Damon:- Today was an awesome day’s fishing and showed what this reef system is capable of delivering. We started with a light tackle session on the reef flats and caught a few red bass and trout just to warm up, then headed out the eastern side of the reef to do battle with a few dogtooth on the run in tide. We deployed a koolie minnow 190LL and a dogtooth 200 stickbait on 30W tiagra's with 150lb braid, and proceeded to do a few laps of the point. The koolie minnow dives to 18m, and the depth of this lure proved to be the key to success.
The first pass over the point resulted in a double hookup of a 35kg dogtooth tuna on the deep diver and a Spanish mackerel on the stickbait. The 2nd pass resulted in a double hookup of a 10kg coral trout on the minnow and another 20kg Spanish mackerel on the stickbait. Working our way down the ledge then produced a massive strike which peeled drag off the tiagra on sunset with 32kg of drag disappearing at a frightening rate. We ended up landing and then releasing the dogtooth of easily 70kg, which had also taken a liking to the sebile koolie 190LL. After this amazing effort, we landed a green jobfish that went 31lbs on the boga grips, easily the biggest jobfish I have ever seen, and then finished the session with another screaming run which produced a 50kg dogtooth tuna landed and released. This was the best conversion rate we had ever achieved on dogtooth tuna, landing 3 fish from 3 hookups, and releasing all fish healthily, and without being sharked. An incredible morning that was followed before lunch by a hot GT popper session along the reef edge. We landed about 7 GTs in 45 minutes before lunch, along with a bunch of trout and red bass and some big flowery cod. The biggest GT was around 20kg, but there were some larger models missed. After lunch the guys just wanted to snorkel and look at the incredible underwater scenery of the reef. A spectacular day that would be hard to match anywhere.
Nick:- This morning started off with a bang. We decided to start the morning off with a bit of jigging. On our first drop with the plastics produced a big cod of around 40 kilos. Second drop yielded a double up cod this time slightly smaller fish around 20 kilos each but still nice fat fish. As we dropped things took a turn for the worst with Matt hooking up and the locked up 20k stella racing off uncontrollably, in a matter of a few seconds ping we got beaten - Doggie, big Doggie! Re-Rig and a few minutes later pandemonium again, and beaten. Ok last try with the stella, surprise surprise we got reefed again. While all this was going on we were still catching other fish but decided that it was time to try and land one of these fish so we put the Stellas away and got the Tiagras out, unfortunately i think we must have spooked the fish by now and couldn't raise any. Still on the troll we managed to land a variety of species including job fish, trout, spannish and sharkies. Great day out on the reef.
Alex- Today could have been great we saw some amazing fish but didn't manage to keep the hooks in many. We were casting all day today and with the calmer conditions it allowed us to get on the outside of the reef to chase some bigger critters. We caught the usual red bass and big trout casting around the edges but then some serious action started. We missed a nice doggie of about 50kg that nearly ran into the side of the boat it was coming in so fast, this was a real shame a big doggie on popper would have been a great capture. After this the next big ooglie was a huge potato cod of about 35-40kg that engulfed the popper. This buck mouthed creature was released in good condition after a couple of happy snaps. The rest of the day was red bass mania a few GTs and some more trout. One heart breaking moment came late in the day when a huge maori wrasse, the fish Scott had been searching for all week, came up to the popper, hit once, missed, twice missed and then as it was coming back mouth open for another hit, a tiny red bass screamed in from the side and took the popper from the big green wrasse’s nose. We lost so many fish today, another doggie on popper that missed, about 8 or 9 GTs that pulled hooks mid fight and the wrasse getting muscled out of the way by a 4kg red bass. Still a great day but it could have been unreal.
