Spring is officially here, the days are getting warmer, longer and day light savings is around the corner. Water temperature is on the rise and as a result there is a lot of life moving into the Hauraki Gulf and acres of fast-moving pilchards are getting chased by whales, dolphins and diving gannets.
On our recent charters we are encountering some big undisturbed workups with the fishing as hot as it can be and hardly any boats out there, which makes for a perfect set up for us to enjoy the fishing to ourselves.
The bins are filling fast with a mixed bag of big Snapper, Kingfish, Gurnard, Trevally, Kahawai and the odd John Dory. Fishing among the diving birds and dolphins never gets old, just nature at its best providing a cool back drop to the full action fishing. This is just the start of the warm season and from what we see so far we’re pretty sure and confident that it’s going to be a cracker of a season.
Best working lures for snapper, and the rest of the bottom feeders, currently are the Shimano Baku Baku and Dotera in the darker colours; slow winds on a super sensitive Shimano slow jig rod makes the job fun and easy with at least one or two trophy fish landed on most trips.
Volume of kingfish is increasing as well with reefs holding decent numbers already. We are also jigging for them in the workups with some good results (getting larger snapper up in the water columns as by catch while jigging for kingfish).
My favourite form of fishing, top water, is slowly underway and showing results with the inshore works proving better at the moment. We expect that in the next few weeks all the popular spots will fire up.
I’m looking forward to take you out and experience it from first hand.
The gulf is truly on fire, join us on board and enjoy this magical time of the year.
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