This weekend was the start of something good I hope! Fickle fish have left us frustrated over the last 2 months
The fishing was outstanding with lots of legal Kingfish and snapper one day and bigger snapper at the same spot the next. On Saturday we made our way to Anchorite early in the morning and worked our big jigs for 7 kingfish. We found the best and legal ones drifting through the KY and Trevally schools. The best jig was a 300gr blue/silver catching the biggest fish, but the orange and black/silver worked great as well. We got there at 8am and had 7 kings by 9.30am…was a good workout for the boys.
We also caught a few of the KY on top water softbaits (4kg) as this is just about as much fun as catching the kingies. Standing on the front of the boat allows great access and reach to the schools swimming by eating krill. We also managed some rats on this gear.
The only issue that morning was a couple of big boats coming in and anchoring on the schools. Lucky we had our fish so we moved on in search for snapper (should be called Anchorwrong!).
I like to find the large areas of bait and rather than chase workups all day, I tend to look for these instead to find the snapper. I went to the area where it goes to 50 mtrs (huge area of squiggles and holes on the charts). Well sure enough there was the bait and we started catching fish.
I looked off towards Coromandel and could see a lot of birds up high indicating more bait, so headed about 3nm SE of this area. Well while there were no intense workups, the fishing over a large area was phenomenal, but it was hard to get down below the KY to get to the snapper. I use larger jigs like 130gr – 200gr in this scenario to get to the hungry waiting fish.
The next day I came back to the same area and there were no birds or KY but heaps of better sized snapper. As we fished one long drift some gannets turned up and started working around the boat. This brought on the biggest fish.
In fact the largest fish of the day was on a 130gr Candy Apple Jitterbug in the rod holder with flat seas/no wind and no drogue (very slow drift).
See you out there.
Cheers Capt. Snap (Nik)
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