25.01.13 Enterprise Holden Bay Bonanza Competion

Day one.... Canceled, Woke up a 4 am to hear the rain on the roof and the howl of the wind in the trees, 25 knot southerly and swell increasing to 1.5 meters. Back to bed try again tomorrow.

Day Two .... Not much better than yesterday, but the wind had dropped a bit, only 10-15 knots from the southeast. So the call was made to let the boats go, we head to the Wharerateas to hide under the cliffs, hoping to get some protection, but no the sea was yuk. We dropped anchor on the inside neddle's area to find only small Kahawai, so we then head out to the neddle's proper where 6 other boats are at anchor. We find good sign on the sounder and drop the anchor, berlie in the water and straylines deployed. Bang a hit and the trace is gone times 4 rods. Baracoutta  are at their worst, we hang in retiring trace after trace, the other boats are pulling in small snapper one after the other. Finally I get a bait to the bottom and after 15 minutes a hit and I wind in a 7.18kg snapper. After another 3 hours and dozens of traces later, we pull the pick and head over to another boat to find they haven't seen a coutta at all, we drop the pick near them and have problems hooking up to the bottom and manage to catch 3 Tarakihi and that was that for the day.

Day 3 .... Still southeast but 1-5 knots, we head out from the Tata ramp and head to Baistows, the conditions are sloppy but ok. We drop our gear in  210 metres of water and I hook up instantly, a 8 kg Gemfish and Evan brings up a smaller one. We move over slightly and again soon as we hit the bottom I hook up, this time a small Bass and Evan a  5 kg Bluenose (good size for  Baistows). over the rest of the morning we catch 5 Bass, 2 Hapuka  (we even release one small bass, one that seemed ok, normally they have blown up from the change in pressure) and 4 good Bluenose all around 5 kg. We follow our game plan and head over to south rocks where we come arcross a work up of Kahawai, we break out the jigs and I land a Kingfish around 10-12 kg's Evan is straight into a good sized Kingi, takes around 15 minutes to get it into the boat and its a beauty, I release mine and it swims off none the worst for its stay on the boat.
Evans Kingfish weights 27.68 kg and takes 1st place, My snapper takes 2nd place and one of my Bluenose takes 3rd at 5.8 kg, so we didn't do to bad after all.