May 2010 - Part 1
Bay of Islands Fishing Report
2nd May - We cancelled yesterdays trip. They were promising 25 knot SW winds and that, coupled with the swell, was going to make fishing tricky. The Snapper hate strong winds from the south and I felt that I'd rather cancel than just take people's money and claim that the reason for the poor result was because "that's fishing".
Today the wind was almost non-existent plus the swell had disappeared. We had a Sole Charter made up of a lot of return customers so we were determined to better their last trip (and I think we managed to do it.)
Our first stop was in an area that can produce good Snapper, the odd Kingfish and in the right time of year Trevally and Terakihi. At first we were getting nothing but small Snappers. The pilchard baits were being stripped instantly, so we started to vary the baits and then it started to happen. We caught a couple of Snapper around 30-32cms and then a few around 2lbs and then lots of Snapper around 2-3lbs. Best Snapper of the day weighed in at 5.5lbs and we managed to average 5 keepers per person.
It was interesting to note the competition starting to appear from all directions around 11:30am. Obviously it hadn't been happening where they had been so they were having to search around and had eventually arrived where we'd been all trip. They'd missed the best bite time in our area and were obviously still not having a good time as, although they almost religiously depart for the wharf at 12:30pm every day, they were all there until 1pm and one of them didn't head back until 1:15pm. Pretty strong indicators that they had not had a good day.
Oh well, we headed back with 42 Snapper, 5 Kahawai and 3 Trevally secure in the knowledge that Skipper Terry had pulled another rabbit out of the hat on what (for the others) had been a hard day.
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.jpg "Andrew and Paul with their best Snappers - closeup (640x480)")
Paul Borg (right), also known as "red" was having a pretty good day. He caught quite a few Snapper around the 2-3lb mark. He commented that his results were a definite improvement on his last trip out with us. Basically, today he went from the back of the class to the front.
However, last word went to Andrew Thorne who bought along a reinforcing rod disguised as a fishing rod. He thinned out quite a few small fish before he caught the best Snapper of the day. Here he is with his 5.5lb beastie. Nice fish !!
Red is posing with three of his Snapper trying to prove that quantity beats quality.
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I bought a new camera a week ago and am trying to see what it's movie capabilities are. It's a definite improvement on my last one. In this shot I'm trying to capture the atmosphere of the birds swarming all around us trying to catch the Inanga (adult Whitebait). The Kahawai were forcing them up to the surface and the birds were pigging out on these tiny fish.
3rd May - Today was a classic example of the weather being too nice. It was beautifully calm, when the sun came out it was soooo warm, there was no wind and it took forever for the tide to start running. Everything was laid back and tranquil, including the birds and the fish unfortunately. Marjorie caught a couple of good sized Snapper (see photos below) and found quite a few opportunities to remind her family about them during the rest of the trip. Unfortunately these sort of fish were very hard to come by. Although we had done very well here yesterday and Marjorie's fish proved that they were still here, unless the tide picked up or we got a sea breeze we couldn't see anything changing.
We briefly tried another spot on the other side of the channel but the results were the same, apart from a very nice John Dory that Philip had quietly targeted and got just as the anchor was being pulled up. Terry then took us to the other side of the same reef. He lined up the tree and the pink palace and we were right where we wanted to be. The results this time were immediate, the very first line in the water was pulling in a fish before most people had even picked up their rods. From then on, even though most of the fish were small, we were consistently pulling in something. When we did a count up at the end we had half of what was kept yesterday and the quality was slightly down as well. Still, we had enough for at least a couple of meals for everyone so I think we did okay.
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.jpg "Marjorie Jennens with two of her best Snappers (2)")
The Jennens family were pretty competitive and mum (Marjorie) never passed up an opportunity to remind everyone that they just weren't cutting the mustard.
Luckily for her son (Philip) he had been quietly targeting a John Dory. This was the result, it was the first time that I've seen a Dory take the live bait by the tail as they normally attack their prey face to face.
5th May -This was another very nice day, weather wise, and once again the fishing was very quiet. However, this time we managed to get a sea breeze that helped things a wee bit but inexplicably there was very little tide flow. Eventually, we had to give up waiting for something to happen and tried a further two spots. It was the last spot that produced the goodies but unfortunately even they were a bit disappointing. By the end of the day we had two fish per person and they weren't particularly big. It's starting to look like a trend with each day getting progressively worse.
6th May - We got off to a great start today with two no-shows. This particularly annoyed me because I had gone to a lot of effort to ensure that this trip happened as I didn't want to let them down. So my new entries for the Hall of Shame are Bruce and Glenda Hawdon and the beauty of it all was they missed the chance to get some pretty good fish.
As we headed out, it was obvious that a big swell was starting to develop. Getting past Tapeka was a bit of a mission but we were going to head in amongst the islands anyway. As we approached Roberton Island, we observed Spot-X dashing for cover from somewhere across the bay (they'd obviously not enjoyed being tossed around out there.) Our first spot was about 100m from Spot-X and we got one 3lb Snapper very early in the piece but that was all, so we moved. We checked out a couple of spots on the way but eventually stopped at our favorite spot from a couple of weeks ago. I'm every pleased to announce that this spot is performing again - a large John Dory, three Snapper in the 3-4lb range and a large number between 30-38cm, plus a couple of Trevally. With only four people to share it amongst, Terry and I found that there was some left for us too.
Looks like the good Snapper are coming back into the shallows. We were able to pretty fussy and we still caught enough for everyone including crew. When we opened up the stomach of Douglas Soper's 6.5lb John Dory we found a tiny Snapper. It's possible that Douglas caught the Snapper first and before he realised that he had a fish on his line, the Dory pounced on it, quickly going from hunter to dinner.
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.jpg "Today's catch - John Dory, Snapper and Trevally (640x411)")
.jpg "Douglas Soper with a 6lb John Dory (640x480)")