Welcome to another week of relatively wretched weather for boating. It looks like there is going to be a decidedly average westerly wind around for the week, up around the 20-knot mark and again strengthening in the weekend.
There are a few windows of opportunity though, so make the most of them as they appear. You never know, summer may arrive before Christmas.
Bream Bay is the place to be and lends itself nicely to the westerly forecast during the week. The pilchard boat has been down there hammering the pilchards but as a sideline, it is creating the world's biggest inshore berley trail.
Snapper, kingis and trevally have all been coming out with relative ease. Rapalas and stick baits have been catching consistently.
The bait schools showing up are fantastic and right on cue for the spring feed up.
Snapper are patrolling these bait schools and a few have been hooked on rapalas or live baits intended for bigger kingfish. There are pockets and roving small schools of snapper all over the place and with the water not warming up much lately, that's the way you'll find them for a while yet.
Saying that, a number of guys have done well finding likely structure or baitfish and parking up with plenty of berley and straylining for them.
There's some good fish out there for the taking, don't be disheartened by a sounder full of fish and no bites, persevere and it will happen.
Tarakihi are still on the bite, and snapper are among them while Three Mile Reef has produced a couple of pup hapuka this past week so you may find them with the tarakihi - especially near some deeper foul.
The Hen and Chicks has been producing reasonably consistent results for kings, trevs, snapper and tarakihi. The Chicks is an interesting place and is one you think you know really well and have sorted, only to be dealt a dud hand and find a skunking after a couple of recent good trips. Such is the nature of the beast and it seems to have a lot to do with current direction.
The Whangarei Harbour is slowly coming alive. Whitebait are moving and so are the snapper in the shallows, fish have been caught as far up as Limestone in recent times.
Sharks and rays can also be found in abundance from now on so do expect a bit of a spooling on light gear from time to time.
Fishing is hot and only going to get better. Get out there folks when the weather allows.