If you catch a Kahawai you will want to bleed it fairly quickly otherwise the meat will spoil or you might end up with that fishy taste. The best way to bleed a Kahawai is to cut up through the gill latch just past the gills (with a sharp knife) then up through until you reach where the spin and head met. This will cut through first the Ventral Artery, and then through the Dorsal Artery and Vein (found just under the vertebrate).

Next pull the top of the head back towards the spin and blood should start to squirt out. You can also cut up from the bottom of the tail through to the vertebrate (this cuts through the lower Dorsal Vein and Artery). If you are on a boat do this over the side since it can get messy. It’s a good opportunity as well to gut the fish and clean out any excess blood using the sea water. To keep the meat in its best form you should then put the Kahawai on ice.

Bleeding Kahawai is a good idea and the sooner you do it the better the result in terms of meat quality. A common mistake is that people don’t bleed Kahawai soon enough and the result is horrible tasting meat which might put them off eating Kahawai ever again. This is a common mistake with many newer fisherman and as a result Kahawai often get labelled as a second class fish for eating. If you bleed Kahawai and preserve them well then this is a great source of fish for dinner and since it’s a very easy fish to catch your dinner plate shouldn’t get empty.

For more information on the Fish Blood Circulatory System VISIT THIS LINK

We did a lot of fishing without much luck at all (just some small sharks) and the hours seemed to just pass. The good thing was that for about 1 hour the wind did drop and it was really nice. But obviously as it did switch to Northwesterly the wind picked up and the sea got choppy again. It was around this time we decided to head in shallower, we saw some good bird activity up and down the beach. We anchored at about 13m of water and the fish finder showed a lot of activity – probably mainly bait fish, however where there are bait fish there are generally larger fish chasing them. In a very short time we started to get takes and wasn’t long before one held. It was a nice size Kahawai. A short time after that we got another Kahawai and as soon as I dropped my line in the water again, I caught a Gurnard. My brother caught a couple of smaller Kahawai, but just this small amount of activity really made the day. I guess the lesson learnt here is to not always rely on one depth to provide you with all your fish. We saw that there was a lot of bird activity in the shallower water and although we didn’t catch Snapper we still did catch Kahawai which I really rate as an eating fish. I guess in the future, if one spot isn’t producing fishing then we should move on… there are times however when a bit of patience is a good thing and sticking to one spot can bring results… this was just not one of those times

We weren’t expecting much activity till the current dropped and sure enough when it did drop I hooked into a nice eating size Snapper. I caught it on my smaller rod which had a standard dropper rig, using small hooks and small strips of squid bait. Around this same time my brother caught a nice small size Kahawai, by accident, after leaving his hook just over the side of the boat. We didn’t catch anything when the current dropped completely however we did see lots of fish sign at around 12m and this looked like some sort of fish school, however when we did put our lines to this depth we never caught any fish nor did we get any bites. There were some very large trees in the water floating around so I wonder if maybe this was just larger sticks floating around at this depth.

Kapiti Snapper

Once the current started to head north, from the incoming tide, we got more activity. I caught another Snapper the same size as the last one and also I caught another Kahawai. The Snapper this time was caught on my larger rod, which was equip with a Snapper Rig with a large squid tentacle on it.

We didn’t get any action for another hour or so and our lines started to lift higher in the water due to the increase in current. My brother was dealing with one of his lines when suddenly his larger rod bent over quite dramatically. This line wasn’t hugely deep and so he saw that he had caught a Thresher Shark winding his line up a little. He could tell it was due to its large thresher tail. We had to pull in all our lines quickly and also take an ore off our small 8ft Zodiac Boat to prevent the shark from biting into a pontoon or its tail hitting us. Because my brother had 80lb line on he could fight it a little, however we weren’t too happy about bringing this shark too close to the boat so we didn’t try to land it. It wasn’t long before the shark wrapped itself around the anchor and it snapped the line. Unfortunately the camera didn’t take the photo early enough and therefore I couldn’t get a photo of the shark.

to slow to capture the shark

This wasn’t a huge shark, it probably would have gone 3 – 5 ft however its tail was quite a sight as it hit the water. We kept fishing here for a while however nothing more was caught and also there were quite a few boats starting to join this spot so we tried a little shallower at the 20m mark. We didn’t catch anything at this depth however there was again quite a bit of sign on the fish finder.

fish sign

Doing some more tests we went to a depth of 50m in the channel. However there was no sign at all on the fish finder at this depth and after about 30mins we gave up and went to a depth of 30m. At about this time the wind changed from calm southerly to a strengthening north westerly which chopped up the water. It didn’t take us long to catch a really large Kahawai (which we released) and straight after a nice size Gurnard (the first for this summer season). We decided to head in as the wind picked up and what was a nice day turned into a choppy mess (though the fish were still biting, we had enough fish for dinner).

