Fishing: Summertime, and the fishing ain't easy

Will someone please turn on the summer? The holiday fishing scene does not look promising, with the prolonged spell of southerly and sou-westerly wind having driven water temperatures down to anything as much as four degrees below the seasonal averages.

The cold water continues to kill the fishing, which has been hard, from Whangaroa where the temperature was 15.5C mid-week, through the Bay of Islands where it was 15C, past Auckland where the Hauraki Gulf is around 16.9C, to Whakatane where it was 14.5C.

Offshore, it is still green and cold and there has been no sign of billfish.

Hapuku and bluenose are still around in numbers and terakihi are still in relatively shallow water in close, in winter spots.

Bay of Islands charter operators Geoff Stone on Major Tom II and Gary Morris on MV Belfast report little snapper action after the bite early morning. Some kingfish are about but you can't use livebaits to get them because there are also barracouta. The 'couta will leave for deeper water once it warms up.

Hapuku longliners working at the 300m mark reported water temperature at 15.5C and at 500m it was 16C, well below what will bring the marlin in.

Around Auckland, Lance Paniora on Smokin' Reels has found it grim.

"We've had some success in the shallow patches where it's a bit warmer, fish in the 30-35cm range but nothing really big," Paniora says. "There's plenty of marks out there but they're just not feeding aggressively."

He recommends using fresh baits of mackerel rather than the standard pilchards and squid. And the Manukau fishers report that fresh mullet has been working best there.

Off Whakatane, water temperature has dropped four degrees since November to 14.5C.

Best catches in the past week have been a 13.7kg snapper taken off Uretiti Beach on a longline and a 12.4kg fish taken on a kite at the top end of Muriwai.

But for most people to get access to decent fish it will take two weeks or more of sustained warmer temperatures brought by winds from the north, not the south.

The trout fishing is better, especially at Lake Rotoiti.

Anglers are catching a high rate of fish in the 2kg range, most in very good condition, perfect eating fish.

Despite aspersions cast by some, they are not at all muddy-tasting.

Thanks to the cold conditions, the algal blooms of recent summers have not affected Lakes Rotoiti and Rotorua. It will take some days of "stratifying" - settling of lake temperature levels - before the blooms impinge seriously and that has not happened thanks to the stirring of the wind.

Steve Smith of Eastern Fish and Game is predicting a good season once the weather changes, as there are good numbers of fish and smelt runs are yet to peak.

It's also promising rather than producing at Taupo, where the late river runs mean anglers are catching a higher than usual percentage of "slabs" that have just returned to the lake after spawning.

The Waipa trap on the upper Tongariro caught 790 fish in November; 100 were caught last Friday.

There is smelt all around the lake edges but wind has made the fishing hard. Glenn Maclean of the Turangi DoC said the spring harvest was usually high but had not been so this year. Consequently there would be lots of fish in the lake edges looking to feed up.

Although the incidence of spent fish was high now, they would recover quickly once warmer waters produced bigger smelt runs.

Jared Goedhart at Turangi Sporting Life reported some good browns taken in the western bays, mainly on dark and at night in the stream mouths. The river fishing has been the best it has for years, he says.

There is little insect hatch to encourage flyfishers. Jigging has been more productive than deep trolling, Goedhart says.

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