Fresh Bay of Plenty Fishing Reports

Wow! Is about all we can say about the fishing right now! Snapper fishing has been exceptional with the fish seeming to be pretty much everywhere at the moment. This day we got a burley trail going and straylined big messy baits down current and caught some lovely snapper to over 10 pounds.

The last couple of weeks have produced some outstanding fishing! Particularly snapper fishing has been red hot of late with big fat snapper hitting lures and smashing dead baits down a burley trail. Kingfish too have prevalent on some of the offshore rocks with some fish going over the magic 20kg mark.. Along with sighting killer whales on our journeys our trips have been full of surprises and this is expecting to carry on for some time yet!

Catching livebaits this day took a little longer than usual but that didnt matter as soon as they were deployed the kingfish were on to them! Losing a couple to sharks we eventually boated some beautiful specimens but not only were kingfish on the chew but some montrose snapper too were nailing the livies making for a memorable day!

The day started with a productive morning catching livebaits with mackeral mostly and also some small trevally in the mix so then we proceeding to bridle one of each and send them back into the drink where we caught the livies hoping that there were some big kingfish hanging around the bait schools. It didn't take long before the mackeral on the starboard corner got nailed and line starting screaming off the reel! Being in shallow water with the kingfish trying its best to break us off on the rugged terrain below I had to maneuver the boat to keep a vertical line between the rod tip and the fish below but slowly but surely the girl on the rod did a great job of pumping and winding and eventually getting the huge kingfish to the side of the boat and with an almighty heave we pulled the estimated 25kg kingfish into the boat! With a quick photo we put it back to fight another day then went on to catch several more nice fish keeping a 12 kg one for a week's worth of fish dinners. With the boat ramp only 15 mins away we went back to Port with sore arms and smiles on our dials!!

An interesting week. We tried around Motiti midweek and did well, with mainly tarakihi. Friday night/Saturday we overnighted at Mayor, had steady fishing and a good variety of species, including snapper, tarakihi, maomao, and trevally. It was a windy trip home, but pretty much on the nose, so comfortable enough. Sunday, a good forecast so we headed back to Motiti only for the weather to change completely for the worse, forcing us to the Eastern side where it was calm, but not much fish, a few snapper and a couple of tarakihi. Things eased a bit so we worked the middle ground which was pretty much a non event, a couple of big blue cod and snapper. An excellent crew enjoyed the day regardless, but a tough one. Monday we headed out to Mayor, the predicted rain didn’t show as Coromandel stopped most of it. We did get some on the way home, but the fishing was good despite a lot of current so a big improvement on the Sunday.