Thread: Fishing tomorrow!

Typical West Coast panny.
How deep?

20p ?

Nice. Got a measurement. Looks close to 20.

What an awesome morning on the water at a leisurely start of 9 a.m. cruising across the bay we came across boil ups acres and acres of kahawai!.



It was just me and the boy on this trip and he soon got into them,we landed 7 before thinking that's enough and off to another spot to try for something different.
We had heaps of current and heaps of Burly but just nothing was biteing and the sun was punishing so we headed in closer to the coast for a dive.

Not much happening in there either but I shot a couple of nice blue cod.

Up and off to check another spot.

Down on a weed bed I could see from the surface....no fish about but a nice surprise of beds of greenlip mussels.. all pretty small but maybe in another year or two.
Round to spot 3....a few known rocks.

Breath up....dive and have a look....work my way round the group of rocks and look into some caves underneath.
Viz on the surface isn't great but it's crystal on the bottom.
Don't see anything so swim out to another rock....it's a bit deeper and a long shallow cave under it.
I do a number of dives and basically just have a look and back up each time but I'm getting more comfortable.
Have worked my way round the rock almost back to were I started and bugger me here is a cray......and I recon I have a fair chance of grabbing it on a new breath.
Yell out to the boy... I've seen a cray!
Breathe up ...dive.... Fuck it's not there anymore.....or am I in a different spot?
Couple more dives but didn't see it again.
Back into the shallower rock and now I can get some bottom time.....like 10-15 seconds
Spot a cray.....it's in a little cave in a jumble of rocks.
Couple of dives to sus out where I might be able to get at it.
Decide on a hole in the rocks about the size of my head....I can see feelers and horns and stuff my arm in blind and got my hand on it but it was off!
So stoked!

Into shore. A couple of groups of people having a drag for flounder.





What an awesome day.

Originally Posted by veitnamcam

What an awesome morning on the water at a leisurely start of 9 a.m. cruising across the bay we came across boil ups acres and acres of kahawai!.

Attachment 189046

It was just me and the boy on this trip and he soon got into them,we landed 7 before thinking that's enough and off to another spot to try for something different.
We had heaps of current and heaps of Burly but just nothing was biteing and the sun was punishing so we headed in closer to the coast for a dive.

Not much happening in there either but I shot a couple of nice blue cod.

Up and off to check another spot.

Down on a weed bed I could see from the surface....no fish about but a nice surprise of beds of greenlip mussels.. all pretty small but maybe in another year or two.
Round to spot 3....a few known rocks.

Breath up....dive and have a look....work my way round the group of rocks and look into some caves underneath.
Viz on the surface isn't great but it's crystal on the bottom.
Don't see anything so swim out to another rock....it's a bit deeper and a long shallow cave under it.
I do a number of dives and basically just have a look and back up each time but I'm getting more comfortable.
Have worked my way round the rock almost back to were I started and bugger me here is a cray......and I recon I have a fair chance of grabbing it on a new breath.
Yell out to the boy... I've seen a cray!
Breathe up ...dive.... Fuck it's not there anymore.....or am I in a different spot?
Couple more dives but didn't see it again.
Back into the shallower rock and now I can get some bottom time.....like 10-15 seconds
Spot a cray.....it's in a little cave in a jumble of rocks.
Couple of dives to sus out where I might be able to get at it.
Decide on a hole in the rocks about the size of my head....I can see feelers and horns and stuff my arm in blind and got my hand on it but it was off!
So stoked!

Into shore. A couple of groups of people having a drag for flounder.

Attachment 189049

Attachment 189050

What an awesome day.

That is an awesome bay to mess around it.
We have not been out there since council in their infinate wisdom made the estuary "Dog on lead" only last year.
Previous to that we walked the bay every night thru spring, summer and autumn tide permitting, with the odd stuff up involving swimming with phone held up high!!.
If all the shellfish gatherers ever work out the best ones are on the main beach it will be rooted in no time................................sadly

Originally Posted by mikee

That is an awesome bay to mess around it.
We have not been out there since council in their infinate wisdom made the estuary "Dog on lead" only last year.
Previous to that we walked the bay every night thru spring, summer and autumn tide permitting, with the odd stuff up involving swimming with phone held up high!!.
If all the shellfish gatherers ever work out the best ones are on the main beach it will be rooted in no time................................sadly

Nobody takes any notice of dog on lead Mikee.....four dogs off lead this arvo.
Dont let the barstards take your lifestyle..put dog on lead at car park....once in estuary there aint no bird nests....at least none that will survive the tide!

Always a good day out even thou the fish were hard to find. Must of been in the wrong spot Cam, all i have heard all day is guys catching too many snapper and big ones over the last 2 days.
Yesterday mates mate caught 4 around 20lbers within less than 2 hours on the rods then another guy caught his quote 6m of rabbit Island , nothing under 48cm.
Then see another post of 6 snapper today in tinny in 7m and nothing under 8lb, biggest 18lb.
They on the bite again.

