15-16.01.11 Liquorland contest

15.01.11 Day one. We left the ramp at 5.oo am and headed out into an ugly sea, the sea breeze was already blowing and a 2 metre south swell didn't help matters. We headed to south rocks, where schools of Kawahi should be, like the last time we were there. The idea was to jig for Kingfish and then troll for tuna, and have a bottom fish if we could find some sign. Well the plan was working, we arrived to several schools of Kawahi, my first drift past using a jig (we are a bit new at jigging as we haven't done much in the past.) lasted 2 drops and a hit resulting in no jig, in went the next jig bang again no jig, this isn't good so we changed methods, we decided to put out a live bait so Murray spun a nice size Kawahi we hooked it up and let it out, a couple of minutes later a slight tug on the line it was gone trace and all. Murray and I looked at each other and dam the sharks have arrived, they must be rather large Marco's (normally they arrive in October and leave about March, this year they haven't been around to now). We then put out a set of lures and went on the troll after half an hour I had a hit on one of my lures and wound a small albacore tuna to the boat where I quickly lost it, first of the season for us. We found a good rock with lots of sign and dropped the anchor to find the wind and current were going in opposite directions - that was going to make life difficult. Over went another live bait, it lasted a bit longer but it to just disappeared with half of the trace - sharks again...by now we were hearing over the radio of lots of reports of sharks everywhere, one shark cage operator reported 8 Marco's and blues around his cage, the most he has ever seen at one time. By now we were losing traces one after the other so again another change of plan, out went the lures and a motor over to Aerial reef, I managed to get another strike and this time landing a 6.380kg Albacore tuna (came 2nd in the contest). We fished Aerial reef for two hours for nothing, we then put the lures out again and went for a troll home...1 fish and 1 fish to weigh in, another bad day out, but we were not alone a lot of boats reported the same sort of day, sharks and nothing else.

16.01.11 Day two. Again at the ramp by 5.00am and this morning it is blowing a gale - strong offshore winds. New game plan head out deep and hopefully the winds will die away the further from land you are. We head out and 20 km's out the wind has quietened down, 40km's out the north westerlies has changed to light northerlies, the sea is a wee bit sloppy from the swell and the inshore winds. The bottom has plenty of sign at 187 metres so we set up our first drift, yet again all we get are sharks (spotty dogfish) the score is 5 to me and 3 to Murray when finally I haul up a 7kg Hapuka (groper) hopefully our luck has changed, next fish is a Tarakihi and then it's back to sharks except they have gotten a whole lot bigger around the 20kg mark, which is back breaking work hauling them up from those depths. By lunch time the lures are out and we were heading into Gables, the water temp is up to 19.4 but we don't find any tuna. On reaching Gables we find a rock with 5 metres of fish around it, it takes us 5 attempts to anchor on it, only to find the Marco's rule the water above them, the first 2 drops with my gear never reached the bottom before a Marco had swallowed the first lot and was last seen somersaulting on the surface with my gear hanging off its lip, the second I tail hooked and that gave me a fantastic fight before getting it to the boat and releasing it. So with that it was out with the lures again and a slow troll home for no reward. Tally for 2 days fishing = 3 eatable fish. A couple of boats hit it lucky and won most of the prizes and the majority had nothing to show for the weekend(fish or prizes).

New Years break

And better (view to the south)

Kept on getting better

Amazing sunset

The view to the east
(sun setting)

The view

Our camp site (freedom camping kiwi style)


News years day was Easterly so I headed to our camp site for breakfast and had a relaxing day with the family after a hectic day at work New Years eve. Gisborne hosts the Rhythm and Vines music festival attracting 25000 kids (over 18's) to town. Gisborne's population is around 35000 so things can get a wee bit busy.
02.01.2011 For the life of me I can't remember what we did or where we went, I don't think we caught anything again but we put the cray pots out.

03.01.2011 We checked our pots early and had 5 legal crays in the pots and we then headed out to South rocks, the sea breeze was already getting up, we went to a spot that has been good to us in the past and anchored up it was slow fishing but we managed to catch 4 Tarakihi (yay the first ones in weeks) Just off the stern a work up developed so we pulled in the anchor and head over to it. We got the jigs out and slow drifted along side the work up, Murray managed a good strike and after 5 or 10 minutes had a nice Kingfish on board (20.850kg's) not to be out done I soon had a good strike on my jig and after about 5 minutes managed somehow to drop the fish... dam... the language wasn't very good on the boat for a while. The sea breeze was howling by 10am so we packed up and headed home.

04.01.2011 Again we checked the pots early, but we weren't early enough someone else had done it for us, we managed only 2 legal crays in one pot with a large conger eel inside. We were heading out to the drop off, about 5 km's out we went through a bank of fog to find on the other side the sea breeze was already blowing, aa quick change of plans we turned and headed over to penguins reef, we found 10 metres of fish sign on the fish finder. We anchored beautifully on top of them, we managed to catch about 18 Tarakihi while catching and releasing the same number of Red Cod. Again the sea breeze was in full force by 10am, we pulled the plug again and headed home.