A windy day greeted the mixed group from Auckland for todays Mechanical Jigging charter. We started with some Mechanical Jigging training in behind Cape Brett out of the wind but never got onto the fish – the strong winds made it too difficult to get out to the wider pinacles. After a short while I made the descision to go to plan B and anchored up out of the wind where we put down some live baits, and deads baits, and soft baits. The live baits one with one plucked from the hook after a brief loading of the rod and Rosemary skipper landing the fish of the day – this nice 25 pound kingy. James Armitage and his mate proved to me a short time later that Jerk Shads do work – though I am still a 6 inch grub fan in terms of soft baiting in the Bay Of Islands.

In the end I feel it was a pretty good trip given the 20 knot winds which were expected to gust 35knots from the nor west

Picked up two gentlemen from Holland this morning that I can pronounce the names of corretly let alone spell so I won’t try! The guys seemed to really enjoy cathing the mackeral live bait and it wasn’t long before we had landed a couple of small kingies (rats). That was it for the day for the kingies unfortunately but the guys but we did hook into a Bronze Whaler shaker for about 5 minutes but the conclusion was pre-determined without a stell trace. Later on the guys caught a few nice snapper including a fantastic 11 pounder to make a reaonable trip for two guys that had never been salt water fishing before.

Southerly 15

Picked up Anthony from Paihia Wharf for a go at the kingfish. It was slow fishing but Anthony did manage to catch is first Bay Of Islands Kingfish – a nice 15kg specimen – mechanical jigging.

Anthony currently runs a tackle store in Australia and is about to start his own fishing charter so we went snapper fishing together in the afternoon. It was interesting to see that he fished exactly the same as myself without instruction – not surprising as I think us kiwis have followed the Ausie techniques for soft bait fishing. Anthony also had an additional interesting technique for moving the bait that is evidently deadly on flat-head. I will be experimenting with this and the worm baits he regularly uses at home. We caught a few nice fish inlcuding a fantastic 20 pound snapper!

Met Allan this morning and headed out for a kingfish session. Caught some Mackeral first thing and then moved out to test some pins for Kingies. Allan quickly picked up Mechanical jigging but unfortuntaly the Kingies wern’t around the morning so we headed to a comfortable spot to try some live baiting. 3 livies were plucked from the hook with no hookups so we headed back to the hole in the rock for some more jigging and whilst fishing with Allan I hooked up and Allan landed his first Kingfish in front the hole in the rock. Seeing this must have inspired Allan because shortly after while I was steering the boat into the wind he hooked up just meters of the rocks and the battle was on. The battle lasted a while but Allan did managed to land a nice 15kg fish shortly followed by a smaller rat King of around 6 or 7 kilos

Guided Dave Betz and Rick Davis today back-country out of Spot X Lodge and had a pretty good first day. After a fairly latish start we hit the river around 9am and Rick was quickly on the board landing a nice 4 poundish Rainbow Trout. The trout weren’t easy but the boys still managed to hook 13 good trout averaging around 4 pounds though the landing ratio of just 3 from 13 leaves us room for some improvements in days to come. Heli fishing for the next 4 days so no reports until then.

Bryce Curle guided the other two of the four person group and managed a similar hookup rate but a higher landing ratio I am told. Bryce was guiding Larry Gordon and Bart Davies on his first fly fishing mission to New Zealand.