My Account
Local fishers have been hampered by the conditions lately, partly due to warmer than normal sea temperatures as I mentioned last month, and we are all hoping for a calm Easter.
Salt water fish species generally don’t like the lower salinity after heavy rain but they do like the feeding opportunities that a storm brings and keeping this in mind here are a couple of tactics to get you onto the fish this Easter.
Run Forest run! As I mentioned earlier the lower salinity can affect the fishing, so to combat that I head for current when fishing inshore. Find a spot with really good tide flow pouring over it and set up to sit it out for a tide run.
Often the fish become a little scattered and unsettled during a blow and you want to spend extra time at your chosen spot to get into the better fish. If it’s not too “sharky” where you are fishing, then add burley to the mix too.
Inshore at the moment New Zealand pilchards are working great as are fresh caught jack mackerel. If you can’t catch any then there are plenty of good frozen substitutes. Rakino Channel, Motuhie, around Waiheke and Tiri all offer pretty good inshore fishing in the upcoming conditions and the time of the season. There are a few kingfish still lurking around and Hooks Bay, Gannet Rock, Shearers Rock and places where the current is running over the foul are well worth soaking a live bait at.
Go deep, Go BIG! The other productive options are heading out deeper in the Gulf and hunting down the work ups and fishing the deeper reefs and other areas where the snapper and kingfish will be hunting. The work ups were about 6-8 miles north of Waiheke and in a line to the top of Coromandel. They move around of course and you may not spot or bump into a work up but keep your eyes peeled for the gannets and sootys. This where a reasonable set of binoculars comes into play. We often stop the boat and have a good look around before moving on again. If you don’t spot the gannets, or there isn’t any mammal activity, then the long drift is a good option too. Prior to this blow, we were fishing in about 50m on the drift using Sliders, Jitterbugs and ledger rigs with cubes of pilchard or strips of squid on the hooks.
We would just head out to about that depth and stop where there were birds or areas of skipjack feeding and start a drift. Normally one long drift was enough to fill the bins and it didn’t seem to matter if we drifted away from the skipjack and birds. In fact, our best fish came from the least amount of activity.
If the surf’s up along the coast and after the heavy rain, keep your eyes open for logs and other debris when you are out.
