Easter Break

With a 4 day holiday the family headed over to the sister in laws bach at Bowentown, a five hour drive towing Gazebo. The forecast for Gisborne was great for Bowentown not so great... typical. Good Friday was fine with a light on shore wind just enough to lump the sea, I managed to grab Bruce to crew for me and we headed out the bar, he said the snapper were in the 20 metre mark, true to word at 22 metres we went over a large school of fish on the sounder (moral to story... "listen to locals"). So down went the pick and the berlie, we had to wait 40 minutes for the first snapper to be hooked. Over the next 2 hours we landed and kept 12 pan size snappers and would have released another dozen legal but smaller fish, as quickly as it started it was over, I pulled the berlie pot up to find it was totally empty... (moral to story "good berlie brings in fish"). After pulling the pick we headed over to a spot called Steels Reef, interesting area, caught nothing but worth a second look at a later time.

Saturday took Cliff (doesn't like bumpy seas)and Gary (second ever time out in a boat) out over the bar, conditions hadn't improved any from the day before and Cliff was not looking good while we were going over the bar (the sea was a bit uneven), so I thought I would be nice and take them back inside the bar so we could fish the flat calm of the harbour. After 5 hours we gave up trying as the snapper were not there. Sunday had a harbour only contest but I decided to give it away as the fishing was so hard, good call as very few snapper were caught, if hardened local struggle what chance has an outsider got.

Came home on Monday to find the weekend weather had been fine and calm, great for fishing...bugger.

Tuesday.. Now I'm getting ready for our 5 day Cricket fishing trip up to Cape Runaway on Wednesday. The weather has turned to custard, gale force winds and heavy rain, flooding and road closures..great we leave in the morning... wait for the next installment.

16-17.04.11

16.04.11. I took the day off from fishing to do maintenance on Gazebo's trailer. As usual the weather kicked me in the goulies, on and off drizzle and not a breath of wind, the guys who went out said it was a perfect glassy sea with no wind all day...great and here I was grinding and trying to spray paint my trailer in between showers.

17.04.11. Having finished my work on the trailer Muz and I went out for a fish, we went south (I hate going south -never do any good). Bank rock - empty-nothing. Westpac grounds - nothing - empty again. Went east to south rocks, to one of our favorite spots - good sign, we dropped the anchor and missed to spot by metres but Murray caught a nice snapper so we gave it a go. Over the next few hours we managed to put 8 snapper in the bin after much work, we had to get our gear down to the bottom through the hoards of Barracuda that have returned for the winter, we are back to keeping the fishing supply shops in business.

10.04.11 tui average weight contest

71kg Bass and 8.4kg Hapuka (dinner for the Bass)

Hapuka and Bass and Deb

The Tui average weight only contest is a new idea and a strange contest to fish in, 7 species of fish, 1 fish per species per angler per day can be weighed in. Trying to work out what size fish to catch and to weigh in would be the problem.

09.04.11 Day One. Canceled due to massive seas and strong on shore winds....Ugly.

10.04.11 Day two. Slow start to the day, the swell and wind had dropped and the contest was on and by the time we loaded up and launched it was 7.30, we headed out to Aerial reef to our snapper spot for a stray line. The fishing was slow with the odd fish coming in, Murry's good run continued with his first fish weighing in at 4.9kg we ended up with 7 snapper, Tzer who were fishing not far from us radioed they were catching some large fish. As the current slowed down we pulled the pick and headed out to south rocks to see if we could find any work ups, but there were none the sea temp had dropped from 20 to 17.8 in a week. Plan 3 was bought into effect - go out to Baistows for a Hapuka drift, on arrival we found Tzer already there they had skipped plan 2 and gone straight to plan 3. Tzer were already fishing the main group of rocks, so we headed to a small group that we had found earlier this year and found good sign the sounder. My first drop I caught a small Bass (really small) Murray a small Bluenose, our second drop, we both had a pair of Blue nose. By now Tzer was following our drifts. Our third drift I had a 8kg Hapuka and half way up from 200 metres my brand new OKUMA (top of the range) rod snapped 30 cm from the tip, I managed to wind up the fish with much swearing. Mean while Murray hooks something big, it takes him 10 minutes to finally get the fish off the bottom in 200 metres of water, another 10 minutes later a huge Bass breaks the surface, we gaff it and bring it on board and estimate it at 40 - 50 kgs. with the fishing good I try another drop with my broken rod and hook up on another 7kg Hapuka. With 2 fish to weigh we leave and go back to plan 2 on south rocks, with no work ups we head home and weigh the bass. It pulled the weigh station scales down to 71kg's - wow - Murray is on fire, two "in a life time" fish in 3 weeks and 3kgs short of the club record caught in the same place last year.

At prize giving Murray manages first in the snapper, I am second in the snapper and second in the Hapuka.

My view on the Average weight only contest is that it still needs at least 1st and 2nd heaviest and then the average weight, it's sad a 71kg Hapuka and a 10.7kg snapper caught by another boat and Tzer's 3 - 8kg snappers didn't win anything, so hopefully changes will be made for next year.