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New Zealand - Tairua & the Coromandel Peninsula
Carl Muir
July 30, 2007
Coromandel - Saltwater Fishing Report
Winter can be a fantastic time to fish in New Zealand, with a mix of trophy snapper being caught 5 minutes from port in the shallows, big grouper from the deep, and of course our XOS yellowtail kingfish.
KINGFISH
Are still around in good numbers, and they tend to be bigger and fatter in winter. You just need to travel a bit further to find them. Big hauls of ‘kingi’s’ are still being caught, and it is great that everyone these days seems content to catch and release, maybe bringing one home for the table.
Big blade jigs and live jack mackerel are doing the trick on the outer reefs. You sure know you’ve hooked a kingfish when fishing jigs on the deep reefs, they seem to fight twice as hard as being caught on livebaits. A fair few hookups end in tears as the kingi’s are just too damn cunning, but of course there are plenty of smiles as fish come boatside as well!
HAPUKA
After a season of non stop kingfish action, hapuka(our grouper) are the real treat at this time of year. They are now resident over many of the outer reefs and rubble from 100m-200m. There are lots of different ways to target them including softbait, dead bait, livebaits and jigs. The trick usually is fishing the edge of the drop off or reef, and usually slack tide works best. There’s not too much better than a feed of fresh hapuka!
SNAPPER - COASTAL
Snapper are resident basically right around the Coromandel coastline from 3-10m. We had a few days that were blown out on the East Coast and chose to fish Coromandel harbour, and there seemed to be a lot of good snapper in close there too. Softbaits works a treat in this situation, especially over the winter when the fish are a bit more lethargic and need switching on.
VANUATU ESCAPE
In September we’re escaping New Zealand shores for a week to fish the Blue Marlin mecca of Vanuatu, aboard Shogun. Hopefully we’ll have a few tales to share from the trip!
SCALLOP SEASON
The commercial scallop season has started and it won’t be long until we can dive for these tasty morsels. In four weeks we have our Scallop Festival which I’m involved in organising. 80,000 fresh, fat scallops eaten by 6,000 people in one day and cooked up in hundreds of different ways and washed down with plenty of fine New Zealand wine.
COMING SEASON
From here on in the fishing just gets better and better. We’re taking bookings for our Kingfish Safari’s for the coming season. Get in touch if you’d like to come and tackle a New Zealand kingfish!
Eastern Coromandel Report
Carl Muir, Epic Adventures, Tairua
www.epicadventures.co.nz
Ph: 0274 834 011
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