Bay of Islands Fishing Report 22Sep22
It feels odd to be writing this report while I’m supervising a planting crew near the Napier-Taupo road – it was -3 degrees this morning and we planted in the snow!! Fortunately, only a few days to go and then back to Russell. My fishing buddies tell me I haven’t been missing much weather wise so that’s some consolation I guess!
Before I left we had 2 good weather days that I just had to fish. On the first day we fished the 55-60m zone with little success and then spotted a few gannets doing there thing around the 45m zone. A quick trip over to this area and we were on the money, being hit on every drop with sliders doing the most damage but the lazy 7” softbait drifting way out the back accounting for a couple as well. I was “testing” the new Daiwa Blade Breaker slow jig lure and this accounted for some nice fish however my mate with the old slider was doing just as well. In less than an hour we called it as we had enough for a feed.
The following day I was joined by Craig Martin whose new outboard fitted to his boat Zeus, was getting its 20 hour service check. This time we went straight to the 45m mark and just waited for gannets to show up. A workup never eventuated but gannets were diving in ones and twos here and there and we just checked out these areas. Craig was using a kunekune lure and this proved effective, even catching a jack mackerel at 40m!
Again, we caught plenty of pannie sized snappers on jigs and softbaits but the real treat for us was encountering a pod of Orca. The first we knew they were close was when one launched out of the water with a shark in its mouth!! The pod stayed in this area for some time and perhaps they were consuming poor Mr. Shark. Our drift took us closer and closer and we watched and filmed the Orca’s until off they went. Although the fishing was good, this will live in my memory for a long time!
Stalking Facebook, I see that the charter operators are catching some good sized fish with Darren Knapping from Days Out posting a photo of a 12.8kg snapper a client caught just this morning! Now I’m fizzing to get back and get amongst it! Oh well, only 7 days to go!