Fishing: Booming season for big fish

Lee Wynyard caught the winning snapper in the New Zealand nationals. Picture / Gene Pabirowski

Game fishers working off Mercury Bay have enjoyed a bumper season, with 130 fish including 33 marlin landed during their four-day one-base tournament last weekend.

Massive blue marlin in the 300kg-plus range did serious damage to the rear end of two boats. One was a Riviera 39, the fish running gear into and around the duckboard as the boat was reversing and the other a trailer boat dwarfed by the fish that speared itself into the trim tabs.

Gear was busted, crimps pulled apart, hooks bent and broken and plenty of anglers were spooled.

The Mercury Bay Game Fishing Club one-base attracted a limit field of 125 boats and 529 anglers. Given the 200-plus game fish weighed in the weeks before its start there were high expectation.

Best catch during the tournament was a 242.2kg blue landed by Bill Penshurst on Astrea.

Best bite time was at the start of incoming and in the two hours before high tide and on occasions every boat in the hot-spots was hooked up, said club manager Tony Fox.

"It's the best year we've had. The number of big fish was striking, and everyone is reviewing their gear and the way they set it up in light of the fish lost."

Hot spot was around The Hook, where there is a deep drop-off, and in 180-200m each side of it. Best lures were the purple and black, a blue and white, the Pacific bait fish and the green and yellow.

There were few albacore tuna around but loads of skipjacks and flying fish and that seems to be the pattern up north too.

The Mercury Bay club won the New Zealand Big Game Fish Council national title. Fishing with Lee Wynyard on My Mistress, we had four strikes, including two good runs, but all dropped off, a common complaint during the nationals, as lots of marlin investigated lures without striking or just mouthed and dropped them.

We did enjoy getting one big stripey to the boat.

What we enjoyed more was that it came the day after a tackle shop "expert" enlisted in our team had left the boat. He'd insisted on choosing the lures and arranging the pattern and setting the drags, and we weren't allowed to touch anything.

It took a purple and black lure. That and the lumo have been most successful this season, with the secret squid, secret saury and fruit salad also working.

The Bay of Islands Swordfish Club we were fishing for came second in the contest with Tauranga third.

The best striped marlin team was aboard John Gregory's Primetime and second was John Batterton's Harlequin, both from the Bay of Islands.

Southeasterly winds plagued some areas, including the bay, and the result was few snapper or other species of any size. Lee beat out 346 teams and around 1400 anglers from 40 clubs to take New Zealand's biggest snapper in the eight days of the nationals, a 10.796kg fish on 6kg line caught on fresh skipjack at Roberton Island well inside the bay.

Next-best fish was 8.8kg caught at Hawkes Bay, and the small size of the snapper that were caught and won prizes at the big Ninety Mile Beach contest was also down to bad wind. The nationals prize for top snapper angler went to Pat Downer of the NZ Landbased Game Fishing team because he accumulated more points than anyone, catching three fish around 4kg on 1kg line. In general, points are given for the fish's weight multiplied by 100 then divided by line breaking strain. The NZ Landbased team won the snapper teams title.

If you want snapper around Auckland you can't beat the Motuihe Channel in close or the Rakino and Tiri Channels further north. Fish in the 2-4kg range are hammering pilchards or squid or any fresh bait. Sometimes it pays to use a cut bait rather than whole. Best times are early morning and evening.

Surf casting and kite fishing on all long beaches east and west coast has been likewise productive.

The contest season is in full swing, with the new replacement for the annual Furuno event to be held at the Ruakaka Racecourse for the first time this weekend.