Darren Judd June 2009
 

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!

Fishing Data
Time of recordings
Barometer (hPa)
Tongariro River
Flow (Cumecs)
Water Temperature(Degrees Celcius)
Tauranga-Taupo River
Height (meters above reference)
Water Temperature(Degrees Celcius)