Every year I do a 3 Kings trip usually with Mogi San and his Grouper Boys but this year I accompanied AG and the Jigging Master guys in March. Earlier in June, I returned to the 3 Kings (yes 2 trips in 3 months!) with a group from California who had chartered the famous Rick Pollock and his vessel Pursuit.
Since the guys are from the home of live bait fishing, they were very comfortable withthis technique. However, they were all very keen to learn more about Japanese style jigging so I carried a heap of spare outfits from PE4 to PE8 for them to use - carefully! Most common jigs were Zest and Jigging Master 300g and 400g models in assorted colours. The 3 Kings is the wild west, the frontier of NZ fishing. The fish here are big and don't care much for jig presentation or technique. Needless to say, the newbies got slammed each time they dropped down. PB's were smashed within minutes!
Couple of guys might change to live baiting for the Kings but I could see that they gravitated to the lighter and equally powerful Jig Star rods,Ocea Jiggers, Saltigas and JMPE4 reels.
Kingies weren't the only fish, we all smashed into tasty Hapuka and Bass up to 40kg which were quickly despatched by the crew and stored on ice. All Kingfish were released while some of the larger were tagged then released. The cherry on the top were the 2 striped marlin caught on the troll and live bait....no wasn't caught on a jig!
This writeup is threatening to be of epic proportions so I'd rather let some of the images do the talking.
