Mokau Fishing Report by Geoff Preston

Snapper catches have been improving at Mokau.

Many are being caught close to shore. Sunday February 5th I caught a 7.1 kg snapper and 6 others up to 3 kg plus six good sized gurnard.

Kontiki fishers here have also been catching good fish.

One in particular on the Saturday pulled in 16 fish from just one set.

Good fishing everyone. Cheers, Geoff

Muriwai Beach from Spencer Roff

Caught these nice snapper and gurnard north of Rimmers Road on Saturday 5/2/2005.

The wind was perfect and took the 25 hook longline out in record time.

My partner and I did two sets returning a total of 11 snapper, seven gurnard one kahawai and three sharks that were let go.

Max the cat was my new best friend. Bait was a mixture of bonito and mullet.

Regards Spencer Roff

Manukau Harbour Longlining from Paul Major

The Manukau Harbour is still fishing well.

On Tuesday I set one 25 hook longline twice (no floats on traces) and caught 15 snapper and five kahawai.

Two of the snapper were good size and I also caught five good kahawai.

On Thursday evening two of us shot onto the harbour for a fish and set two 25 hook longlines.

One longline had the traces fitted with double floats and the other had no floats on the traces.

This time, the one without floats came up empty. The floating traces however saved the day by producing eight reds including two about two kilograms each.

Please excuse the self portrait above but it is so hard to get good crew!

Couldn't resist a third trip this week.

Friday morning I hooked the six fish in the photo on the right on ledger rigs snelled with target hooks about two minutes from the Weymouth Ramp.

These small tides are great for our inner harbour snapper.

Paul Major

Weymouth Boating Club

Muriwai Report by Michael Oudshoorn

On Sunday 6/05/05 my girlfriend and I headed to the 4WD access on Coast Rd, Muriwai at about 4pm.

The tide was on its way in and the wind was heading straight off the beach - the conditions were perfect for kitefishing. It was my first time using my 65kg Dropper Rig, which I had purchased about 2 years ago and finally got round to trying it out.

After a short time figuring out what we were doing, the gear was heading straight out off the beach. We only did the one set baited with blue mackerel, which I had purchased from Paul's shop - I highly recommend it!

We set 10 hooks out to around 800 metres offshoreand left the gear out about 15 minutes for a catch of five good pan sized snapper and two gurnard.

As I am not that experienced in the art of filleting fish, I was wondering if there was an easy way to go about filleting gurnard?

Waihi Beach report from Graham Passau

Back at Waihi beach early in January we had the best catch of gurnard that we have ever had.

We managed a haul of 17 gurnard from 24 hooks set with the Kentiki. We set at 6.30 pm and used bonito fillets for bait and also had a burley pot clipped onto the line behind the first sinker.

Right : Photo of the gurnard catch

On the left is a photo of the burley pots we use.

They are made from Surebake yeast bottles.

I used Ultrabite Burley pellets. I drill 8mm holes in the bottles and the cap.

I have a button connected to eight inches of nylon which goes through the lid. A sea harvester clip is tied to the other end for clipping the berley pot to the hook section of the longline.

On other sets, using the burley pots on the front of the hook section and before the last sinker we have caught fish when others were finding the fishing was quite difficult.

Graham Passau.

Are you sick of replacing perished rubber bands on your Flexiwing?

A 185mm length of 3mm bungy cord tied as shown takes care of the problem. Cut the end of the cord with a hot iron which seals the rubber and stops the fabric from fraying.

It may be neccessary to straighten the wire loops at the ends of the cross spars slightly to allow the new cord to slip in easily.

It is a good idea to smooth the ends of these same wire loops with a small file, so that they don't catch in the fabric of the bungy cord.

Alister Tompkins

East Coast South Island from Allan Parish

It was a nice day with flat surf and an onshore wind so we used the electric torpedo. The trip resulted in nine good sized school shark, one slightly smaller rig and a a few dogfish.

Pics are my mates kids posing with the torpedo and the school sharks and Mother and Son comparing sizes!

Ninety Mile Snapper Classic with PFK Braid by Lewy McConnell

For those who haven't been to Paul's Fishing Kites shop for a while, Lewy McConnell is our newest staff member and runs the Tackle side of the business.

