Winter Moochers In Northland.

By Lee on February 19, 2019 • ( 0 )

What a fishing weekend it was!! So, myself and Drew met up at my house in Orewa at 4am Saturday morning. Now, we thought we’d give Leigh a bit of a rest, and we kinda figured that every kayak fisherman and his dog would be up there anyway! So with that in mind we thought it would be a good chance to head a little further north for a change. As per usual, we arrived way too bloody early! I’d forgotten my light… Drew had forgotten his paddle, usual story you know!

It all worked out though, I shared Drew’s light, and luckily I always carry a spare paddle! Day break was near, so we launched out. Plan was easy… get some big winter snappers! and scream like a bunch of girls catching them! Straight away, you hear Drew bloody screaming away! I paddled up to him to get some footage of his first fish, I stopped paddling just before I got up to him, grabbed my camera and started filming… I forgot to slow myself down before hand 😬 I was too busy looking through the camera lens… I ploughed into him! Sorry dude! Don’t worry people, nobody was hurt in the process…

But yes, first couple of fish were some nice 5kg models, bloody great start to the day for sure! The fish just continued to get bigger!

Nice snapper caught on a Gulp Lime Tiger

We released some really nice fish over the day. Again just using that same method, cast your soft bait out and hit those fish on the drop!

We didn’t fish the bottom at all yesterday, no dragging, no working the lure back to the boat, just straight up cast out, and wind back up if your lure reaches the bottom. The fishing was really hot for sure!

Drew with a coupe of nice Northland pannies!

The wind picked up a couple of times during the day, I watched the water temp drop over a space of an hour. This really does have a big effect on how the snapper take your lures. The warmer times of the day yesterday were, early morning and mid afternoon. The interesting thing is, during these warmer periods of the day, I was catching a few snapper on full speed retrieve!

Another fish returned back to the ocean.

The colder mid section of the day, the snapper were only attacking the lure once, and this was pretty much just off the bottom! Was really good to get back in the kayak after a couple of weeks of boat fishing! I’ve definitely come to the conclusion that I love spending time in the kayak more so than the boat! This was the last fish of the day… All the big fish were returned back to the ocean today, what an amazing day out on the water!