So it was a good day fishing, some interesting things we found was that a good fishing depth was the 25m – 30m mark. We found that at 20m we didn’t catch anything though there was still quite a bit of sign around. At 25m we saw lots of fish sign at about 12m however we aren’t sure what this was, perhaps it was a shark? Or maybe just wood in the water? Either way it was a fun day and glad to catch a good range of fish…

We went out from Paraparaumu Beach, the tide was very high, there was no wind at all and the sun was shinning. We were very excited to finally see what the bottom of Paraparaumu Beach looked like and to have proper depth readings from our new Fish Finder. It was a bit of a home job connecting the transducer to the back of the Zodiac with a tent pole and the battery was sitting loose inside a lunch box container, with the actual reader bolted on to our hatch (as you guessed this isn’t a portable fish finder however going on advice you are better spending your pennys on better equipment rather than portablilty)…. but to our surprise it actually worked really well. With this setup it virtually felt like a portable fish finder and was perfect for our small zodiac setup.  Like with most new electronics we didn’t even bother to read any instructions rather just played around pressing buttons till it showed us the dotted read outs of what might be fish or schools of bait fish. We got really excited when we started to see lots of dots around and so we dropped our lines but soon we relised this is probably just a lot of sticks and junk in the water… I decided to put in the fish symbols to help us better work out what fish look like. I was very impressed that it actually was so powerful it could read our lines as we dropped them and also this helped us work out at what depth our lines were. Knowing this I felt very comfortable that when this reader showed a fish, then there was a fish down there. I’m very skeptical as to whether fish finders are showing fish or something else, however now working with this one i’m certain it does its job very well. We got to the magic depth of 20 – 25m which served us very well earlier in the year and was interesting to see just how flat the bottom really is. Also very interesting to see how the channel suddenly drops from about 25m – 50m in places. You would expect that on both the top and bottom of this drop would be places to find fish.  We always knew there was the drop off to the channel here however we were never quite sure the exact location as our previous sounder only showed fish and depth was just a number, not a graph.

Anyway the fishing wasn’t great however we weren’t expecting much at this time of the year, i think it’s still a bit early for the beach style of fishing we do. In saying that we did catch a Kahawai and two got off. We got a barracuda and also something very large – probably a shark but maybe a king fish, but it snapped our line so we will never know. I like this fish finder, it tells you when it finds fish by beeping and it gives good readouts when you want to survey the bottom. Paraparaumu has some interesting bottom contours which i’m sure we will explore very well over the Summer months.

My brother with the 7kg Snapper caught as the sun was setting. As you can see behind him is the Kapiti Boat Club. This was released

We went out today and caught 4 Snapper, sized between 4kg – 7kg, drifting between Kapiti Boat Club and Raumati Beach, at a depth somewhere between 20 – 30m. We also caught another 2 pan size Snapper. We released 3 of the 4 large Snapper due to the fact they were just to large for us to keep, also they were older Snapper ideal for breeding stock. I caught two of the four large Snapper using the Snapper rig with a Large piece of Squid. My brother caught his two large Snappers on the Snapper rig using fresh Mackerel.

We went out at about 10am and there was only a slight southerly breeze. It was cold, but atleast there was a perfect blue sky. High tide was around 10am so there was no current and we headed to a depth of about 25m just in front of Kapiti Boat Club. It seemed like a lot of Kahawai activity had just happened and it didn’t take us long to get into action. It was a huge take and my brothers line started to strip out much like the time I caught the large shark… So naturally we were on edge and we started to talk about what might happen if this is a large shark and it surfaces next to our small zodiac. So I grabbed a small Manuka stick we had in the boat and also my camera in the hope to capture the previous experience where the shark leaped out of the water. It was around this time that my smaller rod got into a fish, but rather than bringing it in I decided to just leave it on the drag and focus on this larger fight. We peered into the water nervously awaiting what it was (you know the feeling, staring into the blue depth awaiting what mysterious creature comes up from below), then it suddenly appeared. No it wasn’t a shark it was in fact a 6+kg Snapper. This was huge and larger than our previous 12lb Snapper. It was obviously an older Snapper as it was getting a small hump on its head. We talked about keeping, however this was only brief as it was obvious that this was a prime breeding fish. We released this Snapper and I brought in my smaller line. I had a small pan size Snapper on my line which we kept. I must admit ever since hooking the 12ft Shark in our little boat I am on edge when we get something large on our lines… It’s really stupid and a bad way to think as it does ruin the experience a bit, however i’m sure that as we get more and more use to the sea we will get more comfortable with it. It was nice to see this old Snapper return and it was a good decision as we would catch a lot more during the day.

My brother with the first large snapper caught within 5mins of us fishing off Kapiti Boat Club

The first Snapper being released

It wasn’t too long after this that I also got a huge take. Straight away we knew that this must be another large Snapper. We were quite amazed with this type of action as our previous outing we thought the Snapper might have already left the Kapiti waters. Also we haven’t ever caught this many large Snapper. Sure enough after a good fight I got another large Snapper which would have gone 5kgs. This Snapper again had the showings of a hump on its head so I decided this should be released. We took a quick photo before I released it. Stoked with this action we could have finished the day already satisfied however we were determined to keep fishing till the next tide change which was at 4pm.

me with our 2nd large Snapper, just before releasing it

We didn’t catch much more for awhile and as the current picked up we started to drift south towards Raumati Beach. I picked up another Pan size Snapper and my brother caught a few Kahawai during this time, also we caught a lot of Spiny Dog fish. These Sharks have poisonous spikes around there dorsal fins so they are a bit hard to handle and are annoying as they are hard to release with the re-curve hooks. We also caught a few carpet sharks which were all released.

