Record entry for Hawke’s Bay Megafish 2023

Fishing competition stalwart Graeme Bee with a 13.2kg Megafish catch in 2016. Photo / NZME

Major Hawke’s Bay fishing contest Megafish will have a record of over 500 anglers and 130 boats after a Mission Concert-like near-sellout of entries within a few hours of hitting the market.

There were 450 entries in the 2022 competition in February, but Hawke’s Bay Sports Fishing Club immediate past-president Neil Price, now a club manager, said the entries limit for next year’s February 2-5 tournament was raised to 550.

Almost 500 were sold within the first few hours, meaning that, with fewer than 10 still to be picked up, all the entries are “early birds”, becoming eligible for what is effectively a top prize of $20,000 — the combination of the major prize of $10,000 plus the $10,000 that had been reserved for the early entries.

The entry will be a record for Megafish, which will have been going a decade since it superseded the club’s Coruba Tournament, first held in 1977, becoming an annual event for 47 years consecutively before the change in 2013, and having the top prize valued as high as $50,000.

It was once best known as the Coruba Shark Hunt, when the top prize went to the biggest catch, such as the event record, a 417kg mako landed in 1999.

Work started last week on upgrading the launch ramp and putting in place new pontoons. Photo Paul / Taylor

With the shark hunt brand long gone, the Coruba tag continued, becoming one of the longest-standing sponsorships in New Zealand sport, but the Megafish tournament ushered in all-species prospects of the major prize, going to the biggest catch in any of the target species, from marlin to snapper, albacore and skipjack, on a points basis scaled according to the species.

In February it went to Gisborne angler Leon Lewis with a 235kg blue marlin hooked on the first day, consistent with a season in which numerous marlins were caught off the Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne coast amid warmer-than-average sea temperatures during the summer.

But in 2021, when weather and sea conditions shortened the event to just one day of fishing, the top prize was claimed by an angler with a 20kg skipjack, and 12 months earlier the top-prize catch was a 15.09kg albacore.

Competitors will see a significant change at the club with work having started last week on upgrading the launch ramp and putting in place new pontoons.

The ramp was bought by the Napier City Council in 2015, and in March the council announced it had let a $547,000 contract for the supply and construction of 123m of floating pontoons at the “Nelson Quay Boat Ramp”.

The project includes the replacement of the concrete abutments further up the ramp to give additional clearance in extreme tides, and, while it is a specific project sought by the club for several years and made possible only by the council’s procurement, it has become a signal of development the council is planning for the adjacent Iron Port mooring area and other aspects of the inner harbour.

The work, which has included the establishment of piles through the existing ageing ramp, is being done one flank at a time, to enable continued one-lane launching.