What a weekend.
Saturday 2nd July
On Saturday I took a crew out and we searched everywhere to find the fish. We left from Auckland and headed to the 50Mtr squiggles north of Anchorite over towards Channel Island and then to Square Top and caught 2 snapper, red snapper, gurnard, and a Kahawai. It looks fishy and the birds are chasing bait but the KY are tentative and the snapper are frigid. It is days like this that you need to find the bait and then wait until the snapper come on the bite.
At 3 pm we found some bait and birds working. Then in the distance I saw heaps of flickers close to the horizon. I took my binoculars out and yep looks like a huge area of bait being worked by birds (this is just west of the Coromandel sunken barges). We get to the spot and have 1.5 hours of full on fishing with bigger snapper arriving as well.
The Gold (Japanese Kabura), Orange (Slider) and Green/Red (slider) seemed to work better than the Inchiku style jigs.
Sunday 3rd July
We ventured out from Pier 21 and headed into the misty seas. Today looks real fishy and it turns out to be amazing. We find gannets and dolphins close to Auckland. Today was 101 barrel fishing and on just about every drop we caught a fish.
There were some better size winter fish among the pannies and the crew were enjoying the light gear fights on both horse kahawai and snapper beneath. Again the sliders were doing the most damage.
By 11.30 we were very close to catching our limit. After a bit of lunch and a hunt around the area and we found an area of gannets and dolphins as we nosy around they start diving right next to us (this is about 2 Nm from the first stop). We finished filling the bins and then headed home on glassy sea’s .
Love this winter fishing at the moment!
Cheers Capt. Snap (Nik)
Snap Fishing Ventures
https://www.facebook.com/Snapfishing