Sometimes you don’t want to get up super early for a fish. I’m never in a rush, and my boat is always packed, hooked onto my car and ready to go before each trip. All I need to do is wake up, shower, have coffee, put my camera in the car, and I’m off.
Today was the start of Hauraki Gulf Spring fishing, and with it, our thoughts had turned to finding workups and dropping jigs for hungry reds and perhaps a king or two. A cruisey start with a 6 am departure from my place saw us launching approx. 7 am. Workups aren’t generally my thing, and I don’t usually go hunting for them. But once Spring arrives, it’s hard to beat the site of gannets diving and whales and dolphins rounding up pilchards for the feast. With snapper, kahawai and kingfish all getting heavily involved in the commotion.
With all things workups, some intel goes a long way. It’s a big Hauraki Gulf, and unless you have an open array bird-finding radar. You’ll want a couple of starting points on where to find them. Generally, the workups appear in more or less the same areas each year. But it does change up, and those areas can span several nautical miles. So you want to do your homework before you go. The first place to start is social media – Fishing Pages or our very own Hauraki Gulf Fishing Group are great places to gather info. Local tackle shops typically have the inside word and, even better, your mates who are already out fishing.
Date – 8/9/22
Launch – 7:15am
Return – 1pm
High Tide – 10:30am
Location – Hauraki Gulf 35 metres and the shallows
Best bite – The whole trip, except for high tide
Species caught – snapper, kingfish, kahawai, trevally & gurnard
The number of fish caught – Too many to count
Biggest fish – approx. 70cm
A buddy was already out and filled me in on where the action had been happening. So we promptly went straight to this area and right on cue. We had dolphins, whales, gannets and hungry fish at our disposal. This intel saved us a good 45 mins of hunting around the Hauraki Gulf looking for the action. Cheers mate!
We had three on board and fished soft baits, slow pitch and sliding lures. Everybody hooked up straight away in typical workup fashion. The fish size was nothing spectacular; 40cm size fish to start. We all soon switched to slow pitch jigs, which improved the fish size, with fish in the 50-55 cm range beginning to come on board. A few Kahawai and a nice fat kingfish of about 8-9kg. Initially, you hope big snapper after the first run, but then the unmistakable tail beats of a king give it all away. Although the actual workups died off pretty, the fishing continued until we had enough.
I couldn’t resist heading back without casting lures into the shallows in the hope of turning up a dog!
After navigating our way back to the coast for a quick session before heading home, it didn’t take long, and within half n hour, we had three solid fish, around 5-6.5kg, all released, as well as one smaller pup at about 3kg
What an epic half-day! Back on the trailer at 1 pm, a bunch of big fish released a fat king and some school snapper for dinner.
The Hauraki Gulf turned it on, and we will be back soon!
