Kawhia / Raglan

fishing report

August 21, 2020

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The fishing in the past week has been great, and we are thankful to be able to get out at all at the moment. There were no real donkey snapper pulled in this week, but the average size has been good with pannies up to three kilos making up the catch. As you can sometimes get in the colder months, the spiny dogs have been out in force, which can be a bit of a pain. Usually there’s enough table fish to ease the pain and hang in there. These mini sharks seem to come through in waves but there is often good snapper fishing in between.

I found that the sharks don’t seem to be out in the deeper water, so if you are having a problem in 50 to 55 metres, go out further to 60 to 65 metres and this sometimes makes the difference.

We are still concentrating our fishing off Albatross point at the moment, and it’s pretty productive.

Typically, as we near September, and the spring spawning cycle of snapper, we start heading toward Gannet Island where the fishing has proven great in previous seasons at this time.

Typical winter runs of barracouta, that like the cooler water, are keeping the tackle shops busy, and there are plenty of these stinky old toothies about.

To cut your gear loss, it can pay to go to really heavy tough mono or flouro traces, up to 130 lb even. This seems to be tough enough to handle the coutta, and still not deter the snapper when they are feeding.

Barracouta as bait hasn’t really fired this week, even though it’s often worth a try. Certainly good for puka and deeper water species.

Good old trusty squid then bonito would be the flavours for this week.

The weather on the days we have made it out has been magic. Occasionally flat calm, and pretty warm for this time of the year.

There’s a bit of rough weather forecast over the next few days, but hopefully later next week should see some better conditions.

Hopefully you folks from Auckland are doing ok, and are able to move about again soon, and we look forward to having you back on board when you can make it.

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Cheers

Rob

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Rob Fitzgerald is owner and skipper of Venturer Fishing Charters, operating out of Kawhia.

Venturer fishing charters