Had a great mornings fishing this morning hooking 14 nice trout averaging three pounds. With all of the fish being in good condition with the exception of two recoveries my landing ratio was good for me at 9 from 14. Spent the evening at Riverstone Backpackers with my fishing mate Rob Henderson tying flies ready for my guiding jobs in October and November and ready for the big back-country opening tomorrow – which looks like it will be flooded!!

Fished the Tongarrio this afternoon with my mate Rob – who runs the best pack-packers in town – for an hour or two late in the afternoon after rain delayed the start. We very quickly hooked three nice Rainbow Trout landing two of about 3 pounds. The size is still not up to normal but the condition of the fish was probably better than last year. Fished around town in the braided water in front of Tongariro Lodge.

Fished a local Taupo river today with a couple of mates. Have been up north getting the boat ready for Salt Fly over summer recently so it was great to get back into some clean water.

Conditions wern”t 100% ideal but we still manged to hook 22 trout averaging around 3 lbs so the day was pretty good in the end.

Have a fair bit of guiding scheduled over the summer and it is great to be only 4 days away from back-country opening – an eagerly antercipated date!

Should have taken some photos but was too keen to get back into the water today and catch another after not fishing for a few weeks.

Met Simon and his group of 5 from Wellington this morning staying at the Copthorne Hotel in Waitangi near Paihia. At around 9am we headed out and tried to catch a few live baits which unfortunately was a little slow so we only ended with four mackeral in the live bait tank. The kingfish however as with all recent trips were fortunately on fire! I helped put the first livebait down for one of the group then moved to a jig rod and in the first 10 meters of water quickly showed Simon the art of Mechanical Jigging. Simon got the hang of it quickly and dropped to the bottom. On his first retrieve to the surface he hooked and landed his first ever Yellowtail Kingfish – a rat of around 5 pounds – however on his next drop he hooked and landed this Kingie of 25 pounds. I moved over to help show the techique of using the gimbal and harness on the live bait rod and as I taught the movement the rod loaded up and the fight was on – for around 30 seconds until the monster Kingfish took the 80 pound gear to the bottom and broke us off. What ensued for the next few hours was nearly chaos with 3 rods hooked up simultaneously at one stage. We lost a couple to sharks – unfortunately one of these was Karens and was the biggest – the 3rd hooked on our 4 livebait!

The group were stoked – they had never caught Kingfish before and had hoped to maybe just get a legal sized fish or 2!

By 3pm the group was exhausted from fighting fish and we dropped them back off at the jetty and in front of the Copthorne Hotel and joined them for a celebratery drink!

Been fishing the Bay Of Islands again for the past week and experienced some of the hottest kingfishing I have ever had. Well to correct that statement my friends and family and anyone I know who wanted to go fishing have experienced some hot fishing with me as I have been using everyone and everyone as guinea-pigs to iron out the kinks and smooth the systems on my new boat ready for chartering from October (actually doing the odd charter now working in with Justin Smith of Oakura Bay Fish Dive & Cruise). On four days out of four this week the boat has hooked over 20 kingfish per day i.e. probably over 100 for the week and this is mainly introducing beginners to the new technique of Mechanical Jigging as well as experimenting with various live bait techniques and rigs. We could have easily been doing 50 – 100 fish days if anyones arms and bodies could handle the beating the 20 – 40 pound kingfish have been giving them. Three experienced marlin fishermen but relative kingfish novices rated the fight has harder and more physical than fighting a marlin due to the type of gear and manner in which these are played i.e. harnesses and gimbles don’t work well with the jigging rods we are using so far and the fish fight deep and dirty.

I have discovered that a badly hooked livebait will pull the big kings up from 80 meters deep without being hit – generally get 3 or 4 or more following a badly hooked livebait to the surface. This should be a great technique for teasing kingies up to take a fly when they arn’t around on the surface. Will experiment with this over the next few weeks.

Have been mucking around all summer with various different knots, and leader systems for the Kingfish and have between us probably lost thousands of dollars worth of jigs but we are finally getting a system that lets us put a lot of weight on the fish with less and less breakoffs.

As a bi-product of this weeks fishing we have been pulling a few nice snapper foul hooked in the head and one nice one in the mouth that have been hitting or 370 and 470 gram knife jigs. On one of the days this week my mate Muz who was exhausted from the kingfish took a break and dropped baited ledger rigs down which wouldn’t reach the bottom before being hooked up on snapper.

My mates are all chomping at the bit to get back out but with a gale warning in force I have taken the boat out of the water for 2 or 3 days to make some modifications to enhance if fishability.

