Due to the spell of inclement weather in February, the team at Blue Ocean Charters has had a bit of a quiet time.

However, the two trips I did to Mayor Island on Te Kuia provided some quite interesting results.

The first trip consisted of a mixed group of keen anglers wanting to get out and have a bit of fun and experience Tuhua (Mayor Island) close up.

Most people see the island in the distant haze from shore and those that venture out love seeing it close up.

Fishing near to the island, the crew managed to put together a good feed of tarakihi, porae and snapper.

Some of the worst tangles still produced some good fish.

Travelling to and from the island gives the opportunity to pick up some skippies to add to the bait selection for the day.

The second day was a little bit slower with a group of locals from Tauranga.

We headed off to Mayor Island in search of trevally and kingfish with some mixed results.

We managed to catch a few trevally and a great number of undersized kingfish which were returned to potentially grow to their full size – this being dependent, of course, on their penchant for schooling under boats and sampling the baits on offer.

Although playing with kingfish is a lot of fun, our attention turned towards getting fish for the table before the call came to wind up and head for home.

Sashimi enjoyedA good number of colourful species came on board; rainbow wrasse, pink maomao, granddaddy hapuka, along with tarakihi and porae.

We decided to head back towards home to catch a bit of evening fishing close to shore in some shallower water.

A few skippies took the lures on the way back which added to the excitement.

They promptly got turned into sashimi.

We first stopped at the 10mile to pick off a few tarakihi then stopped at about the 30m mark only a few miles out for a cheeky evening fish for snapper.

This is where one very lucky lady managed to get the fish of the week.

Shin Ae Kim managed to land a nice 9lb snapper, resulting in a great end to the day.

 Bonus day-offRatahi headed out on an inner-reef fishing trip on Waitangi Day.

Fishing in about 30m of water, the fishing fired up as soon as the anchor went down.

Small snapper and rat kingis were the main catch, with the odd takeable snapper coming up in the 30-35 cm range.

Moving a bit further out, the good fishing continued and over the course of the day three people actually got their limits on snapper.

Everyone else took home a good feed for dinner.

What a great way to spend a bonus day off work.