We caught lots of these Spiny Dog fish

This is me with the 3rd larger Snapper - though it was the smallest out of the 4 it is a great eating size

We didn’t get any action around the low tide change and we weren’t sure why – until I pulled up a blind eel! As soon as this happened we were off back up the beach to the spot where we had caught the previous two large snapper. On the way up the beach we noticed a long line out deeper and saw close to it a black shape moving about on top of the water. We weren’t sure what it was until we got closer and saw it was a large Seal. I wonder if it had taken the fish off the long line or if it was just enjoying itself floating around on-top of the water in the sun. We took a quick photo then threw it some pilchard before heading back to the spot.

If you look close enough you can see the large seal on top of the water

Closer shot of the 7kg Snapper just before it was released

My brother releasing the 7kg Snapper

Caught alot of these small carpet sharks

Well we went out today and caught about 4 Kahawai and lots of Carpet Sharks, a string ray and aBlind Eel  but no Snapper??? Well we went out just off Kapiti Boat Club and started fishing about 200m north of the Club. We caught a Kahawai there and I also caught an undersized Blue cod… a bit random I thought considering we were over a sandy bottom. There must have been quite  a bit of Blue Cod there, as our lines kept getting stripped of bait.

The Tide was pushing us towards the Marine Reserve in the north direction and since we were drift fishing using our claw anchor we decided to head further south, so we didn’t drift into the reserve. We noticed a few buoys out in the water, which were obviously long lines. We drove past them, by about 200 m south and decided to drift back towards the Kapiti Boat club. It seemed like the great fishing we had experienced with the Snapper had dried up. We caught Kahawai however there was no sign of Snapper – perhaps it might have been just a bad day. As we drifted past these long lines, it was obvious that they had been sitting there for awhile – about 2 hours had gone by and noone had gone to check up on them. There was quite abit of Kahawai activity around the long lines and we started to get some tugs on our lines as we drifted past. We hooked up on Carpet Sharks, we caught about 3 and released them all. To top it off we also hooked up on a Barracuda and as we pulled it up we saw another 2 -3 more swimming around it. I wonder if there were quite a few dead or dying fish on the long lines which would have attracted all the shark and Barracuda activity. We decided that these were not the fish we wanted so we headed back to the spot north of the Boat Club where I caught the under size Blue Cod – in the hope there was more in this spot. By the time we had gotten there the tide was on change and the current had virtually stopped. We also noticed there were a few more long lines out along the beach, so we stayed clear of these. We caught another Carpet Shark there and also a couple more Kahawai, however there was no sign of any other type of fish. Lots of Kahwai action happened all around us, but there was not Snapper. It was a perfect cloudless day and very still water – a good day for a lazy lay back fish, however it was a bit frustrating not catching any Snapper. To end the day we caught a Blind Eel – which might have accounted for the lack of action.

I know the Snapper do migrate to warmer waters as our coast cools down so I wonder if they have started to do this already? It was a bit of a downer day compared with our last fishing trip, where we caught a lot of Snapper, however I guess that’s fishing for you. At Least we can catch Kahawai… maybe we need to look at our techniques again and vary our fishing if, in fact, the Snapper have migrated. I don’t know when they do leave our waters, so I can’t really say they have gone as our next fishing trip we could catch a lot and today might be just a poor fishing day.

Kahawai and Gurnard caught on one line

It was predicted that it would be an average day for fishing however what we found was that there were plenty of Snapper. Infact previous to this day we had only caught 3 Snapper in a fishing day. They weren’t huge Snapper just the nice good eaters. We hadn’t tried any drift fishing before however I think the claw anchor works really well and from today’s experience it shows it’s a good technique to use when the current gets up. I think the claw anchor works so well that in theory you shouldn’t have to ever drop the sand anchor as the claw anchor seems to move perfectly with the currents and when the current dies it grips in the sand enough to keep you still.

You can catch some good fish just by letting yourself drift, especially the times when fishing from a fixed anchor is just to challenging with strong currents. One other thing we noticed was there was a fish down there that was nibbling all the time but wouldn’t easily hook up. It was taking our bait, which was Mackerel. A good strike pulled up a Gurnard. So if you are finding on the sand that something is nibbling but not taking then its probably a Gurnard. Also we noticed that out from where the river enters the sea at Raumati Beach Pools the sand below seems to catch your sinker or perhaps there is weed down there. It seemed like there was a clay bottom sticking the sinkers, however because this was just out from the river it might have just been foul. But we did have great success with Snapper at about the 20m depth just off the Raumati Beach Swimming Pools. As a small surprise just as we were pulling in our lines for the day my brother caught a 1m long Shark. It had a good set of teeth on it, but we released it as we had already had plenty to eat. A great days fishing with perfect conditions!!