West Coast Waikato - June 2010

No spring required

Despite cooling conditions, I hope you haven’t put the rod and reel away in the cupboard.

Both Aaron Laboure at Raglan and Dwade Pinny at Kawhia tell me this is their favourite time of the year. “No spring required,” they say. You may not leave the wharf with the same expectation of a 20-pounder as you might in late spring, but for consistent fat snapper up to and including 4.5kg, you won’t beat this time of the year.

Let’s have a look at Raglan first; Aaron tells me of regular limit bags before lunch. His best results have been from around 20-25m. The snapper are coming up chocker with ‘snapper biscuits’, a circular-shaped type of starfish that snapper love at this time of the year as they start to pile the weight on for the winter.

For those who target the bigger fish, there are also good opportunities at this time of the year. While not in large numbers, the patches of foul spread along the coast in the shallows are covered in mussels and hold the odd big boy. Sea conditions have to be right, of course.

Down at Kawhia, Dwade tells me the same story: limit bags of fat snapper and often pulling the pin by lunch time. At this time of the year Dwade spends a lot of time fishing over the Southwest Reef and finds it very productive, with plenty of very fat fish around 3-4kg.

For those who enjoy a good scrap with the kingies, get yourself out to Gannet Rock. The boys tells me they are still around the reef in excellent numbers and taking jigs and livies.
Trips out to the trench recently have produced excellent results, with ‘puka, bluenose, bass and gemfish all about in good numbers.

Close to home the harbours are producing some nice snapper. Both Raglan and Kawhia have produced some good fish, including an absolute beauty of 11kg – a great catch from the harbour. Graeme White is a very happy chappy, as you can imagine.

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