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

]]> http://kapitifishing.co.nz/snapper-are-still-here/feed/ 0 http://kapitifishing.co.nz/where-are-all-the-snapper/ http://kapitifishing.co.nz/where-are-all-the-snapper/#comments Fri, 03 Apr 2009 09:17:40 +0000 korin http://raumatibeach.co.nz/fishing_info/?p=107 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.]]>

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!!

]]> http://kapitifishing.co.nz/raumati-beach-7-snappers-3-kahawai-2-gurnard-2-mackerel-1m-shark/feed/ 0 http://kapitifishing.co.nz/10ft-12-ft-great-white-caught-off-kapiti-boat-club-snapped-line/ http://kapitifishing.co.nz/10ft-12-ft-great-white-caught-off-kapiti-boat-club-snapped-line/#comments Mon, 16 Mar 2009 10:17:06 +0000 korin http://raumatibeach.co.nz/fishing_info/?p=51 Went fishing this morning at 8:00am to catch the low tide change at 8:30am. We caught 3 Snapper, 5 Kahawai and 2 Mackerel. We also caught a good 10 – 12ft Great White Shark. This was at a depth of about 20m and about 100m south of the Kapiti Boat Club. I don’t know how rare or common this is however I thought I should make this quick post, it would be good to hear if anybody has sighted this Shark or has caught anything like this before. I know it of its size and type as it took my half fillet of Mackerel then jumped about 8 ft out of the water – after stripping my line about 30m from the boat. Obviously it cut my line but I wouldn’t want this near our 8ft boat – What can am I saying I caught this directly under our boat!!.

Friday Fishing

Friday was forecasted for bad weather, however by the time work ended it actually looked not to bad. So being new keen sea fisherman we decided to head out. We got to Kapiti Boat club around 5:30pm. The high tide time was scheduled to be at 6pm that night so we thought that we would get out in perfect timing for the current to drop. There were a lot of boats out so we decided to head down south a bit. The sea had a bit of chop on the water but like most other evenings we predicted this would drop. Having not fished a lot when the tide was high we weren’t sure if the fish would be found at the magic 20 – 30m mark or shallower. On Thursday we did catch the Trevally at 16m so we decided to tryout in the 20m mark for something different. Something strange occurred however, by the time we got out the current seemed to be already averagely strong. Considering that the tide changes day to day by about an hour later, we didn’t quite understand how this could be. Not too phased we decided to drop our lines – I went straight to a standard dropper rig while my brother used a Snapper rig using his homemade downrigger. I got into some heavy action virtually straight away, sending me from left to right, to right under the boat. It was obviously a large Kahawai. Sure enough after a good fight it was a large 5lb Kahawai. We decided to keep this one as we weren’t sure if we would have anymore luck. My brother had a whole pilchard on his Snapper rig and from previous experiences it seemed to attract Barracuda.

He was using his homemade downrigger again and it seemed to unclip every so often. We couldn’t tell whether it was fish doing this or whether it was just the current unclipping it. This wasn’t a bad thing as every time it came out he would get good takes as his bait drifted to the surface. What was bad was that his line would get bitten off once he felt the take. A sign that it was obviously Barracuda. They were stripping his 50lb without much effort. However you can’t be 100% sure it was one till you actually see one. So one of the times he pulled his bait just above the surface, a large Barracuda jump a metre out of the water and took everything – so that settled it. He didn’t get one in and that was about the only good action we did get, I did catch a nice Mackerel towards the end of the evening. I heard that Mackerel makes great bait so we decided to keep it. We headed in and later for dinner we ate the large Kahawai, battering it similar to Fish n Chips. It actually tasted no different to Fish and Chips which surprised me as I thought you would taste the stronger Kahawai flavour. This could be due to the fact that we bleed all our fish straight away by simply cutting there gill plates. It is actually very important for meat flavour to kill the fish very quickly, then bleed it. Killing the fish quickly means it doesn’t stress the meat and bleeding gets rid of the blood in the meat. Not killing a fish quickly or bleeding it will lead to that fishy taste and also the white looking meat. The meat should be almost translucent. Another issue is bruising of the meat. The Mackerel we decided to fillet and would use this for bait the next day we went fishing.

