Fishing: Sou'easter blows away the bites

We've enjoyed great settled weather all week but unfortunately it came with south-easterly winds.

That is the direction regarded as an absolute killer to the bite.

Even commercial fishers are wary of the southeaster and regard it as a bad wind. For amateurs fishing closer to shore, it stops the bite dead.

"Gurnard Guru" John Moran spent six hours on the Manukau Harbour fishing soft baits and baits and berley and he and mate Tiny Coe came home with just six small gurnard and three kahawai to show for it when normally they clean up a limit in far less time. That experience was typical for many in recent days.

The snapper schools seem to head for deeper water in southerly and southeasterly winds and some areas around Great Barrier and Little Barrier can be okay.

Charter operator Eugyn de Bruyn reported snapper to 8kg at the Hen and Chickens early in the week, and fish up to 6kg at Seven Mile Reef off the Noises and in schools around the 40m to 45m mark.

There is also usually little surface activity, baitfish and kahawai when the wind comes from that direction. Whether it is the bite of snow coming off the mountains or some other factor at play is uncertain, but the past week has been great for boating, poor for boating fish.

There are lots of trevally in the Hauraki Gulf and some anglers can be fooled into thinking they are being picked clean by small snapper. If the runs are good but short, the bait dropped when any attempt is made to strike, then the feeders are most likely 1kg to 2kg trevally. They are good-condition fish and fight well on light line.

The secret is to go down in hook size and to use a light trace. Cut baits are more effective than whole pilchards or similar, which they will eat their way around.

There are also still plenty of John Dory in the Gulf and soft baits are a good way to nail them. Use the weighted fish or crab baits hooked through the back, with a small ball sinker on the hook. De Bruyn says large trevally will take the soft baits more readily than large snapper do.

At Taupo, the rivers have cleared after snow dirtied the water for a few days. There were some runs of fish but they had stopped, said Department of Conservation fisheries manager Glenn Maclean. Some reported hard fishing in the rivers; others were doing very well. "The answer is to keep moving if you're not getting anything," Maclean said.

"The lake is fishing well now that people can get out, lead lines are starting to work well and the deeper methods are producing good fish."

The plan to save kingfish from a Far North farming venture and release them to the wild is gaining momentum, not least because of the backing of fishing company Sanford.

The Recreational Fishing Council and Sanford are awaiting MFish and other approvals to take about 20 tonnes of kingfish from the failed Parengarenga venture and release fish locally and at Whangaroa, Taipa, the Bay of Islands and the Hauraki Gulf. About 20 per cent of the fish will be tagged before release, the most that can be handled given time constraints.