Went out fishing with my friend Justin Smith and – his friend Tony – from down the road who runs a charter boat out of Oakura Bay Northland today. Had a great day – landed a 27 pound Yellowtail kingfish within 15 minutes of leaving the shore as well as a few Kahawai and then headed out to probably New Zealands hottest marlin spot at the moment – a further 10 minutes in the boat. By the time we got there the VHF was going nuts with hookups happening every few minutes out there and 9 fish allready landed for the morning. We put our lures out and within 10 minutes saw our first marlin tailing on the surface about 20 minutes from the boat on the port side – it looked huge and was probably a big blue. About 10 minutes later one of lures had a hit and sure enough a marlin appeared behind my Pacific Lumo lure – probably a stripie as was considerably smaller than the other one. I eased the drag and dropped the lure back to the fish – a technique someone had suggested I try – and the fish grabbed it and took off. By the time we had cleared the rest of the gear and put the harness on the fish had a few hundred meters of line out. I increased the drag to the strike position — and nothing – it came off! On bringing the line in we found the lure gone as the beak had abbrased and sliced through the 300 pound leader just below the lure – my favourite lure. Later on in the day we had another brief hookup from a fish that we never saw on the Zuker ZM5.5 purple and black. We went over a couple of bait balls and picked up a few skippies on the way. On Sunday, 26 marlin were weighed in at Tutukaka – the Majority of these taken at the Kumara Patch off the Poor Nights and out of Home Point where we were fishing today. I heard that a further 50 were dropped. Am expecting a couple of days of strong winds before it becomes fishable again. I intend to make the most of the Marlin over the next week or so before I return down South to the trout.

Hi All, Today I guided a delightful couple from Lincolnshire in the UK that spent the night staying at Spot X Lodge and were all geared up for battling big New Zealand fish when I pulled into the driveway on a very misty drizzly morning. Bob and Shaine had some experience with fly casting and assured me that if I put them in the right place they could deal to our fiesty trout and have a fantastic day. We arrived to the river in the pouring rain and trudged our way up the bank to a place that suited both of them and began casting in the obvious areas of where fish would lie and feed. I had high hopes as the this area has not seen much rain and it could bring the fish on the feed just nice which I was right and it was not long and Bob was hooked up to a steam train that was taking him onto his backing and had Bob re thinking his thoughts on trout and their capabilities, unfortunatley Bob locked the reel up and the fish escaped with a full set of flies connected to it’s lip. Both Bob and Shain had continious hook up’s through the morning and afternoon and showed some great skills in landing a few fiesty hard fighting Rainbows that were all in great condition and was obvious that they had fed well over the summer months. The poms managed to hook a total of ten good fish but only landed 4 as they were not used to the larger rivers and stronger fighting fish of New Zealand. Shain actually asked me to find her some smaller fish to play as she was finding hard to hold onto the steam trains that grabbed her natural nymphs, it’s an odd request it’s usually the other way around. It was a pleasure to fish with you both and I hope to share simallar experiences with you both in the future have a great holiday.

Tight lines, Andrew Christmas

Guided Don Shiver and friends over the past 2 days. The first day was a little slow possibly due a falling barometer but still not too bad. Don still managed to land a couple of smaller ones and one nice 5 pounder. Terry lost 3 good ones and missed one on dry fly. The second day was a cracker with around 20 + fish coming up to the dry – several of these were landed. Not sure how Bill Grace got on for the two days as he guided the other part of the group in the boat.

Tight lines
Bryce Curle

Was meant to go out fishing with my brother in law to be Mike Burgin yesterday but it seemed to me to be too windy – evidently I am a soft **** and my sister has bigger ****s than me so he was going to take her out instead – though I hear this morning that they in fact didn’t go – coz it was too windy!

Am still weighting for the “plastic surgery” on my boat to be finished, should be here within two weeks according to the boat builder – am chomping at the bit – she is a 29ft 3 hundred horse pure fishing machine destined to take over the world, one fish at a time! The marlin were going off out off Whangarei earlier this week – hopefully I can get out with some friends this week. Back down in Turangi guiding in a week or two – off to my cousin Sarah Blake’s wedding shortly – she will be Sarah Slagter when she marries a good local fulla Jeroen today.

I have just got some photos from my fishing weekend with my mate Kevin Singh from a couple of weeks ago so I have put these up today. We landed 10 good kingies at the Aldermans on the first day and several more at Mayor Island the second day – and won the Tauranga Charter boat competition. The two biggest were around 45 pounds when weighed in at the end of the day – as much as I am a catch and release person we had to keep 3 to weigh in on the second day – so were probably nearer 50 pounds at the start of the day when they were caught. We were fishing in the tournament with Aaron from Primo Charters in Tauranga – a fantastic skipper with a huge amount of knowledge and experience – ex Oracle skipper.

The weather looked a little dodgy in the morning but the rain radar indicated that things should be OK so I took John to a nice litttle spot for some dry fly fishing. John started with a nice Rainbow on nymph and then another that came in foul hooked. A fish then rose at the front of the pool so John flipped up a dry fly and the trout grabbed it – shortly after, John had managed to land his first ever trout on dry fly! This was just the beginning, by the end of the day John had landed 8 out of 13 good Rainbows (3 pounds plus) – all on dry fly apart from the first two! Some were hooked fishing blind and others sight fished. In all a very hard day to beat!