Originally Posted by deer243

Always a good day out even thou the fish were hard to find. Must of been in the wrong spot Cam, all i have heard all day is guys catching too many snapper and big ones over the last 2 days.
Yesterday mates mate caught 4 around 20lbers within less than 2 hours on the rods then another guy caught his quote 6m of rabbit Island , nothing under 48cm.
Then see another post of 6 snapper today in tinny in 7m and nothing under 8lb, biggest 18lb.
They on the bite again.

Yea mate I blame the tardy start.
The goal was diving with my Son and rod fishing a secondary.
I have never had much luck with the sun high in the sky.
Let's see what tomorrow brings

Originally Posted by deer243

They on the bite again.

Usually fickle in jan. To be honest i have given up trying to catch them for that month.

However my fishing diary shows some excellant catches in feb most years. Those catches are in shallow too 8-15m were all the entries i looked at tonight

I'm getting my fizz on about hooking into them again


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Tardy report.
Out with @stingray Nelson anaversary for mainly a dive and find some new turf mission but went early for a chance of some decent snapper.

Snapper Intel from a fellow forum member proved to be spiky dog hot spot and we gave up and headed into my never fail pannies spot(ok it's failed maybe twice)
Got a nice feed or 5 of pannies then scouted some turf to drop stingray on.
Spot decided on over he went.....bit of a swim round....then stationary bubbles pouring up.....park boat directly on top of bubbles and mark spot......more swimming around and more watching bubbles from above for me and park the boat on another mark when I see him working.
Far to deep for me those spots but it's a couple more marks we have to farm.
In stark contrast to the Sunday when I had the whole ocean to myself ( well me and my son) Monday being a public holiday and good weather saw boats everywhere!
Joe up from dive he talked me into ankoring for some tearakihi he had seen.
I was pretty over it by now....I had been fryed by the sun 3 days previous but gave it a go with the gear I had.
So ankors stuck....been drifting and motoring last 40min watching bubbles but no ankor up and catch a Terri he says

Ankor stuck did a bit of a reverse circle on it but I had a diver so sent him back down

Round to look at some more turf on a breath not a bottle.

I had a bit of a swim but I was sunburned and dehydrated by day 4.
I did find a couple of almost legal paua tho....tho I doubt they will ever get legal where they are.
All in all a good morning,couple feeds of panni snaps and crays and great company as always.

Another great day, plans made on the hop …an hour before was a trip to the top of the hill to build fitness , two txts later if we are getting a wet arse let’s go floundering…keen as ..

Crew understandably were already were already doing other things, twisted jelly arms ( my son) and set sail.

Got to the spot sent the young fella out wide …current was supposed to be pushing out ..one side of the channel was running hard out , our side was eddieing hard running back up the bank our net being dragged in the middle of this …..well turned into a shit show.

So we hauled the drag to find a net rolled up into a tangle, fortunately with little weed and crap the tangle with a bit of effort and paintience was recovered back into a net,

Changed of tactics up into the head of the reach , netted us two flats , but heavy mud saw me washing the victims before gutting and icing them down, somehow I managed to turn two into one…much to everyone else’s delight … @Pengy knows this pain …now so do I.

Another shallow drag binned a couple more along with some inchers sitting in in the bottom of the drag.

Back to the start a cold beer and a change of tide , the flood rushed we got a few bites, then the flood stopped , went sideways and then decided to ebb harder than it had flooded ,then just stopped . 2 hours into the flood we saw a wee push creeping ..out of time we hauled the drag in for the final time only to see a big flat in the tangle ,make it to shore ,shake itself out give us a flap of its tail and disappear into the tide …

Guess that was the story of our day…binned a few ,lost a few , rain came and went , tide did weird things ran in out and sideways ..company was excellent and even with all the challenges and amount of fresh water about we managed a feed.

Cheers VC small VC and my lad ….always a memorable trip. Great folks and yarns

Its time to hunt some snapper again !!

Fully loaded and pretty excited



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Well its fair to say the snaps are back on the bite round here, and in shallow. (10m)

We had no problem loading plenty of 30-35cm brim in the bin this morning along with a couple of gurnard and a trevally.

Released a bucket full of under 30cm ones too.

Had dad on the boat with me and the boys which is always a treat to have three generations fishing together Especially this time as he's fresh back from stewart island and had plenty of awesome stories !!

Launched early at low tide, only others to have a crack at that skinny water was a couple with matching (his & hers) fish pro sea doos.

I thought of you both @MB & @Shearer they are pretty tricked out machines and made short work of the skinny water. We also saw them when they came back in and they too had done very well

Sorry about the lack of photos, a piss poor effort on my part. I'll do better next time

Get amongst it you nelson lads






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Walked around one of the flood zone tracks the other night, saw about twenty eels in a small tributary running into the main pond, water was an orange/ red with algae Blume, is basically stagnant, relies on rain for flow down the valley