Did my second charter for the Northpower fishing competition over the weekend back up North near the Bay Of Islands where I am originally from. Started out at th Rimuriki Islands for an evening fish in Mike Burgins close spot after an unsuccessful try on Tom McCauleys reef off sugar loaf. Burleyed hard and soon had a few smaller snapper coming aboard as well as hundreds of Jack Mackeral, Trevally, and Blue Maomao in the burley. Didn’t land anything fantastic but definitely had the takes we were after. Moana had 2 good runs that were large snapper but they failed to hook up, and Charlie had 1 which had so much weight we though it would bust off but in the end the hook pulled, very unlucky as Charlie was starting to make some headway with the beast. Pretty sure they were snapper as the had the nod and just headed away in a straight line. Keith had a stingray earlier which we thought could have been a good snapper but should have know better as it circled the boat.
Ross had speared a godd kingi of around 30 pounds earlier in the day of the close point from Wangamumu, we also had had several small snapper and a lot of reasonable kingis - not rats, following the fish up off the reef just short of Taupiri.
On Saturday morning we headed North looking to get out of the easterly but found little fish on the reefs and ended up at Cape Brett where I got my first good lesson on the success of speed jigging. A boat with people on was working the area we decided to anchor in just in front of the Northern side of the hole in the rock, they had already had a few nice kingis with a 30 pounder tied onto the back. They dropped there jigs down medium size white blue and pink and cranked like hell. The hooked at least half a dozen good ones right next to us that we saw so we decided to give it a go. While the girls and Charlie continued to snapper fish Vern put one of Yohans warehouse jigs on - white and pink - and cranked it to the top on a bait runner with 20 pound line. After 5 minutes he had had enough so I took over. After about 5 minutes whilst cranking to the surface the line went tight and I felt a nod. Thinking it might have been either a kingi or the anchor rope I called to the others just as the brute decided to head for the bottom, the rod gave and almighty heave down with the tip dropping several feet into the water in a split second and the line broke - stupidly had the drag up too tight. The line came back frayed as the beast had done me on the foul bottom.
A short while after this Mary hooked a good snapper which after a long fight to the surface came over the side and weiged just under 7kg gilled and gutted so probably around 17 or 18 pounds. This fish won her first in the ladys section at the Northpower comp and I think it was 3rd overall.
Have got my jigs ready for next time.
Have just heard that the New Zealand Fly Fishing Team have beaten Australia in Australia at the oceania champs with my good mate Nick Dobyn coming first overall! You can see Nick in some of the photos on my site as we often give each other a hand guiding.