November 2009 - Week 1
Bay of Islands Fishing Report
2nd November - The forecast was for light to medium SW winds, although not ideal at least it wasn't going to rain. Luckily two things happened: one the forecast was wrong and the winds were very light and from the West for most of the day; and the algae bloom was less than previous days. We started out being impressed with Snapper around the 35cm mark but this soon changed. The fish got better and better. Ray Brockley was pretty stoked when he pulled in his 8 lb Snapper but unfortunately for him Terry piped him with a 10 lb Snapper. Ray sort of got revenge when his wife Judi caught a ripper Snapper (amid much grunting) that clearly left Terry's for dead. Never one to ignore a challenge, Terry eventually pulled in one to rival Judi's. Only the weigh-in at the end of the trip was going to tell us who the winner was. Meanwhile, it was going a bit quietly for Bill and Jackie as they struggled with getting a feel for the way the fish were biting, but eventually things started to come together and Snapper around the 4lb mark became a regular thing. All in all it was a very successful day. Lots of Snapper for all our clients, plus some for Terry and myself. Lots of joking and kidding around made it a very easy relaxed day that was over before I knew it.
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It was a fun filled day with some fantastic fish to show for it.
7th November - We started the day with light Southerly winds but with the promise of them turning to the West sometime in the day. The locals have a saying "when the winds from the South, the fish close their mouth" so we were hoping that the wind change would happen sooner rather than later. The local superstition was looking pretty accurate for a while. Our first spot was devoid of fish and we carried on wondering why so many charter boats were fishing there. There was certainly nothing happening on board any of them and our fish finder was empty. We carried on for another ten minutes and dropped anchor at a likely spot. Over the next half hour we caught three Snapper that were okay but none had the distinctive colours of School Fish so we tried another spot on the other side of the bay. The reasoning was that, if we couldn't find the big schoolies then we could at least have a go at catching Golden Snapper. We started out quietly but the fish steadily improved with some nice Snapper (Golden and Red.) We had a sweepstake going for the biggest Snapper so, for a while, we were measuring every fish coming on board. The biggest fish was 32cm, then 45cm then 2 kgs. Kris hit the lead with the 2kg Snapper but she told us that she wanted something bigger. Among accusations that she was greedy she then went on to catch a bigger Snapper but (still) this wasn't big enough. Her last big fish blew all opposition right out the window. Her fishing was over and the gloating began. Damn nice fish, I would have gloated too.
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Kris was determined to get the biggest fish today. Every fish she caught was derided as being too small. We accused her of being ungrateful and greedy but she was determined. There is obviously no justice in this world because she caught this magnificent 8.5kg specimen. We talked her into photographing and releasing it. Then we were going to lose the photo (what fish?) but the hook was caught deep in the gills so we had to keep it. So we kept the photo and movie. Well done Kris.