August 2009
Bay of Islands Fishing Report
We've been out of the water for most of the month carrying out our yearly maintenance. We were delayed a week because of wet weather doesn't go well with painting but it's all done now.
Improvements have given us an extra 1.5 knots in speed, a fully automated winch and a new paint job over much of the boat.
We're really looking forward to the upcoming season.
22nd August - Finally, we are back. We headed out today with Sue and Ray to check out the fishing. There was a bit of a swell to start with but we were out of the worst of it for most of the day. The sun was shining and the wind was 10-15 knots from SE (and E at times.) We checked out our first spot and found pretty good fish life below so we dropped anchor and then our lines. The first fish was a really nice snapper around a kilo in weight. Sue (the successful angler) had about 15 minutes of gloating before we pulled in a 3 kilo snapper, quickly followed by another (around 3.5-4.0 kilos). We ended up using the net three times today so we were really happy with the results. Ray's Trevally was a good size also and put up a good scrap. By the end of the day we bought back around a dozen fish, having kept the best and returned the rest (including a good number of keepers).
Hopefully Sue will remember to send some photos to post here soon.
Our Next Trip is 1st September
- Weather closing in for a few days but we're keen
to get out there again and hoping it will pass quickly.
28th August - The weather was very pleasant today. Virtually no wind to speak of to start with and lots of sun. The fishing was disappointing to start with and it never really improved all day. Reports from other boats showed that it was the same all over the bay. If it wasn't for a Kingfish appearing and giving one of the girls a good fight it would have just an average winters days fishing. The Snapper never got above around 32cm but the five Snapper and one Kingfish should have given our group today a couple of meals.
Unfortunately our brand new winch spat the dummy in the last 15 minutes of the trip and we had to pull the anchor up using the old winch. It was a bit of a blow, as we have only used the winch 4.5 times but I was getting used to the speed and ease that it dealt with this task. So far, it looks good with the manufacturers trying hard to get replacement parts to me as quick as possible. I'll give them a free plug if they come through with the goodies early next week.