A nice afternoon at Blacks

I’ve been meaning to get up north of Wairoa for well, most of the summer.. Every time I made plans something would throw a spanner in the works. The weather would turn to crap, other must-do things got in the way etc.. But last weekend I finally got my shit together and made the mad dash to Whakaki. Well perhaps it was more like a leisurely trundle in my van, but never the less after work Saturday I found myself staring at beautiful clean calm water at Blacks Beach.

Although it was a Pania Surfcasting Club field weekend, I was more interested in fishing for the table, having been starved of fish for dinner because of my lack of local (Napier) fishing luck, I was looking forward to getting a fish or two in the bin.

Recent reports of plentiful snapper and gurnard from north of Whakaki had me hopeful I could at least catch something!

I started out fishing 3 rods, two with pulley-rigs, one with a ledger (droppers) and a variety of baits to try and get an idea on what, if anything, would work.  I had pilchards, skipjack and prawns in the bait bin. First fish of the evening was a 32cm snapper, good stuff, a few more of those and I’ll be a happy man.  But from then on the snapper seemed to desert me. I managed three nice Kahawai just before dark, and then it was shark time..

Baby Bronze-Whaler shark

From about 9pm onwards all I could catch was baby Bronze Whaler sharks and baby Tope sharks. I had hoped the prawns would attract a Lemon or two but they either weren’t there or weren’t interested. I did manage another very small (just legal) snapper on a prawn bait but I released it. The tiny ones like that are hardly worth filleting.

Dawn at Blacks

Getting sick of the sharks I crawled into the van for a few hours sleep. Up again at 3am and baits out. Nothing for the next 3 hours. Then I caught a smallish Kahawai and decided to try it as fresh bait. Gurnard apparently quite fancy fresh Kahawai as bait. But nothing wanted it until about 9am when I decided to call it quits.  Just as I wound in my last rod I thought I had a piece of weed or something but it turned out to be a Gurnard.

So overall it wasn’t a bad trip. I had fish to eat and the weather was great.

Back at the Pania weigh-in there were some nice catches of snapper, gurnard and lemons.
The biggest snapper was 1.4kg and that was caught right here in Napier!
Thats fishing I guess..