Bay of Islands

fishing report

November 7, 2019

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It’s been fantastic to have a little spell of great weather. This last few months have certainly been pretty frustrating, and finally getting a nice break over the long weekend was the first of it’s kind for a while now.

Beautiful, clear hot sunny days, I could hardly remember what they were like! And the action accompanied this of course with some good fishing.

We were looking at a great week ahead but this cold wind has just taken the optimum conditions off a bit.

There’s been a few boats hanging on the main centre foul in shallow, which is a good option for both soft baiting and bait fishing at the moment as the snapper start to move in for summer.

The edges of Tapeka point fish well if you can time your fishing when the wind and tide are going in the same direction.

This has been firing on a regular basis with a good berley trail helping to get the bite going and keep fish in the area.

This year has been a lot different from last as far as snapper holding areas go.

This time last year there were a lot of school fish to be caught along the Brampton Reef structure, and the water temps were a lot warmer. At the moment we are still measuring between 15 degrees to mid 16’s, so with a few more Easterlies the currents should bring in favourable conditions.

One thing I did notice was that there was a lot of red algae that appeared on the two hot days we had.

It might be an indication of a repeat of conditions we had a few years ago where it was like fishing in a red sea. Weird to experience and definitely clouding the visibility, but we still managed to catch fish.

The reefs that are worth looking at targeting in the coming weeks are area's like Whale Rock, Centre Foul and Mitas Foul.

They should be starting to fill up with a few scouts prior to our pre-spawn.

There are still a few large schools of slimey mackerel in the middle ground around 35 mtrs mark, and the usual kingfish schools will start to gather up around the bait as per usual.

A good plan of attack is to hit the soft baits early around the change of light, then move on to live baits or berleying up for that big moocher J

Tight lines

Regards Darren