Hunting & Fishing 2 day contest

Perfect day - looking for skippies
Gisborne's east coast 16km away

25.30kg Kingfish

Day one's catch

Day one;

Murray and I leave the Tata ramp at 6.30am there is a small half metre swell and little wind, we head out to our spot BS1A to look for Hapuka, it is 32 km's to the spot and there is already a light sea breeze, we set up our first drift in 225 metres of water and Murray catches a 3 - 4 kg Bluenose, it takes another 3 hours for us to realise there isn't much down there as we catch nothing else, the only other boat out here is Men at Work (the boat I was on in the Tuna Hunt). We move off to the South Rocks towing lures, we get to the South Rocks and nothing has changed, still one fish in the bin, we check out a few of our spots and there isn't much sign, we find one rock that looks ok and we drop the anchor, one Tarakihi and a lot of rubbish fish returned. We pull anchor and head to Ariel reef and drop the anchor in the middle of the shallows and put out a sack of berlie, it takes half an hour to catch our first snapper, we bin 6 nice size snapper, 2 good Trevally and like all good fishing stories loose a couple of good fish, with fishing time nearly up, I see a large fish lunge at my bait as I was reeling the bait in to change it. What we thought first up was a large Marco Shark turns into a large Kingfish, it strikes and takes off, taking half of my line in its first run, its next two runs takes me down to the last 10 metres of line, I screw the tension down and start trying to turn the fish, slowly metre by metre I get the fish to turn and head to the boat. It takes another couple of smaller runs before it tires and we get it to the boat and Murray sinks the gaff into it, What a beaut. We check the time and we have 30 minutes to get the fish to the weigh station, with the boat running at 34 kph in a choppy sea it will take us 27 minutes to cover the 16 km's. After what seems like a power boat race we make it with 4 minutes to spare and weigh the Kingfish in at 25.63kg.

Day two;

We change plans and make the day a stay lining day for snapper, I have the feeling there is a big one in the area we were in yesterday. The biggest snapper weighed in so far was only just over 3kg's and one of ours is in third place at 1.99kg. We arrive at the Ariel Reef to find the sea is flat calm (at last a great day), we put a sack of berlie in the water, after half an hour of soaking Murray catches our first snapper around the 2kg mark, he soon has 4 more in the bin before I catch my first one, my second one is a good strike and I get a good fish to the boat where Murray gaff's it and we have a 7 plus kg snapper in the bin, over the next 3 hours the fishing slows and we have 10 snapper on board and the sea is still perfect. We pull the anchor and start to head to the Penguin reef about 6km away, the area seems alive with Skipjack tuna so out go the lures. With the sea so flat it is really hard to catch any, I manage to boat one and lose 2, we cruise round for a while but nothing will get the skippies to take our lures, we head home and weigh our snapper in at 7.60kg's.

At prize giving we take out first in the Snapper and Kingfish classes.

A lesson I still haven't learnt - weigh all your fish, with hardly any tuna caught the skippy would have taken 2nd place and would have gone close to taking first in the tuna class.

Finally the Snapper have arrived back at their usual haunts, where they have been no one knows.