Striped Marlin, Yellowfin and a great week in Nationals 2020
For the last 12 years Ants and I have signed up for the eight day fishing mission that is the NZ Sport Fishing Council Nationals. Hundreds of boats right around New Zealand compete in a range of line classes and species. Boat v boat, club v club.Back in the day we chased the kingi title, then focused more on gamefishing.
You never know what will pop up with a few days straight on the water. This year we decided to go with the flow, and just have a good chilled week, eat good food, catch a few fish and enjoy the new property at home in Tairua instead of road tripping.
Ants flew up from Christchurch, and brough up lots of goodness with him! Venison and duck sausages and salami! Yum! We tucked into a feed of Scotch Fillet from the local butcher and some fresh kingi sashimi and formed a game plan for the week.
That saw us 400m in the middle ground the next morning, we found a whale feeding and it didn’t take long before the custom Bonze Trojan got scoffed off the short rigger. It didn’t stick, but a bit later on the short corner above the dredge went off and a few minutes later we had a nice tasty 20kg ish yellowfin! YUM!!! Sashimi on!!
We savoured this in so many ways over the next few nights. It was so good to taste fresh yellowfin again!
We tracked out to the same ground the next day, and boom!
A stripey came in hot on the Heat on the long corner, got tangled in the leader and stood up trying to thrash it off, dropped the lure, then ate the D Shackle on the shotgun on the way out of the lure pattern.
The Makaira 50Wii SE was howling and a chunky stripey started dancing away from us.
Ants chased it down and 20 minutes later stuck a gaff into a real solid looking stripey!
We decided to track in to Tairua and get the fish weighed nice and early and keep it in good condition for smoking. We didn’t get far! Next minute the Heat on the long corner got scoffed again! Ants was hooked up to one on 15!
We had it to the boat in 5 minutes!
We sent this one on its way to fight another day!
The next day was a bit blowy out of the Sou East, so we had a nice cruisy start and towed up to Kuaotunu out of the wind, Ants got to see a primo bit of coastline he hadn’t seen before. We fished in among gannets feeding right in close to the rocks on macies and piper, hooked a few kingfish, but on 10kg mono they won the fight.
We took a few of the snapper we caught to Kuaotunu restaurant Lukes Kitchen and they turned it to some awesome Coro style fish and chips, fresh snapper and sweet potato - washed down with a couple of Coro Daze from Bluefridge Brewery - primo!
We had a few more marlin and swordfish bites over the week, but not too much more stuck, we ate bloody well, enjoyed the usual camaraderie and took in some Coromandel goodness. Lets see what next year brings!!