Mid May Kingfish Charter Pics

Pics from the decks of Epic and Sanity through Mid May 2010, fishing Aldermen Is, Mercs, Whitianga, Tairua

We've had a pretty consistent northerly flow through May, which has seen the water temp stay a bit higher than usual for this time of year.  We've seen a tonne of bait on most of the deeper reefs and that has meant the kingfish have been feeding a little different than usual. It has been an interesting few weeks on the water that is for sure.  Livies have been outfishing jigs by a long shot, especially for the big fish on a consistent basis.    There have been the odd days where the kingfish have gone ganbusters on the jigs, and we were honoured to have the head engineers from Daiwa Japan, who design their Saltiga range of reels out jigging, there first day saw 50 odd kingis hitting the decks before being released - awesome stuff. 

Brett Meyer and team got a cracker of a day, the "G Spot" in behind the Aldies fired up with an afternoon bite and the jigs got devoured.  James was jigging with our Jigging Master 300 and our new Daiwa Z40 Saltiga reel, this set sure fired for James on this day with the line share of the big fish landed, as well as a few that pinned him to the rail and spanked him!

James with a cracker, his first kingi and not a bad one at that, on a River 2 Sea green and Gold spike, one of the most consistent jigs recently!

From a double too...

Michael with a nice fish on a Green Spear jig

James with another solid fish

Brett being the nice guy left his run til very late in the day and came up with a cracker fish to trump everyone else

You know there is a lot of bait around when these fellas are hitting jigs out in the deep

Tobes has been doing some mooching for the snapper in around Red Mercury and has found a few cracker spots, Hamish McLauchlan with one of a long line of snapper caught on Sanity on his fishing charter with Tobes recently

Dave and mates came to fish Tairua for a couple of days.  Pete from the Compleat Angler in Sydney had built him a rod to try out and true to form the Tairua kings came out in force to see if they could demo it, Saltiga 4000 howling....

Dave pretty stoked with his first New Zealand kingfish

And another nice king on the jig

Pete with a new PB for him on a livebait

Oh-oh.....seems to be a little theme for the last few weeks, there have been a big path of fish ready to demolish any gear not up to it!

Dave's old fella getting stuck into one on our Tica Magnum livebait rod

Solid fish for him too!

Dave with a new PB of 17kg's

Pete with a kingfish that we'd tagged three weeks earlier (by Andrew Cox) it was released.  Good to see that these fish we are releasing are surviving in good condition

Michael Lowyim with a solid fish of about 19kg, which had him pinned to the rails on our Stella 2000SW

The YeeHaa boys were out to do some more product testing and we decided it would be a jig only day.  We got into some crackers still, with a distinct afternoon bite.  Mitch pretty stoked with his on his 250JMspin and Stella 8000

Phil got the two best fish of the day with this 20 kegger being released, orange/brown jig did the damage for Phil

Huge schools of nice sized trevally around too and this one fell prey to a New Penny grub on a Berkley Elevator rig

Mark Reese usually flies choppers over the ice in Antartica, he's used to his fair share of adrenaline but got a taste of some Aldies style action on a day where the kingfish smashed everything put in the water, both livies and jigs going off, but the livies catching the bigger fish.  Mark was supposed to do three days of shared trips but inclement weather and the Tairua bar running high we sorted him out a solo day on Sanity Tobes loaded the livie tank in no time in the Mercury Bay, and headed to the Aldermen Pins.  Mark had previously fished the Bay of Islands and was itching to see how Tairua stacked up in comparison...he wasn't dissapointed!

They got bigger....

A few of the monsters tested out Mark's gear

This is what Mark came for!!  22kgs of Aldermen Pins kingfish!!!!  Awesome stuff Mark!

And a few more fatties to round the day off....a days fishing both Tobes and Mark say they'll never forget

A bit of a prospect around Great Merc also producing some great snapper for Mark

Tobes got rival Whitianga campground owners Craig and Kim out to see who could get the biggest kingfish.....

Livebaits again doing the damage, Craig getting the first...

but you know the rule...the Ladies always get the biggers, Kim Honeybun with a stonker of a kingfish caught on Sanity, after a few dustings she got her kingi!!

The next day aboard Epic and the ladies were at it again....Stella howling

Fiona pretty stoked with a new PB kingi

The boss Craig from Dynalink with a cracker fish himself

We were rapt to have the head engineers from Daiwa Japan fishing with us on Epic, hosted by Daiwa Australia and Pat from Brittain Wynyard.  These guys make some serious gear, probably the most robust jigging reels on the market and were out with us to test out next years release of reels.  There was a lot of gear loaded onto Epic on Day One, with the guys fresh off the plane that morning, Tobes orders first drop and all three guys were loaded up on fish on jigs, over the course of the day 50 odd fish were caught on camera andthe action should be seen on "The Fishing DVD" in Australia later in the year.

One of the engineers from Daiwa pulled to the rail on a New Zealand kingfish

Pat got a break from holding the sound mic and had a crack on the rod....

70 odd fish released over two days....this one got taken back with Pat to smoke up for the Daiwa boys, for those in Oz, keep an eye out for the action on 'The Fishing DVD' later in the year

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