Kawhia / Raglan

fishing report

February 4, 2022

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You’ve gotta love getting out west at the moment. Fishing is still very much on fire, and by all accounts should stay like that by my estimates until at least April. We have been getting plenty of good catches south of Taharoa in the 20-40 metre zone recently, with good numbers of snapper in the 15-20lb range!

In fact, snapper has made up the bulk of the catch, with very little bycatch, which shows just how prolific and dominant in the food chain they are.

Some days we pick up a few gurnard, and occasionally the kahawai are out in force, including some very large sea run specimens.

The flavour of bait just doesn’t seem to make a difference at the moment, and no doubt your favourite kabura lures will prove very effective when they are really on the munch.

We did our first overnight trip recently and threw in a bit of marlin trolling too.

Unfortunately, not much was seen this time, but it’s still early days for them, and they do appear to be in close when we have spotted them whilst snapper fishing.

We did manage to catch a few albacore tuna in the 8-10kg range, which are always fun to break up the monotony.

Stopping for a snapper fish right on dark, the result was out of this world. Smashing 4-8lb snapper two at a time! That part of the trip was repeated again the next morning.

This was down near Waikawau in 50 metres.

All along the 50-60 metre line there was plenty of big blobs of snapper on the sounder, so any fishing here should have you in the action pretty easily.

Game fishing is happening out in the 100-130 metres zone, which can be a fair hike, but it won’t likely be long and they will be in closer.

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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