Hitting the road to a new destination always fills me with a sense of adventure; fishing in a new location makes a trip that much more exciting, and the anticipation of what you are going are you catch increases tenfold. Hapuku, along with snapper, is my favourite species; however, with my current boat downsized to a 5-metre alloy centre console setup for lure fishing, it’s not quite the proper rig to head 30nm offshore and into the abyss in search of denizens of the deep.
With Penn releasing a new range of Fathom reels designed for all pelagics and coastal species, we made the easy call to go big and fish deep. A couple of phone calls later to old-school legend Jason Clarke and plans were afoot.
Conditions were bluebird for most of the day, it was late spring, and the water on the shelf had a nice clean blue tinge. Rigs were baited, and down they went. And up they came with sharks attached to them. Unfortunately, this would be the story of the day. Shark after shark all day, I’ve never encountered such an infestation of them.
Jason had a prototype 750gm jig with him, which, given we were catching so many sharks on bait, seemed the logical thing to drop down. It didn’t take too long, and after only 20 mins of jigging it in slow-pitch style, I hooked our first puka of the day on the 50-pound set. The 15kg fish gave me a pretty reasonable scrap, and eventually, we boated our dinner.
We thought our luck had changed here, and Jason was trying pretty hard to put us on the fish, but alas, shark after shark continued to come onboard. Even on the jig!
We did manage some tasty by-catch of tarakihi and an XXL golden snapper. And it wasn’t until late in the day that Mark Stephenson picked up the trip’s only other puka.
Who uses manual gear for puka these days?
I do, always have done.
And in all seriousness, fishing in 200-250 metres with a bent butt rod and a correctly set up harness like the Black Magic equaliser isn’t taxing at all. I can easily fish all day, assuming I’m hydrated with some ice-cold cans of Lion Red. Admittedly, dropping for bluenose in 400-450 metres can be a bit punishing on the manual wind, but I don’t like big bluenose from a culinary perspective so much these days.
And with puka daily bag limits on the east coast rightfully slashed and long overdue, is it even fishing using electric reels?
