CRAYS

At the moment there are alot of crays around but in saying that you have to be very aware of the spawning and re-shelling of these amazing creatures. An experienced diver can tell a male from a female by its posture,  leg size , body shape and tale width if visible. A newley shelled crayfish will be clean of barnicles and fresher in colour - often more orange than brown. Different coastal areas host different spawning and shelling periods so there's always descent rocks to dive on.

July Terakihi and Bluenose

The past few weeks have have produced some amazing terakihi fishing often 2 and 3 at a time. I have been fishing deep from 60m to 110m with ledger rigs tied with 3 wasabi suicide 3/0 recurve hooks and 5 or 6 ounce sinker on 30lb black magic supple trace. There are alot of Mako sharks hanging around and they love to bite strugling terakihi in half or rite off the line. On wendsday 11/7/12 it happend 9 times throughout the morning but didn't stop the boys from filling the bin with king terakihi up to 1.3kg. We then headed to town point for a dive and even though there are lots of female crays in berry and a few with soft shells, the boys sorted through them and got 14 nice bucks to finish the day off. Out wide the bluenose have been biting hard some days and just sucking at the baits other days. There are alot of fish on the knolls at the moment and the last couple of weeks weather in the bay have been very kind to the deep water fisherman.

Sunday 17 June

What a day, we headed out the back of Motiti Is and anchored up on a rock in 68 mtrs and started pulling up 2 at a time red snapper and terakihi with the odd nice snapper after selecting enough fish for everyone we headed into motiti in the shallows for a dive and getting the desired amount of crays we headed home in not a breath of wind , bloody cracker.

FISH GOING OFF OUT DEEPER

Over the last three weeks the snapper and terakihi seem to have gone deep or lost thier appetite and the deper bite has come on strong ive had some good hauls in 65 to 80 mtr out the back of motiti on snapper golden or d snapper and terakihi. Out deeper the bluenose are still on top in sertain places on the knolls spawning this can mean its sometimes hard to locate them but once you do it is vefy productive . At the moment it is a good time to be deep live baiting for kingfish and hapuke from 90 to 200mtrs on shallower knolls around Mayor and Plate Is. I cant wait to fish Astrolab when this no go zone is lifted whenever that might be. I have dived just about every week all summer had an awesome season on fat scallops at motiti and some epic hauls of big crayfish from motiti town point area. The crayfish are scattered at the moment and alot of females in egg and a few sorf shells around so its realy important to chek the tales and posture of the cray before you grab it so you dont desrupt spawning.

Dive motiti

I have had 5 dives in the last few weeks studying the crayfish ha ha ha.
Most of the female crayfish are stil in berry or have eggs therefore have to be left alone
although getting a feed of nice bucks has not been a problem.
 This rock produced some reds for dinner. 

Diving

I have had 2 dives in the last 2 weeks and its not warm but there are plenty of crays around. Each dive produced 6 nice bucks, All of the female crays are still very much in berry (eggs) and will be for a while yet. I am counting down the days until scallop season opens a week and a half away, yum I cant wait. 

TERAKIHI

The last week or so the weather has been great and so has the Terakihi fishing with large numbers of big fish (1 to 2kg) being caught. The fish seem to be near any sort of rock structure from 50m to 150m. On Saturday one of the old favourite spots produced 70 Terakihi, 5 golden snapper, 2 john dory in 72m of water out the back of Motiti Is the area has alot of small rocky reefs that all hold fish during certain seasons.