A very last minute plan was hatched and we left Auckland at 4pm headed for whakatane with the car fully loaded with trial custom rods and a few of our own.
The trip out to white island was very smooth but waking up out there it was noticeably windier and not ideal conditions for drifting in 80m+ of water but we didnt go down to twiddle our thumbs so we started fishing.
The first few spots we tried showed some really good sign on the sounder and we all jigged hard using some big 300-500g for a few hours with little to no reward I was buggered so moved to a lighter jm250g rod and saltiga20 and thats when we hooked up!:eek:
I immediately knew I was under gunned but luckily the fish hit really high so the first 50m run didnt manage to bust me up ........... mean while I look over and ants is onto a monster well. It wasnt pleasant conditions but we had to deal with it.
Half way through the fight the trinidad20 that ant's was using busted his anti reverse but still managed to get the fish to the boat and the next time I looked around a massive kingfish head greeted me...
ants nailed a pb 27kg fish
Meanwhile I was still struggling away with my fish and 10 minutes later we had it to the boat. my best King on a jig to date 80lb
we continued jigging hard in the trying conditions with the other two anglers working jigs through 100m+ of water looking for some more big kings but the bit had shut down.
we had a brief chance with a big hapuka later on in the day on a 150 zxoga rod but unfortunately we popped the hook:(
Cheers to Lionel our skipper from memorymakers charters in Whakatane. what a mean setup!:cool:
