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The thing that excites me the most at the moment is the beginning of the moki season.  These awesome fish are so good fun to catch, and of course, make pretty good eating too.

They are a real land-based fishing prize, and it’s usually the surf casters that are picking these fish up off the beaches and weed lines from shore.

It’s a seasonal run when the fishing really peaks for moki, and right now they have started to appear.

The best place in my book, for targeting them is Palliser Bay.  The really keen anglers will head all the way to White Rock, but there are heaps of other good places you can go to catch them.

Other great spots like Ocean Beach, and Whangaimoana, are much easier to fish and there’s good moki getting caught there right now.

Fishing for this particular species requires a bit of perseverance and dedication, but the patience is worth it in the end.

The type of terrain favoured by moki is also habitat to a lot of reddies, kelpies and other ‘junk’ fish that will pick away at the baits and sometimes create a bit of a nuisance of themselves.

You’ll want to be fishing right up against the reefs on a lot of occasions, where the fish shelter and feed, which means putting up with the bycatch as par for the course.

Also, if you’re serious about catching moki you really need to use shellfish or crab for bait, or even cray tail, which takes extra effort to bind to the hooks, but makes all the difference.

Keep persevering and you will end up with the win eventually, which is really rewarding and makes a nice change from picking up the normal species.  You’ll also have a great chance of catching snapper using the shellfish baits too.

The water has really cleaned up which is when the south coast and Palliser fish the best.  After the moki have started to turn up, perhaps triggered by an increase in the water temp, other species also tend to come on.

There has been some massive gurnard taken recently, and nice snapper out there too.

Palliser Bay is easy to get to by boat from the harbour on a decent day.  As soon as you get to Turakirae Head, you’re at some of the best fishing the south coast has to offer, and past there a bit further towards Ngawi is a big drop off you can fish starting at 50 metres and down to 300 metres.

Here you can catch anything from big snapper, cod, teri’s and kingfish, and even decent hapuka down to 100 metres, and out deeper puka, bass and bluenose.

The Trench is fishing really well for bluenose at the moment, with plenty of big ones around.

Also, nice puka and bass fishing in the present conditions out there.

As we expect after a lot of time off the water, the west coast is also fishing pretty solid.  The usual haunts, Fisherman’s, Hunter’s etc, all fish pretty well in the right moon and tide conditions and big kahawai workups out at Hunter’s is always a healthy sign.

There has been some excellent snapper fishing of late, and this time of year the big ones start moving in quite close. Surfcasters are picking up snapper in good double figures, with the odd 20 pounder north of Peka Peka.

Our part time deckie, Anton, managed a lovely fish around the magic 20-pound mark last week (see photo above) , and other reports of similar fish are coming into the shop from time to time now.

Once you’ve fished the deeper ground around the turn of the tides, it can be really productive patrolling the 70 metre mark anywhere from Ohau to Kapiti up the coast, where there are anything from teri’s, snapper, kingfish and even the odd puka straying in.

It’s a good time to be out there, so get into it.

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Cheers

Pete

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‍https://www.petelambfishing.co.nz/

027 443 9750

Petelamb2@gmail.com

Shop - 15 Kingsford Smith St, Rongotai

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