Impromptu Autumn Fishing Trip to Opito Bay

Opito Bay, the most eastern point of the Coromandel, would have to be my favourite spot in the world. This pic might give you some idea why.

Overlooking the Mercury Islands, the fishing and diving opportunities are endless.

Every summer we rent out a bach belonging to my mate Dion, for a family adventure. Dion and I have always talked about doing a mission back there to stay with him and Carmen during the quiet season. With a nice weather window we made the impromptu call to blaze up there. Arriving late in the afternoon we had a successful little strayline mission to get snapper for the first night's dinner.

The next morning we were up chasing livebaits for a mission out wide. It is always tempting just to stay inshore for the day with awesome settings like this...

Especially when there are tasty John Dory around to be caught on softbaits!

We found the bluenose in 400m with the Furuno sounder - piece of cake! Lots of tasty bluenose fillets for dinner the next few nights, and some to take home for the freezer.

You can't beat the sunsets at this time of year! The sun setting in the Colville Channel over Red Mercury Island

The kids woke up to an amazing sight the next morning, with the sheep being herded at sunrise along Opito Bay - wow, worth getting up for!

I'd heard there were some good bait schools and kingfish around the corner so we shot around to give the kids a challenge catching them on light line. Bella fought a big kingfish on 6kg for 20 minutes only to get beaten. Oscar was up next and played one on 15kg

He did a great job and managed to land a new club record on 15kg

Time for a dive! I called up Coro freediving legend Rob Fort to see where the crays were holding and got some good oil. We had some nice tasty crayfish to add to the dinner table tonight!

We had a cool little session straylining that night and Bella managed to get her kingfish after all! What a great day on the water!

Things roughed up a bit for our last morning at it, so we snuck over into the lee of Great Mercury Island. We had a wee challenge going down dubbed the '6 Species Opito Bay Comp' with points awarded for each species then multiplied by the number of species we had caught.

Oscar managed to clean up on the last morning with a nice snapper on 6kg