Fishing Report
Hauraki Gulf (January 2012)
It has been a very busy waterway out here on the Waitemata over the last month. Boat traffic coming and going on holiday and day trippers have been making the best of the the best weather amongst what was a pretty average bunch of lows and fronts that have peppered the north. This has not affected the Auckland harbour fishers because we can always tuck up in a corner and keep out of the worst. It has been a bit of a snapper phenomena over the last week around the inner harbour. I would have to say on record , that over the last 22 years of my charter experience I have not seen the number or quality of inner harbour fishing as good as has been recently. It has not been uncommon to score over 50 snapper above 40cm for parties, sometimes in only an hour. Some of the fish are up to 5kg. What is more interesting is that they are schooling in unusual places, recently just 100m off the tank farm and also 200 m up the harbour from the harbour bridge!. The charter boat flleet seems to be a bit of a giveaway of the hot area, it is common to see trailer boats zooming past and returning an hour or so later to join in the action at the doorstep. The inner harbour does have its nuances. There is a lot of area closed to anchoring so check your chart. The harbourmaster is issuing warning notices and a boat anchored may be only metres in the safe area. The other gremlin is the strong current which can limit your technique. I try to work over a slack tide to get the window of tide right. I get a lot of questions about the choice of softbaiting, lure or whether to baitfish for snapper. It is interesting to follow the forums from the kayakers whom are mostly softbaiting. We are regularly having them drift through the patch of fish and to come to a conclusion for a preference of technique is hard. I am stumped on this. Productivity wise, it seem either can work at the time, so try them all and enjoy the variation. The reports coming from out further have been a bit scratchy, a result of dealing with a lot of south easterlies lately. The shallow reefs out from Pakatoa and the bottom end of Waiheke have had a good smattering of snapper and some nice kingies have shown up. The work ups further out at Gannet rock are still having school snapper but to be honest, you can do as good in the harbour at the moment. There have been some reports of skippies out from the Noises and off Whangaparoa. During the upcoming month you should find snapper in the inner harbour holes such as Kauri point, Stanley point and Bean rock. In the evening or morning some bigger fish will be up in the shallows so a line thrown in under the harbour bridge or at the tank farm will be amongst them. Chasing kingfish around structure or setting livebaits down deep around Crusoe rock may be a good option too.Eugen de Bruyn
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