Jigging Charters

Jigging is by far the best way to fish for New Zealand's famous yellowtail kingfish.

Nothing has revolutionised the world of sportfishing in recent years more than the technique of jigging.  Once you've tried jigging, with the right gear and with the right tuition, you'll be hooked!  It's EASY to pick up and the most fun you can have with your clothes on!

Catching kingfish on metal lures has always been an effective way to catch kingfish in New Zealand, but advances in fishing rods, reels and tackle in recent years coupled with a new technique out of Japan called 'mechanical jigging' has seen jigging really take off.

On a good day catching 50 kingis between four anglers is not out of the question, and our kingfish typically average between 10kg and 20kg! Most of these are released in good condition to fight another day, ensuring we preserve a quality kingfish fishery.

Ken is a regular jig fishermen with us and always manages to catch some of the biggest fish each trip.  He jigs with his own Daiwa Expedition reel and Smiths Nirai rod.

Our jigging gear

Only the best gear should be used when jigging for our sportfish like kingis.  You need to minimise any possible weak link in your fishing tackle or the kingis will take you to the cleaners!  Without the right gear jigging can also be very hard on the body and so we have equipped the boat with a range of good rods and reels suitable for the new style of jigging.  We have a Stella and Smiths spinning combo - widely regarded as the best spinning combo available for jigging. 

Spinning reels are becoming very popular and often catch the bigger fish.  We have two JigWrex and Tyrnos 10 combos which are nice light combos ideal for first time jiggers and these have caught some whopping fish over 20kg. We also have what is widely regarded as THE overhead combo - an Ocea Jigger and Jigging Master Powerspell 400.  They are all very EASY to jig with

Loaded up!  These new jigging rods are just awesome, bending right through the blank and delivering maximum hurt to the fish - not the angler.  Here Rhys Lyon from Sydney tackles a 20kg kingi on our Smiths Rod and Stella reel!  Love the photo!

On any given day the kingis can be very fussy on styles of jigs and colours so we have a range of great jigs like Zest Curved Slider, Zest Deep Slim, Broken Arrow, Katch1 spears, YeeHaa pencils, Jigging Master Rockets and plenty more. 

We typically use 300gm or 400gm jigs.  These are attached to an assist hook and 100lb flurocarbon leader.

Loosing fish is not cool for the fishery when we are out doing it every day so we make sure the tackle is up to the task.

Jigging for Kingfish
Jigging for kingfish usually involves us travelling to the Aldermen Islands out of Tairua.  The islands have a number of pinnacles north, south and east of the islands which hold good populations of hard fighting kingis. These kingis are widely regarded by people who fish right around New Zealand as some of New Zealands hardest fighting kingifsh on jigs.

Then it is a matter of locating the schools on the sounder and holding the boat in position over the schools.  We use PE6 and PE8 line which is multicoloured to allow effective targetting of the fish.

Getting the hang of jigging for kingis is easy and if it is your first time jigging we'll have you into it in no time at all.

The results speak for themselves!

Small girl, big fish!  Livvie Wallace with a whopping 20kg kingfish, caught jigging on a green and gold spear jig with us out of Tairua at New Years 09.  Livvie showed the guys up and caught the first good fish of the day on our Jigging Master PS400 and Ocea Jigger.  Go girl!