KEY POINTS:
The snapper fishing is running red hot off both coasts.
Warm water and settled weather has meant a good plankton bloom and the attendant interest from the rest of the food chain.
It won't get easier to catch fish. Anglers with the right gear, mainly larger hooks from 6/0 up, will catch fish from 2-6kg readily, with few undersize throwbacks.
And best of all, this great summer's fishing will produce repeats in years to come. There's been plenty of sex going on, females coming aboard still in roe to prove they are repeat-breeding. The good breeding conditions will ensure good "recruitment" from egg to juvenile stage and this will show up as a productive "year class" when the 2008 babies reach the legal limit of 27cm in four to six year's time.
Large schools of kahawai are starting to turn up in the outer Hauraki Gulf, in the Bay of Islands and Doubtless Bay and all along the west coast around the 3kg mark. This is a measure of the baitfish around. Last week we fished through a school that stretched from one side of the Bay of Islands to the other. The amazing thing was that even when we could get baits down to the bottom we still caught big kahawai down to 40 metres.
Charter skipper Alan Viscovich on Cobalt reported similar fishing at the 40m mark off Auckland. "There are lots of good snapper, sometimes the problem is getting through the kahawai, you just have to move."
All baits and all rigs are working, Viscovich said.
Off Northland too, bag limits of nine are the order of the day. A group of visiting Australians was pleased to get their limit of good fish quickly, then disappointed they had to stop fishing and come home so early, said Whangarei Deep Sea Anglers club president Pete Saul. "There's good snapper all up and down the coast and at the Hen and Chickens," Saul said. "It's the best it's been all year."
It's also at the 40m mark off the west coast where anglers have been nailing the best snapper.
Both the beach launchers and kite fishers have profited from sustained periods of easterlies. For the boaties, there has been a bonanza of skipjack to fill the bait freezer and unusually large numbers of mahimahi. The kites can't get out to 40m but have done well just behind the surf line at dawn and dusk and further out when the sun is up.
The tropical mahimahi are also in numbers off the east coast, where they are more commonly caught. Fish to 17kg have been landed at the Whangarei club base at Tutukaka.
But the striped marlin count and the size of fish there and further north remains low. Marlin fishing had been patchy, Saul said _ "one boat will get three hook-ups and two or three others fishing nearby won't see a thing."
The fish were often not hooking up. And some of those caught were small. "We had one brought in that was 60kg and skinny, it looked like it just got here and hasn't fed up yet."
That was the experience of the Whangaroa and Houhora clubs too, both reporting small striped marlin at a time of year when they should be in good condition after summer meatballing of baitfish. There is speculation the best of the billfish season is yet to come. It finally fired off Houhora last week with 50 gamefish recorded in a weekend contest.
The striped marlin tagging programme is under way again with two fish tagged off Waihau Bay. Both tags are reporting well, indicating both fish immediately headed north.
Blue cod numbers in the Marlborough Sounds have declined to the point where serious conservation action is necessary.
Recreational fishers catch an estimated 150 tonnes of blue cod in the Sounds annually, commercial take is 15 tonnes. So naturally it is the amateur fishing regulations which will face major change. MFish has put forward some proposals and is taking submissions until April 23, after which the minister will act.
Proposals include: Temporary closure of parts of Queen Charlotte Sound and Pelorus Sound to all hook and line fishing for a period of at least three years; reducing the daily bag limit from three to two with a boat limit of six; requiring fishers to retain all blue cod at or above the minimum legal size of 30cm (to stop high-grading); formalising voluntary agreements with commercial fishers to prevent targeting of blue cod in large areas of Queen Charlotte and Pelorus Sound.
In addition, a local fishing group has proposed a limit of one hook per line and a hook size limit of 6/0.
Weekend Marine - section C
