Everybody on board managed to get stuck into some fish but big Tony up the front of the boat jigged his heart out all day and was rewarded with some of the better fish. I even managed to get myself a couple of good ones, the best coming in at around 29.9 kg maybe even a 30.
Day two was pretty much a repeat of day one but minus the Marlin action, the King Bank seemed to be the place to be for the big kings this trip.
Day 3 we decided to give the Princess group a bash and even have a lash on the stick baits. Every time we got close in to the rocks we either had hits or hook ups on the stick baits with the Carpenters and ASWB lures doing the damage. Carlo did hook a giant one on a sinking Orion Nambas but got smashed up by what could only have been a massive fish.
One of the guests Mark form the South Island had been doing well on some good kings and prior to this trip his business had been decimated by the earthquakes. It was good to see him having a good time and smiling, on one drift very close to the islands a few rods loaded up including his but it was clear that his fish was going to be something special. He was using one of the Accurate reels with a Kilwell Talon that Kane from DeCoro had leant me to use on the trip and line was peeling off it at quite a rate.
The battle was pretty intense and we had to use the boat to drive the fish off the reef, the shallow water kings in this area go particularly hard and this one was no exception battling away right to the boat. Once landed we weighed the fish and it came in around the mid thirty kilo mark, an awesome result in such shallow water.
We finished off the day battling away with some big Bass not too far off the Princess group, great tucker and not bad scrappers in shallow water.
As was the norm with this trip the afternoon bit proved to be the best and the guys stayed back as late as they possibly could so we could stretch our arms just a bit longer. In the end we had to leave this awesome place. It was back to North Cape for the night and the best nights sleep was had by all in the super calm conditions.
The fish pretty much took everything on this trip, jigs, live and dead baits and Stick baits. But it was the dead baits which proved to be one of the most interesting; we just could not get bait that was too big. Trevally, skippies, squid and Mackerel were all used dead to great affect. I have been playing around a lot with dead baits here in the Bay of Plenty lately and have had some surprising results with them even out fishing live baits some days. I will likely write up a detailed piece for one of the magazines soon detailing some of the rigging practices we are using, it is quite important to get this part right or they just wont take them or you will not get a hook up.
Once again the team on board Cascade delivered the goods with a great fishing, great company and awesome food. This has to be one of the best operations doing these trips and it is such a good casting platform.
