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.