Thread: Lower South Island Spearfishing

Wondering if there is anyone on the forum who has done some spearing in the lower SI. Living in Cromwell and my gills are starting to dry out after a year.
Was looking at the area between say Karitane and Moeraki but open to suggestions.

Karitane is a great spot. I've dived a lot there. Just park up at the north end of the beach at the bottom end of the peninsula there. You can walk around the rocks, but I just gear up & jump in right at the beach & just swim out. Plenty of nice reef structure, & you'll get all the usual staples- butters, moki, blue cod. I've shot some nice trumpeter & once kahawai there too. Just be aware of the East Otago Taiapure (check the MPI regs for proper details) in place along that stretch of coast- means there's a reduced bag limit- only 10 finfish & 5 paua (combined blackfoot & yellowfoot), plus you can't take any paua from within 50m of the shoreline around the Huriawa headland at Karitane.

I didn't dive Moeraki at all in 2016, but dived it a lot in the 2-3yrs prior, & again was a good spot. Just park & gear up at the lighthouse, & follow the track down the hill to the water. I don't usually put the top half of my wetsuit on til the bottom of the hill though cos I get too hot walking down in my wetsuit otherwise. Good butters, moki, cod & paua every time I've dived there. It can be a good spot as often if the east coast is a bit dirty or exposed, the little sheltered bay on the inner side of the peninsula there will be sheltered & significantly cleaner.

Probably half way between Moeraki & Karitane is Shag Point which is a decent spot. Don't bother with Warrington as it's never very fishy & it's just full of tiny undersize paua. The point off the end of Murderers Beach is another good spot- same species as mentioned above.

Moeraki, Shag & Murderers are all also outside of the Taiapure zone too.

Awesome Pixie, thanks for that. Once I have found all my gear in storage I will check some of the spots out. Do you just summer spear or can you spear all year round and still get good results ?

It's pretty quiet in winter, as well as cold. You can still do OK, you just have to work harder & longer.

I dive all year round. But over winter you do notice that fish numbers & size decrease significantly. It's still not difficult to get onto fish though if you do go out during winter. Plus there's always paua round. The biggest limiting factor with getting out over winter is the weather though.

Ok sounds good, be a lot colder than what I am used to. I presume there are crays as well as fish and paua at these spots ?

There's definitely crays around, but they are a hell of a lot harder to find. I used to live in Wellington & up there it was easy to find crays, but I only ever got a few around Dunedin.