News
Easter is to me, synonymous with the beginning of the huge concentrated Autumn workups. Sure Easter was early this year, but the workups have not started as per usual and it is now April 11th. I believe this is due to the warmer weather and therefore the sea temps being around 20-22 degrees Celsius. The good news is that there is bait for Africa out there at the moment, and ...
Cooler weather means bigger snapper!
The cooler weather has arrived and the water temperature has dropped from 26 degrees Celsius to 22 degrees and lower. This means the workups become more intense and concentrated and the snapper become hungrier as they bulk themselves up for Winter! It also means the snapper get bigger!
The wind has been a problem this year with the El Niño weather patterns. It has made it quite difficult to get ...
The last 2 weeks in the Hauraki Gulf
The fishing has been quite difficult over the last month or so due to both the El Nino weather (lots of high winds) and high 25 degree water temperatures (spawning fish). When we have been able to get out the fishing has been “average” to “great” from day to day (it is getting more consistent now).
I have never seen so much bait and predators like KY and Kingfish and this ...
As you may know I sometimes work as a skipper for FishnDips Charters. Last Saturday we drove all around the gulf looking for bigger snapper and tried many likely areas that have worked well in the past at this time of year. We tried west and east of Anchourite, the 50mtr contours, south of the Pidgeons (Gt Barrier), Channel Is. And Square Top Is. (Colville), and all down the Coromandel ...
Fishing during the spawning period.
As you will know the snapper fishing has been hard over the past month for lure fishing due to the fish being in spawning mode. It is very frustrating when you find the workups and can see the snapper underneath them, yet the bite is very tentative to nonexistent. Even when you do catch fish they seem to be the smaller models around 30-40cm max. The bite times are there ...
The weather definitely affects the fishing and I am finding the good sized fish in a lot closer now as the water temp goes up. During the spring there was a lot of wind due to the 2015 El Nino and this meant our drifts were faster. To assist in these conditions we were using 2 drogues and 130-200gr jigs. We found that the bigger jigs were getting down faster ...