New Zealand Nationals 2010 on Epic Adventures

The last week of February is NZ Nationals time, with hundreds of boats and anglers right around New Zealand competing in all IGFA line classes over ten species.

Every night results from each club are collated and published online.

We pulled together a team of regular anglers to compete.  Last year we took out top spot in the kingfish.  This year we wanted to target a wide range of species, hopefully nail a Blue Marlin for the boat, take out top Tairua boat, nail a club record or two, and hopefully some line class prizes. 

YeeHaa tackle spent a good week getting our gear ready including loading all out reels with IGFA mono, and ensuring we were well stocked up for the week ahead. 

The first morning saw us doing what we usually do through the year - smashing the kingis!  Anthoney Honeybone was first on the board, with a kingi jigged on 24kg mono on the OJ and a pink Benthos jig

Brad Burden was next with a nice kingi tagged on the Talica

Over Nationals I get to wet a line or two for a change and this one had me squeeling, the back hurt.....

That afternoon we went in search of the bait and worked out where the marlin were likely to be holding.  We chanced upon some mahimahi which were destined for dinner that night.

The next morning saw us back at the hot area, and we had a HUGE Blue Marlin come crashing in on the long rigger, devouring our Evil Grand Slammer, and he went BESERK!!!!  This was a huge fish, Anthony who was on board has seen heaps of Blues, including a world record he shot freediving, and he called this for 250kg-300kg.  We had 15kg set on the long rigger so we were in for a tough battle.  Brad was on the rod, and we charged down on the line, and Brad went hard to get some line back, pretty soon we were on top of the fish but it did not look good, the fish had gone so hard it had cooked itself and was dead on the bottom, she spent 3 hours trying to shift the fish but eventually the inevitable happened and the 15kg line parted.  We were all pretty gutted for Brad but that is all part of fishing a comp like the Nationals and trying for a high scoring points fish on light line. We were hoping we would get another shot at least.

The next two days John from YeeHaa joined me and Anthony and we ventured a bit wider and found some huge areas of bait and had another marlin up on the short corner, this time a stripey that wasn't overly interested.   We had some more fun on the light tackle with some kings and snapper on 4kg.

This was a good little scrap in the deep, a 9kg king on 4kg mono.....

Days five and six, Dion Wills and Glen van Hellemond joined me and Ants, we had more mahimahi to 6.8kgs,

big Alberts to 12kg,

and more marlin up in the gear and knocking down lures, but no solid hook ups.

Days seven and Ants is setting the lures hoping that we might come up solid!

And eagle eyes waiting for the fish to come up

Sure enough we arrived in the same area as we had hits the days before hand at the same time of the tide and we had a knock down, then the hugest marlin any of us has seen in the lures, we kept zigzagging the area and two minutes later another Blue came in and engulfed the Evil Grand Slammer.  We had changed all the lures to Decoy Jig Hooks and 300lb Fluoro in the hope of hooking up a bit better and we were on solid.  I was the lucky (?) one on strike and went to work trying to gain some ground and Ants drove expertly on the fish, he's done it plenty of times before. Sato helped organise the cockpit and get everything ready for when it came boatside. After 3 hours of it dogging down deep and swimming with the seas we had it boatside and dragged what we guessed to be 130kg's of Blue Marlin into the boat.  A great team effort on 15kg.

At the weigh station it went 137kg, and was a new club record on 15kg, earning us 916 points for the Nationals.

We finished up on the last day looking for a stripey in the morning before finishing up with a few point scoring fish on light tackle to take out top Tairua boat, including a nice 5.6kg snapper on 4kg mono.   The Blue went best fish in line class and 3rd scoring Billfish overall.  Tairua came second overall in Billfish, behind the Waihau Bay club.  Our best Mahi came second in 15kg line class.  All in all a successful week, great fun and good fishing with a top bunch of fellas. 

Bring on Nationals 2011.