Warming up for Hawke's Bay Megafish

Napier angler Graeme Bee with a 13.2kg albacore he caught in the Megafish last year. In 2009 he won with a 384.2kg mako. Photo / File

Sea temperatures reported to be at record levels around the New Zealand coast have sports fisherman drooling over the prospects for Hawke's Bay's richest competition next month.

The Your Solutions Megafish, the revival of the Napier-based Hawke's Bay Sports Fishing Club's Coruba Megafish, with a history dating back more than 40 years, will be held on February 3-5 with more than 300 anglers expected to be chasing prizes worth more than $50,000, including the $10,000 for the best single catch.

Earlier this week about 50 entries had been received, but numbers are expected to increase sharply as "Early Bird" entries close on Thursday, lured by a draw with a prize of a Shemano Tiagra 80W road-and-reel set-up.

Entries will, however, continue to be taken through to the event, with competition organiser Joe Bicknell confident there will be more than the 275 which entered last year, fishing from 77 boats across the Bay.

He said the increased marine temperatures — reported to be up to 6deg above average in some areas — are "very exciting news for gamefishermen," the warm currents bringing pelagic species from the tropics, from smaller foragers to the bigger predators.

The main prize goes to the best fish on a weight-to-species points scale, the competition's target species being marlin, tuna, albacore, skipjack, kingfish, snapper and shark. Last year, when the new scale was used for the first, the $10,000 was claimed by Napier man Robbie Wigmore for an 18.2kg albacore.

The biggest single catch last year, when no marlin or shark species were weighed, was a 40.8kg tuna, but the previous year the top prize, for the biggest catch, was claimed with a 136.6kg marlin.

The biggest in the history of the tournament, first held at Easter 1977, was a 417kg mako caught by John Cave, of Bay View, in 1999, and the most recent true monster of the ocean a 384.2kg mako caught by Graeme Bee, of Napier, in a three-hour battle at sea 10 years later.

The first report this summer of a striped marlin landed off the mid-lower east of the North Island was a 137.5kg catch weighed at Whangamata on the southeast Coromandel coast on New Year's Eve.

Mr Bicknell said there have already been reports of marlin hooked, but lost, in the Bay, in recent weeks, and yellowfin tuna caught in the Mahia and Gisborne, areas where there are also significant competitions over the next few weeks.

Gisborne's Tatapouri Sports Fishing Club stages its biggest competition over three days starting next Friday, while the Mahia Boating and Fishing Club has its Tuna Big Game Tournament on February 23-25.