Wellington / Kapiti

fishing report

October 23, 2020

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Right now, on a Friday afternoon I am sheltered up on the north end of Mana in 25 knots. It’s fishable out wider but uncomfortable! The harbour is fishing pretty well, particularly for gurnard which are naturally an awesome eating fish even though not much sport. The south coast is starting to calm down, and out west is fishable and looking ok if you are happy to shelter up in the lee of Mana or other areas of coastline. The swell on the south coast is supposed to ease to half a metre so it should be pretty good if that happens over the next few days.

There’s a few whitebait still around, and if the water clears enough should be good on the moki off the south and east coast.

There is usually a pretty good run of big snapper between Kapiti and Foxton around this time and over the next month traditionally.

Fisho’s make a beeline from Te Horo to Tangimoana with kontikis and kayaks, or whatever it takes to get amongst it, so I expect this will happen again as the snapper fishery has been very healthy this year.

Even though we are seeing the usual spring run of snapper, and kingies being caught off Hunter’s etc, the real highlight is the spring run of gurnard that make great table fare and are in great size and numbers at the moment.

In the harbour there are a lot of gurnard off Evan’s Bay and Ward Island, and down toward the harbour entrance. Point Journingham and Point Halswell are also great spots to try from both boat and land. Off the south coast Fitzroy Bay and Lyall Bay are also good options for chasing carrots and they tend to be a bit deeper here, like 20 to 30 metres.

To target gurnard, usually anywhere off the sand in 15 to 20 metres is the best go-to, and although they can be picked up often on lures, fishing with good quality fish bait like skippy, is the best way to get good results.

Gurnard are a colourful looking butterfly of a fish, and they equally like a nice colourful bait, which is why fancy flasher rigs and lumo beads are often employed with great success by gurnard fisho’s.

To be fair, they are pretty easy to catch on a bog standard, simple dropper rig, and there’s always the chance of picking up kahawai, trevs, teri’s, and snapper as by-catch.

If you are not having any luck on the droppers, try a running rig that pins the bait a bit harder to the bottom where the gurnard feed.

I’ll often anchor up off Point Gordon, and swing back and forth picking up cod, teris, and gurnard as the boat swings back and forth across the edge of the foul turning to sand.

Weather looks a bit iffy this weekend, but there are some good days coming end of next week so see you out there.

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