***HELLO DEAR FISHING ENTHUSIAST. I'M NOT THAT KEEN ON FISHING ANYMORE AND THIS WEBSITE IS THEREFORE BEEN DISCONTINUED. YOU CAN STILL READ ALL POSTS, BUT I WON'T RESPOND TO COMMENTS AND EMAIL. PLEASE REFER TO MY NEW WEBSITE GreatBarrierPhotography****
A successful fishing mission usually starts out with a solid plan. Watching the sun rise over Medland’s Beach on a beautiful morning on Great Barrier Island, I anticipated that we were in for a treat today. Mateo had contacted me a few days earlier and since he seemed very keen (about fishing) and was heading to the Barrier, we arranged to go for a serious fish off the rocks.
In this part of my Big Snapper Off The Rocks series, I write in detail about how I target big snapper. On this particular day, well more an adventure than just day, I got up early and by about 0700 I had the burley deployed; low tide was at 0800. The sea was moderate, no swell, but a lot of wash hitting the rocks, the winds were slight.
I had a remarkable landbased fishing session on Easter Friday. I listened to the marine forecast, looked at the tides, climbed up a tree and had a good look at the harbour. Well, things looked quite promising and I decided to go to a spot close by for a quick snapper fish. Also decided to only take one rod and reel and to pack light, leaving most of my gear at home. Pre-tied 5 rigs and took only the bare essentials. I was keen on burleying up, but the shop didn’t have any and I decided to purchase two packets of frozen pilchards. One for casting, the other for cubing and attracting the big snapper.
The other day, my mate and I decided to go hiking and scouting for new landbased fishing spots. It was a hot day but I thought it would be a good idea to take the small rod and reel, a few pre-tied rigs and a pack of pilchard bait. Finding new fishing spots is a big part of landbased fishing, a part that is often neglected. I’m probably no different to you, once about a dozen of fishing spots have been found, I tend to fish them depending on tides, wind and other conditions. Thus, utterly neglecting the fact that finding new fishing spots can be just as exciting as landing fish.
I had to go rockfishing yesterday. You can probably imagine that, after a couple of days of ‘over-thinking’ my landbased fishing options here on Great Barrier Island – should I go to the east or west coast?, fish around the low or high tide?, do an evening or morning fish? – that I just felt the need to get out there, catch a feed and do what I can to land a big one. So I stopped thinking and planning, and headed to a bay in Tryphena, close to where I live. The plan was to have a bait in the water around mid-tide and fish the outgoing. The conditions were not ideal; hardly any clouds in the sky, it …
The Great Barrier Island Sports & Social Club was holding one of its annual fishing competitions this Friday and Saturday. I bought a ticket and entered the competition just like last year, planning to fish off the rocks and catching the big one. Last year I ended up landing three snapper at the light house in Tryphena, none of which were worthy to be weighed.
The fishing is certainly going well for me lately. My mate Gary and his partner Nadia came to the Barrier for a weeks visit, and unfortunately the weather has been quite bad on the Tryphena side. We’ve been to the hot pools on Thursday, yesterday we hung out a bit on BENIsLAND and the plan for today was to catch a few fish off the rocks.
When it comes to fishing, you just can’t top rockfishing or as some people say LBG (land-based-game fishing). I’m going to stick with the term rockfishing as LBG implies that you do a bit more than simply casting out a piece of dead bait from the rocks and hoping to catch the big one. We had rough seas and gusting south-westerlies all week and I was eager to go for a fish.
