We've just come off four awesome days of fishing action with Gazza, Brett, Allan and Les from Australia. The guys had a ball tustling with plenty of awesome fish on the jig gear and left with sore arms as you will see soon....
The fellas arrived on a Sunday night in Tairua, ready for four days of action with us aboard Epic Adventures.
The first day saw us out wide jigging and Gazza was hooked up to a kingi that pulled him to the rail for a good old New Zealand welcome!! It was all of 20kg's by the looks and had the Stella howling....
This one ended in tears as it was sharked half way up....not bitten in half, completely inhaled by what must have been a huge beast of a shark....anyway this pretty much sets the scene for what lies ahead :-)
We decided the give the shark a wide berth as we couldn't get anything past him and took off to another reef where a few nice warm up size kings were boated over the afternoon session, Brett with his first, wearing a tag and about to go back in the drink
Gazza pretty rapt with his first to come to the boat in one piece
With our mate Jaws in residence out wide we decided to harass the local kingi population in close on Day Two and when we arrived on the reef I said to our new Skipper who was deckieing for us on Day Two that the bait schools look a lot like when we filmed with the ITM Fishing Show tean, and sure enough the livey tank was filled in two seconds flat. When the kings started taking livies off sabikis on the way up we decided it was time to get amongst it and first up was Gazza who got his armed stretched in the shallows on this nice king. There's nothing like a kingi in 10m of water hell bent on finding the reef pulling out 30m of line sideways!
Allan battled with the next beast which went 16kg, a huge fish for the shallows, a tag was popped in his back and he was away
Les is used to catching yellow belly back home, so was blown away with the freight train he was attached to next
And Les bagged an awesome shallow water kingi that got a yellow tag and it went back in the drink
Gazza getting pulled to the rail as we chased down a kingi that peeled off a heap of line
And another one about to be tagged and put back, shaping up now to be one of the all time best days in the shallows, every single livey was getting nailed right through the day
Allan getting peeled now
Brett getting his arms pulled off
And Gazza in for another round
Tobez sets the next livey as Gazza puts his kingi back in the drink
Didn't take long before the next one got hammered......
A real solid one for Brett
A pack of kingis swarming all over a 2kg kahawai set on the balloon
Les threw a 7" Nuclear Chicken into the pack stripped it back and he was on!! 14pound Fireline in the shallows.....lets see if it all holds together....!!!
You bet!!! A mammoth 30 minute fight in 10 metres of water and Les bags his first softbait caught kingi!! Stuff mate!!
The boys were chomping at the bit after Les's fish dragged us around and Gazza had his livey down in no time and as hooked up straight away
Brett and Alan were on to a double of fish next that went back with tags
And a wee jig in the afternoon Allan fought one that went straight DOWN for a change!!
What a way to finish up a day we'll all remember for a long time!!! Cheers to Tobez for helping out on deck for the day!!
Day three and we decided to see if we could slip a few past Jaws!! First one we got lucky!!
Then Brett hooked a decent kingi and 20m down we saw a MONSTER of a Mako Shark, all of 5metres long come in a devour it!!
Right about now I was getting a bit sick and tired of quality fish getting monstered by Jaws, it was time to drag the mutha off the reef!!! So the Berkley 300lb fluoro came out, a 10/0 Owner hook and the trace was swiveled to the Stella and 100pound braid!! A whole skippy went on as bait and a sinker got rubber banded on to get it down.......
All of 5 minutes later the JM400 bent over!!
"I think I've hooked a bus!" Gazza holds on for dear life
Holding on as the Stella empties and the boat is charging along at 15 knots to keep up!!
Spool looking pretty empty now....
1 hour in, he comes to the surface, you can just make out the huge dorsal fin in the distance here, and a tail along way behind it!! A huge creature we are picking in the 350kg - 400kg category..... about now he decided to jump and we got a real good look at him....
This is about the 2 hour mark Gazza had done an awesome job lasting this long against half a tonne of shark with no harness at all and calls in for the tag team to give him a breather....
Allans wide eyes say it all....check the spool....
Brett comes in as the beat dives down.......
He's a broken man pretty soon!!
Allan steps up to the plate.....
Brett in for another crack, between 3 and 6 hours we have the spool pretty full and the fish close to the boat for most of the time....
Gazza about to step back up for his eight crack at the beast!
After 7 hours we made the call to ping the fish off in the interests of safety as we didn't want to be fighting him in the dark, I got to have a feel at what this beast was like, and I'd have to say like no fish I've ever encountered.......at this stage I was thinking something like "I think I was dreaming we could knock this fella over in under 7 hours with no harness on jig gear".....
Anyway....mission was accomplished, we had towed Jaws about 10 miles (or maybe he had towed us more like it!) and here was hoping we could fish uninterrupted the next day....
Day four and we were out early and into it!!
Les pretty rapt with his best kingi of the trip so far on a Green Broken Arrow!
Gazza knocked over another solid one on the Pink JM rocket
Les hooked up on a snapper
We've been trying out the new Berkley Deep water rigs over the last week and the snapper seem to love them!
Alan and Gazza with some more for the BBQ. Skippy working well on the deep rigs as well as the softbaits!!
Brett sticks it to another king
Alan tags another on a Broken Arrow
Brett with another solid snap on the Deep Water rigs
Make that another!!
The kings love the Deep Water rigs too - 7" New Penny bait got inhaled.... T Curve Spin Stick and Symmetre reel getting a work out but up to the task!
Another sweet softbait caught king for the fellas! Stuff Allan!
Gazza thinking all that fighting the Mako yesterday and the sore arms were worth it!
Brett adds to his tally of tagged fish for the day
Les takes a breather after fighting another freight train!!
A sweet kingi on the tag board with the jig that did the damage all day for Gazza
And the fish of the day on the last drift!
The boys with the bycatch for day four, all the kings got released and a handful of nice snapper went home for the BBQ for the next few nights
A top few days fishing with a great bunch of fellas - look forward to doing it again next year guys!!
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