Lewy brings with him 15 years experience in the tackle industry and extensive involvement in surfcasting, ultra-light tackle, snapper fishing and gamefishing.

If you need expert, friendly advice and top tackle deals ring Lewy on 634-5005.

I ended up with a dislocated finger from one of them, but I was fortunate to have spooled up with PFK 30lb spectra. Thanks to the thinness of the braid I was still able to hit the 100 meter mark plus most of the time even though handicapped by a very sore finger.

Over the past 8 or 9 years I have tried using the new braids that have come onto the market, which were touted as being the best thing for fixed spool reels since nylon was invented. Well I can say that after trying two of these well known brands I swore never to use braid on my surf reels again. They tended to have coils of Spectra come of the spool two or three at a time after a bit of use. They would bunch up causing a knotted bunch to fly through the guides and if you have ever tried to untangle a knot in braid, you will know how frustrating it can be.

The other problem I had was I would end up with tangles down near the sinker end on more than one occasion, for no reason at all. I could only assume it was to do with the stiffness of these braids which after a bit of twisting in the surf when the breakaway sinker let go, it would start to do a snake dance.

The PFK 30lb Spectra showed no signs of doing what the previous braids were prone to do, probably due to its suppleness. I am now going to replace all my surf reels which are spooled with 6kg line, with PFK spectra as I was that impressed with it.

I have cut off the Bimini double along with a section of my 150 lb spectra shock leader to show customers how good the connections I have used are. This rig lasted the whole 5 days fishing and also landed 3 eagle rays, with one of about 40 to 45kg in under 20 minutes, which, if you have ever landed one this size on a beach, you will know is pretty good going.

Other anglers were taking upwards of an hour and on smaller rays. The PFK spectra played a major part in my surf set up, but I also used balanced hardware at the same time. By that I mean a Penn 9500, because with spectra it is no good using a budget reel with a shoddy drag.

Because Spectra has virtually no stretch you need a reel that allows line to peel off smoothly when under full load as it was on the big eagle ray. The rod I used was Composite Developments new Plum Fibre Tournament distance caster.

I went with this rod over Kilwells Power Play distance rod because it had the same stiffness in the bottom two thirds of the rod but the tip section had what I felt to be a better action for when using spectra.

The combination of all three has given me the best surf set I have ever used, and when my finger comes right I know I will be putting my baits a good 120 yards plus.

Cheers Lewy.

Spectra Feedback from Dave Crean

I love using the spectra line with my flexiwing. It has no stretch and stays out of the water a lot further than the old nylon did. It also makes retrieval a lot easier.

Muriwai Beach from Steve Naylor

We fished two 25 hook sets of our kite longline rig from the very top end of Muriwai in a light southwest wind on the 26/2/05. Both sets were baited with mullet and set straight out against the incoming tide. We caught a total of 13 snapper and a shark.

Te Arai Point Kayak Fishing from Paul Morris

After a recent harrowing experience where a 20 foot white pointer shark attacked my kayak while longline fishing at Taupo Bay around Christmas, I got up the guts to go out kayak longlining again.

Last Saturday I kayak fished with Peter Vesaloto off Te Ari point. We had about a meter rolling swell and it was calm, it felt quite good once I was out there.

Peter got seven good sized snapper up to 6lb and I got 12 good ones up to 9lb. AWESOME day, sorry we didn't take photos but I am doing it again tomorrow.

On Sunday we were back out again, this time on the incoming tide. Bottom longlining with Peter Vesaloto off Te Ari point I laid five sets in a rather extreme chop on top of the swell - a wind strength of about 20 knots onshore.

Peter got two pan sized snapper and I got 12 snapper around 30 cm long. Cheers Paul Morris

Fishing Reports and Fish Photos

If you go fishing, please send in a report and make Peggy's job of putting this newsletter together easier.

Don't forget to take your camera when you go fishing and send or e-mail in your pics please.

The link below will to you to our catch report form

http://www.fishingkites.co.nz/beachreport.htm

All fishing reports are welcome. They do not have to be recent. Any information about your kitefishing, surfcasting, boat, kayak or kontiki experience is welcome. If you want photos returned please include you mailing address.

kayak fishing shark article