Hello fellow fishos.

The day started bright and early, as always. We launched from Mana Twin Bridges and headed north to Hunters in search of kingfish and snapper.

There wasn't much sign on the sounder, but we found big schools of kahawai, which also contained barracuda. We caught a few kahawai, as my son loves fresh kahawai. After losing a lot of gear to the 'barrys', I switched to a smaller 150-gram Shady Lady Long John slider (available at KP Marine) and jigged away. The jig was smashed and felt massive, so I braced for a fight. After a few mishaps and juggling the drift anchor while playing tag with the kingfish—every time it saw the boat, it would dive deep, forcing me to recover the line—I finally got it up. It was tail-hooked, which made it swim harder and feel different, but it was still a good fish.

After losing another five jigs, we moved on to catch a few snapper and kahawai closer inshore. As we headed home, the sea glassed off nicely. After a chat and calling our better halves, we got the OK to go deep to try for puka. After the first few drops yielded only scarpy, I switched to a big Harrier head and a 10-inch glow gurnard black Livie soft bait. The bait started to move so I struck, feeling loaded but dull. Thinking it was a scarpy, I didn't pay much attention until it started swimming in circles. To my surprise, it was a huge John Dory, a happy reward to end the day.

It was a very productive day with snapper, kahawai, kingfish, and John Dory.

Jason Grimmet