Geoff Thomas: Global film festival brings fly fishing exploits to big screen

Stuart Buchanan (left) and Kent Baigent score doubles on tarakihi. Photo / Supplied

Fishermen are in for a treat when the annual RISE Fly Fishing Film Festival visits Auckland next week.

The world's largest fishing film festival features the best adventure fly-fishing films from global destinations including New Zealand, Norway, Africa and Canada, presented in crystal-clear high-definition on the big screen.

Exotic destinations, epic adventure, big fish and award-winning cinematography will entertain patrons at the Bridgeway Cinema in Northcote, next Wednesday at 8.30pm.

Now in its sixth consecutive year, the event has become a celebration of the fly-fishing year.

The feature film last year, Source New Zealand, won the main prize at a fly-fishing film festival in the United States this year.

The festival has been touring the country and ticket information can be found at Gin-clear.com. Tickets will also be available at the door.

One of the biggest trout of the winter season, a 6kg rainbow, was caught in Lake Rotoiti recently but overall the numbers of fish caught by shore-based fly anglers have been down.

Lake Tarawera is the best performer of the Rotorua lakes in terms of the numbers and condition of the trout caught, with average weights up on last year.

Trolling on Lake Rotorua with a clown Tasmanian Devil or Silver Toby spinner is always popular at this time of year, and that fishing should improve as the weather warms.

Some good reports have been coming from the Hauraki Gulf, where snapper are just starting to develop roe, but the schools are still small.

Dropping blue and silver soft baits in 40m off Little Barrier Island produced a bag of snapper up to 8kg last week, but barracouta attacked a lot of lures. Straylining with fresh baits like a whole, butterflied jack mackerel is working better than other baits in the shallows around the islands. One bonus is that small fish won't attack such baits and they last much longer.

On the Manukau Harbour, the first snapper, coming from Mill Bay, have turned up one bag of six fish up to 3kg, but fishing generally is patchy.

Snapper fishing at the mussel farms in the Firth of Thames has been hard for many anglers, but those trying a different approach have done well. One fisherman tried casting soft baits in different directions from his boat which was tied to a farm - rather than drifting which is the usual method - and pulled in six snapper of about 3kg. The fish were reported to be fat and in top condition.

Tarakihi are providing good fishing for anglers in the Bay of Plenty and can be targeted with small baits of fresh pipi or narrow strips of squid fished on small recurve hooks on ledger or flasher rigs.

Tarakihi are versatile fish and can be found from 20m out to 350m of water, and in Wellington they are caught surfcasting in the harbour.

Their white flesh is highly regarded and many people rate them above other species like snapper. A layer of fat between the muscles ensures fillets remain moist when cooked.

Some large snapper have been taken while straylining in close at the Bay of Islands, including one fish of 9kg from Tapeka Point and another of 9.5kg from Capstan Rock.

Schools of snapper can be picked up on the depth sounder at about 50m, but they consist of mainly small fish, and unless good-sized fish are caught it is better to move to another spot. Tarakihi and the occasional john dory can also be picked up on the bottom, but kingfish appear to have moved away from the regular spots like Bird Rock and Cape Brett.

They have probably moved out to deep water and are often hooked when dropping baits for hapuku in 150m or so of water.

This has become more common as more people use jigs like knife jigs, which are so effective in deep water on all species, from bluenose to bass, hapuku and kingfish.

More fishing action can be found on Rheem Outdoors with Geoff, 5.30pm on TV3, and on the internet television channel FishnHunt.Tv