I love it when new lures come in the mail, and the legends at Pure Fishing always have new exciting potential products for the NZ & Australian markets to send my way for testing.
And I’m not sure there is a better time of year to go fishing than Spring; everything comes to life in Spring, and there are large volumes of fish moving en masse into the Hauraki Gulf right now. If you want to experience workup fishing at its best. It’s happening right now. The abundance of marine life in the Hauraki Gulf gets better and better every year. And with the sheer volume of snapper moving into the HG, this could be the best spring/summer season in the last 20 years. That said, It baffles me why we allow commercial fishing inside the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park. It’s nonsensical to refer to the Hauraki Gulf as a Marine Park and let commercial fishing take place in the marine playground of over two million people. But let’s not dwell on the negative, with the fishing getting better and better every year.
Date – 12/10/22
High Tide – 9:52am
Launch time – 9 am
Return to ramp – 4:30pm
Moon – 2 days after the full
Lunar calendar – indicated average fishing
Best Bite Time – All day
Size range – 35cm – 68cm
POB – Hamish Beasley, Jack Lusk, Noah Beasley, Alistair Arkell
Lures used – Berkley Skid Jigs, Berkley Forktail Minnows, new lures for testing
Upon leaving the ramp, the plan for the day was to find the workups; catch enough fish for food – the total fish required was 14 fish to split between four people. Then switch to bear hunting, with a strict catch-n-release policy.
Finding workups can be frustrating, but a simple game plan goes a long way. First, understand the areas they usually happen in, get some intel before heading out, and then follow the birds and take a good pair of binos. Your best indicator is gannets moving at pace in duos or squads of 3’s & 4’s. They only expel large amounts of energy to find food. So follow the gannets – find the workups.
We ran into stunning workups after approximately 40 minutes using this simple formula. Then, for 2 hours, we had it all to ourselves—the Hauraki Gulf treated us to a spectacular display of birds, dolphins, whales, and snapper in a feeding frenzy. All were gorging themselves on big fat pilchards. The giant whales put on a show, breaching side-on and scooping up bait in one foul swoop! Oh, to be a bait fish. I can only guess how many metric tonnes of snapper and baitfish were present—truckloads.
With Lures deployed, everything was getting smacked either on the drop or as soon it hit bottom. And the paygrade was excellent, with fish size ranging from just legal to approx 5kgish snapper. The new lures were excellent and accounted for all the bigger fish – unfortunately – we can’t show you these fish and Lures just yet. If you want to improve your skills as a fisherman, it’s essential to try new lures and techniques. Notwithstanding, fishing the same old way is bloody boring. It may take you a trip or two to learn new techniques, but in the long run, you will enjoy your fishing more and become a better fisherman. All skills you can pass on to others.
We encountered a wide variety of fish sizes today, and it’s a perfect example of a healthy fishery. If you were only catching smaller fish, that would be a concern, but that’s not the case in the Hauraki Gulf. Sure we’d love to see more XL fish, and that’s why – at HG Fishing – we have a permanent release policy of big snapper unless the fish is mortally wounded. Every big snapper we kill is one less you can catch next time. Shit happens, and fish will die, and I don’t begrudge anyone keeping a fish for whatever reason they see fit. However, the more we collectively release bigger snapper, the better our fishery will be in years to come.
With our required fish tally on ice slurry, we decided to get out of the workups, head into the shallower reef zones, and look for dogs in the 70cm plus (6kg) range. As fun as catching fish one after the other and only a couple of hours of fishing time left, we wanted to go into hunter mode and work for our prey. Besides, we had secured our food – releasing some bigger fish in the process – which also has a higher mortality risk of releasing fish at depth.
The area we were fishing was getting hammered by a large easterly swell! It was pumping! We usually like swell and wash, but this one was so big the baitfish were not holding shallow, and there appeared to be little sign anywhere. Unfortunately, that can happen with a large swell, as it means the fish have to exert energy to go about their daily business, which they only like to do when feeding. Still, we were determined and put lots of casts for only one shot at big fish, which Jack hooked, line screaming off his reel in 4 metres of water. Sadly, the hook had fallen out when I jumped on the wheel to chase down the fish and get on top of it. What do we say? Thats fishing.
Upon stopping fishing and heading back to the ramp, we passed more big workups in the same area we had left them in. We couldn’t help ourselves and dropped lures to catch a couple more fish before heading back to the ramp.
What a crazy, fun day! And we will be back as soon the wind allows.