The nice 5lb Kahawai caught. It made bloody nice Fish and Chips - but they need to be well bleed straight away as you can see it has already been guttered and bleed

Conclusion
It was a nice day fishing on Friday, the current was just to strong however to get the rigs down deep enough. Perhaps we will try drift fishing when this occurs again. We did also get talking to some local experienced fisherman. They had a really nice Zodiac Boat which gets right across to Kapiti Island, something I think we might try later on but not right at this time. One of them was a young guy who had taken the day of School to go out fishing. I think it’s fantastic to see young people getting out, really enjoying and learning to fish. He was saying that he loved fishing of the sand over fishing of Kapiti Island as you tend to catch larger fish off the sand. Reefs tend to house a lot of under size fish. This has also been our experience from reef fishing when trying it out off Pukerua Bay, where we only caught small reef fish. However I did talk to one of my friends recently who told me you need to anchor just of the reef within the sand and try to attract the fish out from of the reef. So we definitely will be giving Pukerua Bay another go sometime soon. The young guy also mentioned that one of his friends had recently caught a 20 odd kg Kingfish from off the sand – which is bloody huge when you think about it!!

Saturday Fishing

The weather was a bit stormy which brought up the chop on the water, however it also brought large workups

It was a bit more stormy on Saturday and there was a lot more wind. The sea had a small swell however there was a lot of chop on the water. This meant that we would get the odd wave swamp the boat and yes I happened to have my back to this and I took the full effect of been soaked on a regular occurrence. We got out at about 12:00pm and predicted that low tide should have been about 1:15pm, so we would get that tide change nicely. As we predicted the current was fairly strong and heading south, but knew this would drop fairly quickly. I decided to put on a 10 ounce sinker with a standard dropper rig. This got me down however it felt like a lot of weight for the rig and I wasn’t sure if the bait would be well presented to the fish. I used 2 large pieces of squad for bait on large hooks (I would use the special black magic mouth hooks however I have found them extremely hard to get the hook out due to there shape – not easy if you are trying to release a fish – they do however hook in the side of the mouth, which is a good thing) . After not catching anything for awhile I decided to check my bait – sure enough it was still all intact. I dropped it down again and virtually straight away my line went into a freespool and I was into a small 2 lb Kahawai. This is a great eating size for Kahawai so we kept this one. Unfortunately it also snapped of the 10 ounce sinker which was costly. Seeing my $$$ literally sink to the bottom of the ocean I decided to revert back to the 3 ounce ball sinker. Surprisingly it actually got to the bottom, so i quickly mentioned that the current was dropping – right on cue. I also should have mentioned that my brother was using his downrigger again. He was using a very large piece of the Mackerel on a Snapper Rig. After about 40mins the current had dropped to virtually nothing. We had both changed our rigs to Snapper rigs with 3 ounce ball sinkers. My brother was still using the Mackerel and I was using a large strip of Squid. My brother started to get some good bites and started to explain to me how it was the Mackerel and he had read how good it was for Snapper. I shrugged this off as just speculative blurb, as the Squid had proven itself already. So while he kept getting bites and loosing his bait, I remained silent and biteless. Feeling a little desperate to get into the action I decided to give in and see how this magic bait would work. Sure enough when I pulled my line in there was still a huge piece of squid still on my line – it hadn’t been touched!!! Talk about picky fish. So I took this off and replaced it with a Mackerel fillet. Mackerel has weak flesh so you need to wind and thread your bait well with the hooks – if you have rubberbands then these work well. Sure enough I got nibbles almost straight away. I waited for a bit before giving a good strike. It felt on however it came of straight away. We started to wonder what sort of fish this was – could it be another shark? or perhaps a Barracuda. I pulled my line up and found my fillet of Mackerel was gone. This wasn’t Barracuda because you would expect your whole rig to have been cut. Our focus turned from the nibbling to wondering what on earth was down there. My brother started getting nibbles again as I placed a new piece of Mackerel on my line. This time he gave it a good strike once he felt the fish on. It was well hooked and we eagarly looked over the end of the boat to see what on earth would surface, would it be a shark? No, from the deep came a very bright red fish. My first thought was a nice size Snapper, but then as it got closer to the surface we saw it was quite obviously a huge Gurnard. So big it was hard to get it into the net. This must have been what was eating all our Mackerel. We got in on board and quickly whacked it on the head which killed it instantly. Then it was placed on our bait container as you can see the photo from above. We bled it and also guttered it but didn’t see any of the other Mackerel in its stomach so that still remains a mystery. I can’t think of what else could have eaten the large pieces perhaps it was Snapper? This was definitly the catch of the day.

