Fishing: Gamefish season looks good

Kevin Webb's black marlin will go on display at the Brownzy Sports Bar in Browns Bay

Albacore, skipjack and yellowfin tuna are travelling down the north of the North Island east coast in vast numbers and some meritorious billfish captures have resulted as gamefish boats chase the food source.

The best catch so far is a 361.4kg black marlin taken by Browns Bay Fishing Club member Kevin Webb. It was just his second billfish.

Webb and his mates were aboard John "Leaky" McCall's boat Silva Fox, and had the hell fishing trip last weekend.

Using an Aussie-bought fruit salad lure, they had a hit from a big fish while trolling north from Tutukaka to the Bay of Islands. The fish got off after a short play.

Next was a shortbilled spearfish. Then came the big black, which hit in a similar spot to where they'd hooked the first fish.

Webb took just over 20 minutes to get the marlin to the boat, with McCall backing down on it. But it was a further 20 minutes before the fish was subdued and hauled aboard.

The head and shoulders are to be mounted and displayed at the Brownzy Sports Bar in Browns Bay where the club meets.

On the way home they fished a pinnacle that produced big hapuku and kingfish. "It was magic," said Webb's fellow angler, Robert Briggs.

There were eight black marlin landed and a further six tagged and released last season. They are the biggest and also the rarest of the three marlin species that visit New Zealand.

The world record is 707kg for a black caught off Peru in the 1950s but a fish just under that size was taken off Whakatane in 1976.

The appearance of the black, several shortbilled spearfish that have been landed and two blues already signals this could be a great gamefish season, if a short one.

The high winds have curtailed offshore fishing on many days, with boats needing to get to the 200m mark to score the bigger billfish.

Already this year the NZ Big Game Fishing Association has logged five world-record claims and six for New Zealand records. One world record, for yellowtail on a flyrod, has been ratified and four others for northern bluefin between 262kg and 280kg caught off Greymouth are awaiting processing.

The skipper of charter boat Primetime, John Gregory, appears to have passed his skills on to his son. Luke, 7, played a striped marlin estimated at 100kg for 58 minutes on 15kg line before getting it to the boat.

The fish was tagged and was about to be gaffed when it gave one last thrash and threw the hook. It would have been a New Zealand small-fry record, Gregory reckoned.

Lots of marlin have been caught between the Mokohinau Islands and the Bay of Islands. The water is also thick with tuna and all the northern gamefish clubs report hot yellowfin action.

Far fewer yellowfin were landed than in recent years during the Whakatane Sportfishing Club's annual contest last weekend.

Just 23 fish were weighed in, the biggest 43.8kg to Steve Milbank on the boat Took A Long Time.

The best catch was a 241kg blue marlin, five stripeys landed and one tagged and released.

Around Auckland, the fishing has been relatively hard but those landed are in good condition. Large schools of kingfish have been at Anchorite Rock and their other usual haunts.

The Hauraki Gulf is also sporting lots of big trevally - if your pilchards are being slowly nibbled away, try small hooks and shellfish baits.

The Manukau Harbour hit 23.8C last weekend, bad for the big scallop beds as the shellfish tend to thin back in warm water. But kingfish have been plentiful.

Many anglers seem to fish to the top of the tide but the best time is the last two hours before low, and not always in the channels. The kings will chase baitfish schools into one metre of water and less.

John Moran reports lots of snapper in the just-legal range.

Marlin have also been taken off the west coast.

There were several hook-ups for boats that went over the Manukau bar at the weekend and one more landed at Hokianga on Monday.

The best lures are purple/black or the fluoro green/purple/red/white fruit salad type.