March 2010 - Part 1
Bay of Islands Fishing Report
1st March - We'd noticed over the past two trips that the bay was filling up with very blue water and the Snapper don't like those conditions at all, so today we stayed in the murkier water close to shore. Despite the forecast for fine weather, we found ourselves in almost constant rain throughout the morning. The upside was that the harder the rain, the better the fishing got. Most of us were pretty wet by the time we spotted blue sky, so we were pretty happy when the sun came out. Unfortunately, the sunnier it got the poorer the fishing became. That's the downside of fishing in 10 metres of water. The catch consisted of three kahawai, one Snapper around 2-3lbs and a large number of Snapper around 30-33cms, so although not spectacular fish, everyone had all the fish they needed.
5th March - I was a bit concerned that Paihia might be a bit crowded. We were being visited by the Queen Mary 2 today. It held 4,000 passengers and the local spin doctors were saying that 20,000 people were going to come to town to view the boat. I was sure that they had their heads in the sand as usual but even if 2,000 came to town then we were going to have parking problems. There were no crowds of people and no parking problems when I headed down to the boat but what happened when we got to the wharf really pissed me off. As we pulled in, an officious little prick (OLP) from the cruise ship told us that we couldn't use the wharf as they had sole use of it for the whole day. We told them to get stuffed as we'd been using it for the past 30yrs, had no other wharf to use and nobody had the good manners to warn us beforehand anyway. Terry stayed on the boat and I got off to get my clients, who were being prevented by another bunch of OLP's from coming down to us. I went up to the barriers and let my guys through (they were all there luckily.) In the meantime the OLP had run off for a security guard to get us off the wharf. Too late, we'd loaded everyone and gone.
Unfortunately the fishing was as disappointing as the cruise ship. We tried 5 or 6 spots and although there were fish all over the screen, they wouldn't bite. We had 8 clients and by the end of a very long trip we had 4 Snapper and 1 Kahawai.
6th March - We had a large Sole Charter group today and we were very nervous after yesterdays fishing. The forecast was for fine weather but 20knt winds gusting up to 30knts. Plus the wind was going to oppose the tide. Nothing was looking good for this trip but we still had to try.
We headed out to the first spot and luckily the fish were biting today but although they were legal they were pretty small by our usual standards. The highlight at this spot has to be the 4-5ft Hammerhead Shark that one of the girls caught, unfortunately we were in the middle of an intense (totally unforecast) squall. It was a great battle with line peeling off the reel, we managed a complete rotation of the boat and were both totally drenched by the time we got it alongside the boat. Unfortunately one of the guys was trying to gaff it, missed and broke the line. Great fun though.
The squall was still continuing so we took this opportunity to relocate. We headed for Kahawai Alley. Turned out to be a great decision. The rain had stopped, there was no wind at all, the water was dead calm and within minutes of dropping anchor we had two good sized Snapper (1-2lbs) on board. The fishing continued to improve and to top it off, the Kahawai got bigger and bigger. A lot of fish were caught today and we had to head home 3/4hr early just to process them for everyone.
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For all those 20,000 people coming to Paihia to see the QM2(yeah right) I know it looked disappointing from the shore so here are the pictures up close.
For those people who paid $15 to go on a Fullers boat for one lap around the boat (with a commentary) I could have taken you for a lap and a fishing trip for an extra $65. Trust me though, the boat wasn't that exciting.
7th March - Today's forecast was the same as yesterdays so we were on the look out for rain (because they were forecasting a fine day.) The strong winds that they were forecasting didn't happen. Although the sky got pretty dark for a while, it didn't rain either, so they fluked a partially correct forecast.
Our first spot was so quiet it was dead, plus we were getting a pretty big swell side-on, so we gave up after half an hour and moved to calmer water. A half hour at this second spot produced very little so we headed for Kahawai Alley even though the tide wasn't quite right yet. It started out with tiny snapper and nothing else for a while then slowly things started to come right. The occasional Snapper got bigger and the Kahawai got bigger and more plentiful. Everyone got something worth bragging about on this trip so I felt that it was a success.
My highlight today was "Rocky O" who has never caught a fish before. He photographed his first fish ever, a very small Kahawai, which was about 15cms long. His next fish was a tiny 20cm Snapper (also photographed). His last fish was a gigantic 8lb Kahawai and possibly the biggest fish caught today. Well done Rocky! I hope you enjoyed the day.
9th March - It was a comfortable sized group today. I'm trying to keep numbers down to around 10 people (max) as there is so much Kahawai around (and they have a habit of screaming around all over the place.)
We decided to go out as far as we could, depending on the swell, and see if anything has changed out there. The answer was no. The water is very clear and blue and, apart from one nice 1-2lb Snapper, not a hell of a lot else was happening. Our shadow (the floating brick) turned up as we had a quick look around Centre Foul but we managed to leave him attached to Spot-X who was already there. We headed out further and within an hour we had the Floating Brick anchored off our stern (obviously CF wasn't doing very well either). The Brick headed home because his short trip was almost over, but we had 2hrs to go so we decided to head into Kahawai Alley and hopefully finish on a high.
We arrived and there were Kahawai splashing on the surface all over the place. They are chasing the tiny whitebait like fish that they love so much and showed very little interest in our bait for the first half hour. We lost the first 3 that we caught, which was highly unusual, but eventually started to land a few plus a few Snapper and a whole lot of Koheru. It turned out by the end of the trip, that we had enough fillets to suit everyone's needs.
Highlight of the day was when one of the Kahawai got caught up around the rudder or prop. We couldn't get it out so had to break the line. We didn't realise that the fish was still caught up below us. About 5 minutes later another Kahawai got caught up and we couldn't believe our bad luck. Then we noticed that the swivel was just above the water so I got down on the deck and pulled until it broke free - along with the Kahawai, plus the Kahawai and entire rig that we busted off 5 mins ago. Never had that before. Cool stuff.