17.11.12 Discount Fishing Deep Water Contest

17.11.12 With a forecast that started the day off ok but with increasing winds in the afternoon, we had a early start, up at 4am, at the ramp by 5am, on the water at 5.15am. We headed to Thunder rock 38 kms away to find  sharks and more sharks, haulling them up from 180 metres hurts the arms and back so off to another spot I call EB1A, a further 10 kms away. We find another couple of boats there, which is ok as it is a large area, we start drift fishing as the wind starts to pick up. Lucky for us the current is going the opposite way to the wind so the drift is slow. We manage to catch 7 gem fish (really good smoked, in fact the best smoked fish I have eaten.) the heaviest weighted in at 8kgs, 2 Trumpeters (also very good eating, my favorite)  heaviest at 6 kgs and one Hapuku also weighting in at just under 8 kg. By early afternoon the wind changed to the north and began to kick in and it was time for the long slog home.

18.11.12 Looking at the forecast we decided not to go out, with a sever gale warning in place with 25 - 35 knot westerlies turning sou-west lunch time. The 5 boats that did ended up in the shallows a couple of k's offshore by 10am in very windy conditions, so a day on the land was a good decision.

 Glass - it doesn't get any better

 45 km's out from the ramp and 220mtrs of water

My first jig caught Hapuka 5.3kgs

24.11.12. Day 3 Up at 3am, pick Murray up at 4am, on the water 4.20am, we head to the spot we were at on the 17th. After 70 minutes of steaming we arrive at the GPS mark I had entered and Bugger it was the wrong one, we had overshot the one I had wanted by 7 km's, but by chance it was the spot I had wanted to go to last week, so all was good. The wind was zero...just a sea of glass...excellent. We dropped our gear in 220 metres of water and I was rewarded with a Hapuka around 7kgs, Murray managed a shark. We motored back to the mark and I dropped the baited rig down again as well I dropped down a Jig. After doing the jig thing for 5 minutes  I was tried and put it in the rod holder (how people do it all day is beyond me), meanwhile Murray was hauling up another shark and my jig rod bent over, thinking I was caught up with Murray I wound up and up popped a Hapuka around 5.4kg ....(my first ever on a jig). Another drop and another Hapuka around 9kg and another shark to Murray. by 10am the bite was over, except for the sharks and gemfish. With lines out at 3pm we headed home at 1pm and still there was no wind, amazing day - a sea of glass this time of year. We managed 2nd in the jig caught Hapuka section, 2nd in the Trumpeter and 2nd in the Gemfish.

Bowentown

Being on holiday is great, Deb and I loaded Gazebo and hitched it on to the Prado and headed up the her sisters batch at Bowentown, The weather was good and on Saturday I  managed to get a couple of guys I know who are good fishermen to crew and we headed over to Mayor Island on a perfect sea of glass, We dropped anchor on a reef 3 km before the Island in 70 metres of water fishing was slow but we managed to catch a dozen Terakihi, one snapper and live baited 3 John Dory, not a great days catch but we heard later from the locals that the fishing was really hard at the time so I suppose we didn't do to bad then. Tuesday I took my brother in law who was over here from Australia out for a fish, again the conditions were great but no matter what we did we couldn't catch a thing, the Bay of Plenty is such a fickle place to fish, where as Poverty Bay where I am from seems to yield consistently, maybe the early explorer Captain Cook got the names around the wrong way.