Four days on the deep blue

Waking up at Mayor is a surreal feeling with the clear blue water around you and the sound of native birds singing from the trees on the island.

The sights and sounds, along with the distance from the hustle and bustle of city life is a feeling I cherish every chance I get.

After a morning coffee we pulled anchor and headed out a couple of miles from Mayor scanning the chart over the many rises marked - looking for favorable spots for bigger species. 

Dropping knife jigs and hapuka bombs failed to bring anything to the surface even after seeing some very good sign.  

 
Some of the promising sign we saw.

With nothing biting we changed tactics and trawled some lures while heading in closer to the island to try our luck at getting some koheru for live-bait at a "secret spot".  

Before getting chance to put all the lures out a albacore jumped on making our decision seem like a promising option - another smaller albacore was landed before arriving on the northwest side of the island.  

The "secret" koheru spot proved to be not that secret at all - resembling a marina with the amount of boats in the area. 

Koheru are like chocolate to kingfish and just about any other predatory fish including marlin - so they are in high demand by most anglers around Mayor 

The bait-fish seemed to be elusive and we soon realised why with the presence of kingfish in the burley trail, once again. 

The ’now famous’ 1/0 kingfish rigs came out again, proving there successfulness. Kingfish weren’t the only fish falling for the light weight stray-line technique - kahawai up to 3kg were caught and also some trevally. 


Shay with one of the many ’rats’ he caught.

While all this excitement was going on we also had our Shimano baitrunners set out the back of the boat which produced some nice pan sized snapper. 

After having no luck with the koheru we headed back out deep to trying our luck again in the deep-water before the afternoon forecast of 15 knots wind picked up.  

The wind bet us to it, playing a massive part on the drifts. The wind combined with reversing into swells proved to be a dampening experience with no luck with the fish except two very small grandaddy hapuka. 

Again we headed back to Tuhua Reef to try our luck. Big slabs of fresh kahawai were woven onto the hooks with baitrunners being the weapon of choice.  

The wind and swell worked against each other making fishing difficult. The boat swept from side-to-side fouling the lines in the rugged reef - at this rate we would need shares in a hook and leader company by the end of the trip.  

After countless snags and two bastard cods we moved in close for the night  once again to try come up with a fresh game plan for the next day.

Fingers crossed.


0 Comments

There are no comments on this article.

Leave a Comment

You must be logged in to make a comment. Login Now