This was a HUGE surprise catch. We were wondering what was taking our Mackerel bait. Turned out to be the largest Gurnard I have ever seen!!

Through the rest of the day we also caught a few Kahawai (released) a nice pan size Snapper and also another smaller Gurnard. The waves and wind picked up quite a bit so we decided to head in but not before trying some drifting through workups – unsuccessfully however. Throughout the whole day there were lots of work ups, tonnes of bird activity around. Some people drove there boats through the middle of these towing Kahawai lures through them, I don’t know how successful this was nor what they were going for.

It seemed to make the workups disperse and then rejoin at a different place. I would have thought simply parking your boat up and casting into the kahawai would have proven to be a better option rather than motoring through them with a large boat. Anyway I know when we chased a school of Kahawai a few weeks back by far we caught a lot simply by casting a rubber lure wherever they were jumping. Almost one everytime we casted. We headed in and met up with the young kid from the previous night and he was amazed with the size of the Gurnard. He said we should have entered the fishing competition, however we didn’t know there was one on. But I don’t think we would have entered anyway due to the fact that we are still very much new to this type of fishing. We headed back home having caught 2 Gurnard, 1 Snapper and 4 Kahawai (2 Released). A nice catch for about 4 hours of fishing. One thing we did notice, and it seems to happen all the time, is that we caught all these fish in about 1 hour and there was about 3 hours of no fish action. We are almost at the point where we might head in one the fishing dies – however how can you ever tell that this has happened. Perhaps this is why we end up staying out longer than we should, the possibility that you could catch a fish at anytime….

The fishing died after the Trevally and the current started to pick up as predicted. Once we started to feel that our sinkers weren’t sitting at the bottom we decided to give my brothers home made down rigger a go. Basically for those who don’t know what a down rigger is, it’s a heavy weight tied to a rope which has clips attached to it. You attach your line to this clip and drop the down rigger into the water. This will take your line to the bottom attach via the clip. Once a fish takes your bait the theory is that your line unclips and you bring your fish in. The whole purpose of one is just get your line to the bottom without having to use heavy weights on the end of your line. Our rig was made with a diver weight belt and some rope. Attached to the rope we had a piece of nylon and clothes line clip to act as the clip that would release your line.

Because this is totally experimental we didn’t know what to expect. My brother went first and dropped him one down, sure enough it got right to the bottom and the clip seemed to work. Although shortly after the clip decided to unclip the line and it slowly floated to the surface. As his line did start to surface he hooked up on a Snapper. It was not a bad size one, about 40cm. Our other attempts didn’t bring us any luck like that first time and at the end of the day our two rigs actually tied around each other. Also our anchor started to drift, so it became a bit of a mess. Still we did catch 3 fish and not bad sized ones either. We did fish till it got dark, which was about 8pm. Also the wind seems to drop quite a bit as the land starts to cool when the sun goes down, so you tend to find some very nice still fishing evenings out here. When the current started to flow like a river we decided to give up on our down rigger (it weighed almost 5kgs yet still got caught in the current) and call it a night. I suppose yet again tonight we will have Fish and Chips!!

I might think about going out tonight if this rain eases, the wind doesn’t seem to be chopping up the water, but we will see. The current should be perfect today been fully high tide at 6pm – so i would think some great fishing around this time… happy fishing