Bay of Plenty
fishing report
January 31, 2020
All sorts of good things happening with all this warm water we are getting at the moment. One boat out of Whakatane was locked up to an absolute monster tiger shark until it finally broke at the double. Normally reserved for more tropical waters those beasts! Probably just as well as I don’t fancy dealing with 300+kgs of tiger shark at the boat thanks a lot. There’s tons of skipjack and albacore around out towards Mayor and coming in closer on occasion. These fish can be picked up trolling with skippy lures, and the albies make for a brilliant feed.
They also jump all over kingfish and slow pitch jigs, so have some gear ready to threow over if you see the tell-tale blipping signs, or while your mate is pulling one in.
Marlin are all about, and we saw one whilst diving at Schooner Rocks, so you don’t have to go too far. It’s action all over the place at the moment.
There’s a lot of krill in the water currently, and that, in turn, just brings everything else up the food chain to life.
Finally we do feel like the Bay of Plenty again, unless of course your focus in on the kingfish, which seem to be pretty hard to find in good numbers at present.
The harbour is fishing really well for snapper, particularly in the evenings using soft baits or drifting with straylines.
Maybe not all a massive size, but some huge numbers of good pan sized fish which make the best eating.
Western side of Mayor where the kelp meets the sand, between Nor west Bay and Honeymoon Bay there’s a point where you can fish the edge in about 15 – 18 metres
Fish are easily caught off Matakana or along the Papamoa beach 20 metre zone at the moment too.
Out wide the game fishing is all go, but there are also some massive bluenose being boated up to 40kgs
Terakihi have been in great shape, some really good sized fish popping up at the Astrolabe and between Schooner and Motiti over the random small foul patches known as the 80 metre mark, but it’s more like 77 metres.
There are also koheru around the western side of Motiti, which means there will also be kingfish so it’s worth a look there.
See you out there
Cheers
Russ
RUSS HAWKINS ...OWNER/SKIPPER FAT BOY CHARTERS
PH 5755986 OR 027 2863638
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