Soft Baiting

There is some great fishing to be had at the moment on soft baits as I found on the weekend when the bait stopped producing the soft baits kept getting smashed.
On the weekend it was some of the hardest fishing I have had in a long time but still mannaged to get a feed and some nice fish and have a great time.

Heres a 15lb snapper caught on a home made softbait by my mate Justin was awsome to watch and a personal best snapper on your birthday MINT!

Justin also got this nice frostfish later on that same day on the home made softbait again

HAPUKA BLUENOSE GEM FISH

The weather gods have being nice for a change, in the last week I have seen some of the best sea conditions all year allowing me to get out on the Mayor Island Knolls and target some deep water tasties. Fishing 350-450meters of water and catching good numbers of Hapuka, Bluenose and gem fish.  

SNAPPER

The Snapper fishing has been exceptional the last few weeks with the numbers and size of the fish picking up dramatically.
I have found the best bite time regardless of the tide and moon to be between 9pm and 2am using both stray lines and ledger rigs.
The most productive bait has been Bonito and fresh Kahawai and fishing in 20-30 Meters on the sand just off good fish sign on the foul the fish will come eventually especially with burly.

Hers a 4.5kg snapper i caught on my new 4kg Tica soft bait set used as a stray line.

A bit of luck

Every year my mate Kelvin Johnson and I fish the opening of trout season and celebrate his birthday by catching a few fish and drinking a few beers.
This years opening was on Monday the 1st October as i woke at 5.30am and started anticipating the day ahead and waitng for Kelvin to turn up I thought to myself why not flick the fly rod off the jetty and see if I can get a fish before we head out WELL! I saw 3 fish rise and casted at 1 of them hooked up and by 6.30 had a 4.815KG (10.8lb) Brown Trout on the lawn.

What a start to the season and at the end of the day our team of Kelvin Johnson, Geoff Dadley, John Bell and Myself had boated another 12 rainbow trout and released another 4 caught jigging, harling and trolling. 

Scallop Season

Once again that time of the year is here, where every man and his dive gear heads out to sea pursuing one of the oceans tastiest shellfish the New Zealand scallop. If last year was anything to go by this years scallops should be fat and tasty as they were well into the spawning process at the end of last season. I'm looking foward to comfirming my prediction on Monday along with enjoying a fresh feed of scallops. The Bag Limit per diver in the B.O.P is 20 per diver, although 1 diver is allowed to get 20 for the boats skipper, and 20 for the boatman (deckhand) thats 60 scallops total for one diver and 2 other people on board. Also be aware that you can NOT shuck scallops at sea and bring them unshelled to shore but you CAN shuck scallops at sea if you are consuming them at sea but within your daily bag limit.

Terakihi

I have been out twice in the last week and fished my feet first not going more than 3 Nautical Miles from Tauranga Harbour entrance. Both occasions needing only half a day to load up on beautiful Terakihi at a rate of up to 3 at a time.
These close to home patches of foul ground and papa ledges along with the abundance of Terakihi are hosting a wide range of tasty bottem dwelling table fish like Gurnard, John Dory and in the mid water range plenty of big Kahawai. 
For bait i have been using Bonito, Squid and last years scallop skirts, finding that when on the bite the terakihi will just about eat anything as long as your baits are small enough to eat.
The rigs I am using at the moment consist of 30lb trace with 3x 2/0 Wasabi recurve hooks and 4 ounce sinker.
I have been fishing in 25 - 35M on patches of foul ground and using very small cube baits.
I expect the Kahawai numbers in Coastal areas to increase rapidly toward summer as now the Whitebait are running up Rivers and Harbours. 

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.