Bay of Plenty

fishing report

May 20, 2022

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We’ve had a reasonable number of days out considering the weather, with some pretty tough going ones mixed in there. At the moment, it’s been hard to pin down any decent tarakihi fishing, although this species is often hard to find one day, and plentiful another.

We have tried all our usual spots, the 80-metre mark, south and north of the Astrolabe (outside the restricted area of course!) and the terri’s seem to have been replaced with juvenile snapper recently, but as has happened in the past they are bound to turn up again.

We got a few around the Penguin Shoals, so I guess it pays to just have a look around with the sounder and keep moving.

It seems to be as good fishing in the harbour as anywhere recently, with nice snapper action, and the inevitable autumn run of big trevally.

Even well up into the harbour in just three or four metres up onto the banks, there are good sized snapper. Around the entrance, either inside or outside at change of tide is fishing really well, and off the beaches and out to only eight or ten metres off Matakana is also proving to be good. Soft baits catching some really nice fish cast forwards of the drift.

This is the time of year that deep dropping kicks off, usually out around the Mayor Knolls – south east of Mayor Island, and there’s plenty of gemfish out there for sure at the moment.

Happily, there also seems to be some of the better bluenose action we have seen in recent years around the 300 metre banks, reasonable size and numbers a welcome addition back to a fishery that the commercial long liners even gave up on a while back.

Remember bluenose are often a way up off the bottom so count down your metred braid if you have it, or drop to the bottom and wind up a good section of line to match where you are marking them.

The big game season is certainly at the tail end, but we have seen quite a few schools of small skipjack nine to twelve kilometres north east of the entrance, which means there will certainly still be billfish about.

The skippies are what you might call bite size, around the barrel of a coke can in circumference, epic baits live for kingfish and marlin.

Talking of tuna, the first catches of bluefin were weighed in off Gisborne on Saturday, smaller models around 45kgs, but this signals the beginning of the winter SBT run and no doubt the exodus over to Waihau Bay.

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Cheers

Russ