The Snapper in the Bay Of Islands still continue to fire with 2 great trips today. Danielle and partner Joe were lucky enough to be on both trips and though Danielle gave the more experienced Joe a “whipping” in terms of fished hook, Joe still appeared to have a great time and still caught plenty of nice snapper on Soft bait. The best fish of the day was around 25 pounds – released of course – and caught by Danielle.

ShareThis

Finally river levels had receded enough to do some proper back country fishing. We hit a river around lunch time and Jeremy had a fantastic day hooking 16 good sized trout – a mixture of browns and Rainbows averaging 3 and half pounds. There were even a few small ones that I didn’t count.

Managed to have a brief flick myself for 5 minutes while Jeremy rested and one time and hooked two in a spot I have never normally even bothered with.

The fishing had to be described as pretty darn hot – 16 not counting mine or small ones hooked for an afternoons fishing!

Am back guiding a few past regulars now and am really looked to the next trip with Philip Norman on Feb 17 where we a heli fishing and camping out for 3 nights and 4 days of hopefully fantastic sight fishing!

ShareThis

We started on the Tongariro this morning which had a feeling of being rather slow so after lunch we moved to the back-country where high water levels still made for difficult fishing but despite this, Jeremy still managed to hook 4 or 5 reasonable sized trout and a few small ones.

Strangely Jeremy rated a river fish later in the afternoon as being the high point of the trip rather than the trophy he caught yesterday. The 3 and a half pound rainbow did drag him down river through two rapids though so I suppose this could be called a challenge!

ShareThis

Today was a memorable day for Jeremy Weitz – landing a wild 11 pound 6 ounce Rainbow trout. The scales on the net were validated with 2 x 2 liter bottles of water which weighed 3.9kg so it is possible the trout may have slightly more even. It was a maiden fish i.e. had not spawned according to its fins which had no clippings for the fish trap which monitors fish moving out of this lake to spawn each year. Incidentally there were no trophy (10 pound) trout measure going through the trap last season which just goes to show what an exceptional fish this was.

Jeremy was impressed with my guiding skills at putting exactly the correct amount of backing on which when he ran out of backing and had to walk with the fish to the end of the bank was the perfect amount to be able to hold but not loose the fish which came to the shore after about 10 pounds on 5 pound 4x fluoro and a size 16 nymph. Jeremy has never before run out of backing on a fish and has never bother tying backing on but vows to from this day fourth.

Jeremy landed 4 for the morning before breakfast at Tongariro Lodge and then a nice 4 and a half pound brown trout out of the Tongariro in front of the Lodge just before a four course evening meal.

ShareThis

Picked up Jeremy Weitz from Auckland Airport yesterday to do my first trout fishing guiding job for a little while – been busy setting up a charter fishing Business in the Bay Of Islands. Jeremy is a past customer I had such great fun guiding him last trip I thought he would be a great customer to ease back in after a few months off.

The weather wasn’t looking good for the trip with the remnants of a tropical cyclone causing flooding in all rivers but Jeremys positive attitude and impending jet lag had me picking him up at 5:30 to do a little lake fishing. Jeremy landed 3 nice trout before returning to Tongariro Lodge for a great breakfast a sleep for a few hours before a quick but unsuccessful afternoon fish.

ShareThis

The orders for this trip were a little different. Pick up some Australians from staying on a hired 44 foot sailing cat from one of the Islands in the Morning and teach them how to fish for snapper and kingfish in the Bay. Step one was to catch live bait which was easy at about 500 meters from their sailing cat. The kinfish wern’t around any of my normal popper fishing spots so we headed out to Cape Brett were conditions were a little sloppy but it wasn’t long before we had a a couple of nice Kinfish on board and quickly left the sloppy conditions for calmer water inside the bay for a quick and successful snapper soft baiting lesson before heading back to the catermaran to clean the snapper for dinner.

ShareThis

The fishing wasn’t fast but was steady with everyone landing at least one nice fish and several kingfish getting off. The biggest one was lost early on but we did manage to get into a steady stream of good bites later on with several fish released and just one kept to feed everyone. The current was incredible – requiring 32 ounces plus of lead to get the live mackeral down where normally 10 ounces is plenty!

ShareThis

And the run of Snapper continues. With more big Snapper on Soft-baits most trips!

ShareThis

Another successful snapper fishing trip out of Paihia in the Bay Of Islands. This was the 12:30 lunchtime trip which has pretty pretty consistently good lately.

ShareThis

The snapper fishing is still going strong with the lunchtime charters working the best at the moment though as the tide changes the evenings should get better in the next few days.

The Eggers group again slayed some nice Snapper today – with all the bigger ones and plenty of nice sized ones released to breed and make for good fishing in the future. Just a feed of half a dozen nice sized pannies was kept to eat. I here through the grapevine that the group split into two groups, the boys with us and the girls on another good Bay Of Islands boat and had a fishing competition. Evidently the boys one – does this mean that the girls had to cook the boys fish?

ShareThis