A big snapper day on the mighty 90 - kontiki fishing the west coast of NZ

Stevo and I had been fishing the east coast for awhile while in the north, we had been combating the wind and rain and now forecasted with 25-30knt easterly winds it was time to check what the wild west coast was reading. Staying in the top ten at Whatuwhiwhi just about always guarantees us a day out fishing no matter the weather. The swell wasn't to bad at around 1.5mtrs. Although a meter or less is preferred, there wasn't much else to do other than sit in the cabin for 6-8hrs and wait for the evening to get a surfcast in up the Harbour. So we packed up the Ute with the tiki and the surfcasters incase we could get a line wet with those as well and headed north.

Hitting the beach we found our spot, parked up and readied our first set. The wind was blowing but being offshore with a nice smooth swell rolling it was looking very fishy. We baited the hooks with our favorite tiki bait - cubes of fresh kahawai. All baited up we were ready to rock n roll, Stevo walked the seahorse and dropped her in. The swell was up there I as soon as he dropped it in you could see that heavy northerly pull of the current which the west coast is known for. We usually use this first set to gauge the pull of the current and also getting a rough idea where the fish are holding. We normally do either a short run or a long run. Most times just getting the outside of the outer bank gets you into the fish. Stevo was back clipping on the baits and soon she was on the soak. It hadn't made it out to far as we only set it for a 12min run as the plan was to do a quick set.

once we had here on the soak I decided to gear up the Kotare. Even though it wasn't a perfect setting for surfcasting, it's always worth flicking out on the west coast. I always make my own rigs to fish the wild rugged west coast. It's just a basic single hook dropper rig but blinged up sometimes with a lumo tube, squid skirt and lumo bead for a bit of fish attractant. Knowing I probably wouldn't fish the Kotare in hand i ran a 7/0 mutsu hook which helps the fish to hook itself. I actually managed a nice fish on the surfcaster to start our day off, it wasn't a bad fish either at around 65cm. After that it was time to crank up the winch to see if the tiki would follow suit, it had been soaking for about 20mins and just only out the back of the breakers. It was coming in on a pretty harsh angle, the current was pretty extreme and we were thinking maybe the hooks were even sitting in the break water.

By the time we reached the first few hooks the whole leader with hooks were pretty much out of the water due to that harsh angle so we were able to actually stop the winch and walk the beach to get the fish. We've been sharked here a couple of times where we've stopped pulling in the tiki to retrieve fish or have a bit of a tangle, bronzies sit in that shallow water and pick off your caught fish or hoover up a bait then bite anything in it's way, line and all. Our first set was a little empty but when the fish showed, they were of decent size. We ended up with 5-6 solid fish on our first set which wasn't a bad start. The wind was hampering us as well as a few showers that came by but we were keen for a second set. Our second set was ready to go once again but this time we set on a little more angle - this is where the good old GPS model comes into play. Once you set that course even when it hits waves and gets knocked off course it recorrects it's self. This set was planned off our first, we knew there was an extra strong current, we knew there was some good fish in close so we set the angle and set the runtime 20mins this time. The harsher angle would eat up a bit of time so to get a similar distance to our first we went 5mins longer on the run. Once again it didn't make it out far, it was hard to judge the setting of the angle to the harsh northerly drag of the current. This set the tiki seemed to sit in that inner channel for awhile so we were hoping we still had a few good fish on.

This time with the line angle being 2-300mtrs down the beach I got Stevo to sit on the back of the Ute so he could winch the line as I reversed slowly down the beach. This would stop the fish from being dragged over the sand and able to wind in with not to much stress. We made it about 400mtrs down the beach where we stopped and winched in the last quarter. We were only hoping for another 6-8 fish. Although our quoter was 20 snaps we only wanted about 10-12 fish to take especially being of the good size we were getting. Once all the hooks were out of the water again we stopped the winch and just walked the beach to grab our fish. There was some solid fish once again that hit the sand, they were all good fish around that 50-65cm. In the end we ended up with 10 nice snaps from the tiki and my one on the caster, there was plenty of meat there so we called it a day - and another special day at that fishing the 90....

Tight lines