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).
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