If anyone reading this wants to book a charter then just contact me to book on 021 481 737 or 09 433 2676 or email enquiries@newzealandfishing.com. We are not starting the advertising until September but we are open for business. Not sure how long these kingies will hold in their current position. As the water temperature drops they should move off out deeper. We now have pretty much have a no kill policy on kingfish – or rather a one fish per charter policy over 1 meter in length. Our game is sportfishing and not meat hunting with regards to kingfish unfortunately for those who are wanting to fill the freezer. We would like to preserve the fishery and don’t wan’t to become part of its demise.

We are happy however to allow customers to take their limit of snapper though only one over 10 pounds per customer if you are lucky enough to catch such a creature. We do recommend catch and release as much as possible though.

A little late getting started again this morning, but we still managed to hit the river – this time the Tongariro – shortly after 8am. Reports from all other fishermen were that the Tongariro was still fishing a bit slow with a lot of people spending the whole day out without even a touch – even spoke to a few people who had been fishing a whole week without anything. Needless to say we wern’t expecting a lot, however the fishing wasn’t actually as hard as everyone was saying. We fished handy to where we parked and basically just fished one little lye that we could see some some trout in and Phil managed to get bust off by a good trout pretty early. By around midday Phil had managed to land 1 of 5 hooked which wasn’t a bad effort. I would guess that Phil would have hooked a similar amount the afternoon if he had continued fishing but our plan was to head to a trophy lake near Rotorua for a try before Phil headed back to Auckland for his flight out tomorrow. The trophy lake unfortunately didn’t produce – it was freezing cold and a little windy so I guess the trout just wern’t feeding agressively or wern’t in our part of the lake. In all the Tongariro certainly wasn’t fishing as fast and furious as it will in the coming months but it was still pretty good by all accounts. There also seems to be a general consensous that fish size and condition is gettting better and hopefully but the end of this season or at least next season at the latest things should be back to normal for Taupo.

Guided Phillip Norman from Brisbane in the back country again today. We briefly fished the Tongariro in the morning but struggled in the windy conditions so moved out of the Taupo area for the afternoon. Phil had a great afternoon landing 4 out of 11 trout hooked in the 3 to 5 pound range which inluded one Brown trout and the rest presumably Rainbows.

Conditions in Turangi were a little rough weather wise this morning so rather than battling to cast heavy flies in strong winds I took Phil out to a back-country spot that he has fished with me before in the past.

The fishing wasn’t fast and furious but was still OK with Phil landing 7 out of 11 Rainbow Trout hooked in the 3 to 5 pound range.

Flies of the day were Hare & Copper and Flasback Pheasant tail.

Guided regular client Phil Norman from Australia today and attempted to find Phil his first trophy. Conditions were good for most of the day so we took advantage and fished a local Trophy lake. We didn’t crack the magic 10 pound mark but Phil stil managed to hook 5 nice trout of which the biggest landed was 5 and a half pounds. Two got away and one was a very solid fish – so who knows!

Went for a brief fish with past clients and friends Glen And Theresa Good on Saturday morning. By the time I dragged myself out of bed and caught up with them on the river they had already landed 4 Rainbows. Glen added another to that talley and myself a further 1 before the wind got up and we moved to find a less windy position. We found a less windy position but the fishing wasn’t all that hot which was expected given the conditions and time of year. Later in the afternoon I had a brief flick out in a back-country spot and landed 2 nice browns in the 3 – 4 pound range and lost a good Rainbow around 4 pounds also.

Have basically been focused getting the new boat ready rather than fishing the past couple of weeks but am pleased to say that hopefully the boat will be on the water and ready for chartering within the next couple of weeks – so I can get back to fishing and earning some money rather than spending it! The goal is to have this boat offering sportfishing options out of the Bay Of Islands (including salt-fly) during the summer and to have another smaller center console boat ready also for October 1 to give an extra option based out of Turangi/Taupo when conditions don’t suit fishing rivers or lakes from the shore. The boat in progress at the moment has been modified to be virtually snag-free and completely walk-around to suit fly fishing but is also incredibly sea-worthy and is offshore rated to get to get fishermen safely and comfortably out to the good fishing. We hope to be offering fly fishing tours in the near future that involve pick-up and drop off from Auckland airport and then an on tour fishing trip fishing and sight seeing around the Central North Island for trout and then sea fishing as well in the Bay Of Islands as well as a couple of other North Island locations. We are also considering at some stage adding hunting if required into these packages.