Tane Braithwaite Blue Ocean Fishing Charters

 Once again we’ve been sneaking trips in between the windy patches. Ratahi, with skipper Andy, has been fishing inshore between two and five miles out. The cooler conditions are bringing the water temperature down slowly but the snapper remain on the bite!

Simon Bennett was out fishing with his group of workmates. The fishing was a bit slow initially with lots of small snapper, which were thrown back. Then things hotted up during the afternoon – and, imagine Simon’s surprise and excitement when he pulled up a 6.4kg snapper. A personal best ever snapper catch for him. The second best catch of the week was an anchor and chain that came up hooked over our anchor!

Te Kuia started the week inshore and targeted the area around Karewa. There were a mixture of reef fish to be caught and everyone ended up with a feed of fish to take home.

The next trip was out to Mayor for three days targeting bottom fish around the island and a bit of deep-sea hapuka and bluenose fishing thrown in. The first day was a real challenge when the wind got up and during the night it changed direction necessitating a couple of re-anchoring manoeuvres. The next two days settled down nicely and some good table fish were boated. The best fishing was during the night for those with enough stamina.

Recently, we took a group from Kaingaroa Timberlands out for a day of reef fishing. They had to work fairly hard weeding their way through an abundance of small snapper to catch some decent fish. We managed to get some nice John Dory and good pan snapper for the day.

We cleaned the boat up and went straight back out with a small group, all mates, to Mayor Island on an overnight trip. No sleeping for this crew with the boys fishing all night. They produced some good-sized snapper, porae and some nice kingfish. The weather was rougher than predicted so an attempt to fish the deep water was aborted with decent swells close together, making hanging on more important than fishing. Scurrying back to the shelter of the island the chilly bins were full by the time the call was made to head for home.