knights. Usual catches at this time of year are very fat and in good condition after feeding in coastal waters over late summer before moving north on the spawning run.
This latest patch of fish are long and skinny, with plenty of ectoparasites and indicates they are recent arrivals, likely to remain for a couple of weeks yet, feeding up on the large schools of squid that have congregated off the coast.
These large squid schools have also attracted good numbers of broadbill to the coastal zone. With good weather over the last couple of weeks many local boats have been out trying their luck, mostly trolling baited lures at night. There have been plenty of 'shots' but little catching until Te Ariki Nui landed a small fish on the Garden patch on their way through to the Kings.
Brian Batson landed a 94kg broadbill hooked fishing the deep daytime drop method on Major Tom II at the 505 on Tuesday afternoon, and Pacific Monarch boated a 167kg fish at the Nine Pin Trench on Friday night.
With other action reported at the Cavalli Canyons and the Knights Rise, we have plenty of evidence that after 3 lean years the broadbill have returned to the Northland Coast. The plentiful food supply suggests plenty of broadbill activity still to come, as they are unlikely to make their way north for spawning until late September.
Kingis are showing up in good numbers which will please all the anglers booked to fish the annual light tackle tournament in Russell in June, with the best action around 71M Reef. There are also prodigious numbers of kingis at Rocky Point, but a school of bronze whalers is also stalking them, making catching easy but landing difficult. Most charter boats are leaving the area alone, unwilling to provide kingis as easy targets to the seemingly ravenous bronzies.
Snapper fishing is patchy. The good catches around the oyster farms have eased off, though the shallows around Parakura Bay and Rawhiti are still producing.
Plenty of small and barely legal snapper are being caught inside the Islands, but the best catches are likely to come from straylining close to the rocks in exposed areas outside the Islands.
As always drop me an email at MAJOR.TOM@xtra.co.nz if you have any queries. |
Captain Bert Lee
Unregistered guest
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, June 04, 2003 - 6:45 pm: | |
Subject: May 2003
We have had some great weather in May that has let us get out to the fish and the water temperature is still above average for this time of the year.
There are quite good number of small kingfish on the reefs but the barracouta are mixed in with them making it pretty hard on gear. We have been getting some big fat kingies on the bottom, mostly when we find a school of spawning terakihi that they are feeding on. There are snapper around on some of the offshore rocks but most are small fish, big kahawai are chasing the first of the whitebait outside the bay, they should move in closer in the next month. Hapuku have been hard to find, some days we got good catches and others very few, I expect to have to go to deep water to get many in the next month.
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Captain Bert Lee
Unregistered guest
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, May 02, 2003 - 11:05 pm: | |
Subject: April 2003
When we have been able to get out the fishing has been great with good size hapuku in deeper water and a lot of snapper on the closer rocks. The terakihi moved out early in the month to start their spawning run with the small hapuku and big kingies following. There are plenty of small kingies on the reefs and some good sized trevally with them, unfortunately there are couta mixed in which makes it a bit hard on gear. We have caught a number of kingies on fly gear and don't they make that little reel sing.
There are still skipjack out there and there was a run of yellowfin went through that everyone missed, we saw them jumping a couple of times and towed some lures but got no takers. May should bring more snapper, the kingies will still be about and if the weather allows us to get to them good hapuku.
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Captain Bert Lee
Unregistered guest
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, March 31, 2003 - 11:47 pm: | |
Subject: March 2003
Fishing has been good in March with several great yellowtail kingfish trips with overseas anglers. We had one angler from Singapore who released about 150 kingies in 4 days fishing several of them over 20kg, all caught on jigs. At the end of the month the terakihi are starting to move out and school up on certain secret spots ready to make the trip out to spawn. As is normal the big kingies and hapuku are following along for an easy feed. There are still a few smaller hapuku and terakihi closer in, but you need to be right on the spot to get them. There have been plenty of snapper close in and as the water starts to cool they will move out and congregate on the rocks where it is easy to find them. There are still some big skipjack out there and about the middle of the month we saw some yellowfin jumping but couldn't get a strike out of them. Hopefully April will bring a bit more settled weather so we can get out and do more often. |
Captain Bert Lee
Unregistered guest
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, March 01, 2003 - 3:41 pm: | |
Subject: February 2003
Osprey's new pair 115hp Yamaha 4 stroke outboards are going well and we can still get a comfortable cruise speed of 20kts and a top of 28kts, there are no oil fumes from the 4 strokes and very little noise at idle speed. This will make for trouble free and comfortable trips for quite some time.
For the first time in three years we had a team in the NZ Big Game Fishing Council National Contest we targeted the kingfish section and ended up winning the 10kg, 8kg, 6kg line weight and coming second in the 4kg line class for kingfish. Our 6kg fish of 22.1kg took out champion kingfish angler and we missed out on champion team by less than 4 points. We also tagged and released 45 kingfish with our top angle tagging 17 fish. This result reinforces Tolaga Bay as one of the top kingfish destination in the country and the world. I will put the photos on my site at www.charterfishing.co.nz when I get them out of the camera. There are a lot of albacore and skipjack out there and we have seen big yellowfin jumping on several occasions, there has been a number of marlin seen and hooked but none landed as yet. There are some big makos around, we hooked one on a jig on light line and lost it after two and a half hours when the 37kg leader wore through.
We also caught the heaviest hapuku in the Bay Bonanza contest this year.
Fishing from now into winter is likely to be good with plenty of terakihi with hapuku mixed in, kingfish will be around till at least June and snapper will start moving out and congregating on the rocks as the water cools. Bit of luck the weather will co-operate and let us get out there and catch them.
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Captain Bert Lee
Unregistered guest
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, January 30, 2003 - 3:19 pm: | |
Subject: Report January 2003
Once again terakihi and hapuku have been the main catch for a feed with the odd snapper to add colour to the fish bin. We have done a few kingie trips with enough success to bring a big grin to the anglers faces although there are nowhere near as many kingies as there were a few years back.
We have been getting good bigger hapuku, bass and bluenose farther out with the odd stranger in the shape of gem fish and trumpeter to make it interesting. We got the first of the albacore early in the month, a couple of marlin have been seen and last weekend a yellowfin of over 50kg was caught off Gisborne so the game fish season has started.
I would hope to see more big yellowfin and some marlin caught in the next couple of months.
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Captain Bert Lee
Unregistered guest
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, January 10, 2003 - 2:23 pm: | |
Subject: December 2002
Fishing in December has been full on with the weather being kind and the fish co-operative. Mainstay of the closer in catch has been terakihi with enough hapuku to make things interesting, there have also been a few snapper to add colour to the fish bin.
Out farther we have been catching bigger hapuku with some big bluenose and trumpeter, there have also been a few gemfish which are an unusual catch here.
The water started looking very fishy early in the month with lots of bait fish with pods of dolphins and diving gannets feeding we trolled a couple of lures and caught a few albacore about the middle of the month however there have been no yellowfin caught here yet. There have been some yellowfin of over 60kg caught just around the cape in the Bay of Plenty so it won't be very long before they arrive here.
We have done a couple of kingie trips with good results, there have still been a few couta mixed in with the kingies but they should leave for the south shortly.
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