First Hapuka

[Blane11]

Headed out wide on Saturday, hoping to explore some new ground and find one of those Blue eye trevalla to tick that off the list.

Fishing was a bit slow at first with some baby gemfish, a couple of snapper and a lone barcod coming aboard.

A move out to some slightly deeper water at 280m, along a ridge that drops to approx 900m over a one km stretch resulted in a few good fish.

430m was the deepest we fished and only had one drop at that after winding up a green eyed shark, no one on board was willing to have another crack.

We had only planned on staying until lunch but as the day went on the wind backed off and the ruby jobfish came on the bite so we stayed a little longer to catch a couple as they taste great and are up there as one of the favourites.

Hapuka was almost 15kg, and the largest barcod went 12kg.

Last fish of the day was the flame snapper.

Cheers

[Goodoo haven]

Some lovely fish caught there mate. Well done.

[Fish_Two]

Whats the go with the wheelie Bin??

PS, nice feed

[kingcray]

some nice looking fish there mate. are birds normally found that far out? i once heard Ned Flanders say sea gulls only go out to sea to die.

[Blane11]

Wheelie bin is my make shift live bait tank. It's plenty big enough but does slosh out a bit. When time permits I'll get something different made up that takes up less room.

Those birds kept hanging around all day, occasionally you would be putting bait on and looking down then lift your head to find a bird one foot away from the boat. And they were massive. Definitely not seagulls and definitely not scared at all.

[Noelm]

bit hard to tell from the picture, but bird is either a Gannet or a Wandering Albatross, gannets are the ones that "dive bomb" in closer on schools of Slimey mackeral and stuff.

[Blane11]

Along with the white ones were some that were all black and equally as large. Looked just like the mutton birds we see in closer, but 4 times the size and not as annoying.

[samsy]

nice fish blane. well done