KEY POINTS:
The unusual catches continue in this unusual summer.
In a normal year the snapper leave the Manukau Harbour as water cools and at the same time gurnard come in. This summer we have both in huge numbers and anglers are taking snapper to 10kg well up the harbour.
This is no doubt a measure both of the temperature, which is holding at around 20C, and also the improving water quality some years down the track from the Watercare treatment plant upgrade and post the big South Auckland subdivisions and silt runoff.
The Manukau shellfish beds are healthier and so is the fish population. Further evidence - a john dory of nearly 3kg caught well up the Papakura Channel. A 9.5kg snapper was caught off Mako Point on the south side this week and angler Luke Williams landed a 6.7kg fish and lost a much bigger one at the boat. Manukau expert John Moran also had a big bust-off but has been happy to go home with regular feeds of gurnard. "The harbour has absolutely come alive."
Moran recommends "anything silver" as bait for the big snapper as well as trevally to 3kg - pilchards or whole baby salmon. For gurnard, use loudly coloured flasher rigs baited with small cubes of skipjack. "They are in amazing numbers. We put two lines over while anchoring, three hooks on each, and caught six fish straight away," he said. Best time is the first two hours of the outgoing tide.
But you must use light line on the Manukau, where current hum on mono of 8kg or heavier becomes an issue. Use braid to the swivel, then a fluorocarbon trace.
Out the other side the East Coast Bays are fishing well for snapper to 3kg, perhaps the last in-close feed-up post-spawning and pre-winter. Some of the fish are spent, slim and with little fat slick, obviously a sign of the serial spawning that has been encouraged by the long spell of settled weather. Soft baits work well here, said Eugyn De Bruyn of Sea Genie charters. They are also taking kahawai and trevally on fresh skipjack or mackerel strips. There are plenty of fish around 25m off Rakino, he said, "but maybe you don't need to go that far out for the next couple of weeks anyway."
The bigger fish in numbers, though, are at the 40m mark, along with anchovy work-ups, kahawai and kingfish, Alan Viscovich on Cobalt cleaning up this week.
Paul Barnes cleaned up with a long-line set over worm beds on a line between Tiritiri Matangi and Flat Rock. One set with 25 baits produced three kingfish which unfortunately were all 10mm undersize, plus a hammerhead shark, along with full hooks of snapper to 4kg. He was in 35m on an outgoing tide. "Fresh baits are best," he said, both for there and the west coast kite fishing. Off Muriwai, kite fishers have had markedly mixed results in terms of fish size, which is also unusual. The pattern is for the fish to be of uniform size whatever that size is. But now one angler might catch just-legals and another 500m away do very well with 3-4kg fish. So move, Barnes advises, if the fish are small.
The blue water is still as far south as Waihau Bay where a 191kg blue marlin was landed this week.
At Tutukaka it was a dismal week for the Combined Trades contest with only one very happy angler, who tagged and released two mako sharks and cleaned up all the prizes since no one else caught anything. They have had marlin hook-ups reported and the odd mahimahi continues to be landed but game fishing has been slowed by the sou'easterly.
There are lots of mahimahi still out from Whangaroa and the marlin fishing continues apace there. It's been even better off the west coast where Hokianga Big Game and Sportfishing Club secretary Linda Pattinson reports 50 striped marlin for the season so far including the heaviest this season so far at 181.2kg, with more landed this week, and with easterly winds predicted for the weekend there should be more fishing effort. "We're still getting mahimahi which is very unusual," Pattinson said.
Marlin continue to be hooked between 70m and 100m just north and just south of the Manukau bar.
Weekend Marine - section C
