Fishing: East Cape provides hearty winter treat

The fishing might be harder in winter but when it's on you cannot beat it.

In a window of weather opportunity last week, myself and Glen Eden fishing buddy Lee Wynyard shot down to Whakatane to take up a late offer to fill a charter with Rick Pollock on his boat Pursuit.

You couldn't want to fish the Ranfurly Banks with a better skipper. He knows it like the back of his hand and the result for us and the other four anglers was a smooth three days with tight lines more often than not.

The Ranfurly is a mid-water uprising about 30km off East Cape, about 17km by 7km, coming from 600m up to 40m at the shallowest point. We were fishing between 120m and 75m.

With six of us lined up down the side of Pursuit, Pollock would first do a dummy-drift to check what effect the tide and wind would have. Then we'd steam back up, drift again and drop as quickly as possible to the bottom. Five had 37kg braid, but I had 24kg nylon. The braid is a better strike indicator, providing better touch.

The terminal tackle was a ledger rig with two droppers and 13/0 circle hooks. Some used fluro beads threaded next to the hook.

After a frustrating first morning during which we changed spots regularly, brought on board a couple of trumpeter and some big red maomao and fought sharks and barracouta, we finally found the hapuku. On each of six drifts every angler hooked up and some of us pulled in two 'puku. They were mostly in the 20kg range, the biggest 37kg. Nearly all were males, full of milt.

It was Pollock's last run of the season before Pursuit comes out of the water for maintenance and survey. He is known as something of a conservationist - encouraging boat limits on the bottom fish and asking customers to observe an extension of MFish limits on kingies, taking only good-condition fish over 1m in length. With the fishing you get at the Ranfurly Banks, there is no need to get greedy.

We had doubles of big trumpeter up to 10kg and I caught my personal-best trevally, 6.8kg.

Hold loaded, we headed for shallower water to fish for snapper on light line. Again, we were hammered by sharks and barracouta. On 8kg in 40m of water we were losing plenty of gear - hooks that were bent or straightened, flasher rigs and mainline frayed by shark skin or 'couta teeth, whole rigs bitten off.

But big reds started to come on board and after copping a lot of Jafa-related remarks, Lee and I were pleased to show the others from Palmerston North and Levin how to strayline, taking all the bigger ones.

With weather closing in, we had to run for the cover of the mainland. A quick dive near Hicks Bay secured enough crayfish for dinner.

The moon phase is coming into a hot zone for fishing and promises to be good at the weekend if weather allows.

Up north, snapper fishing is patchy, with some very slow days, and others that produce good-condition fish up to 5kg in numbers. In Doubtless Bay, terakihi are being taken in as little as 20m. Kingfish are rare and kahawai numbers have dropped. Fairway Reef is good for snapper.

Round Auckland, the north end of Rangitoto, the east side of Waiheke and the southeast of Rakino are fishing well at times. There are plenty of baitfish in those areas.

The snapper feeding time seems to vary - for long periods of the day they will ignore all baits. Patience will produce fish because they do feed at some point of the tide, and not always early morning and evening either.

On the Manukau, John Moran has found the same thing - the fish are very picky.

Change baits, try jigging strings of flies, use various colours of flasher rigs, he advises. Fresh bait, especially mullet, seems to work better than frozen.

Gurnard are plentiful in the harbour, with good catches of trevally being taken over the mussel beds off Huia.