Seaway and Broadwater Report 15-16th January 2013

 

Well I decided to change things up a bit, the morning sessions haven't been working for me so I decided to do an overnight session and focus on hitting the important tide changes and times of day for target species, being in the right place at the right time in other words. Got on the water at 2.30pm Tuesday, tide was bottom half of the runout, swell was 1.5m ESE so a bit lumpy but fishable. Wind was 15kts from the ESE.

Had a quick look in the broadwater but nothing there so went to the end of the north wall and fished the bottom with a grass minnow on 3/8thoz head. Got 2 tailor and a couple of small maori cod. At 5pm I had another look in the broadwater and went up as far as the top of sovereign , saw heaps of birds but no fish. Back to the north wall by 6pm and chucked a twistie on pulled a couple of tailor then switched to a popper, and from then on it was action aplenty with acrobatic tailor smashing the popper and getting airborne on every cast. Size wasn't great best fish going about 45cm, smallest about 30cm but plenty of them must of landed well over 15, lost half that. Did lose a big tailor on about the 5th jump. It was rough though, very difficult to stay upright, great fun.





Once the sun had set around 8pm I switched to tarpon and back to the grass minnow, on about the 5th cast I hooked up but the tarpon threw the hook on the 2nd jump, pity it was a big fish. Hooked and lost one more and that was it for the tarpon, even tried a slick rig but no go. Just not enough tarpon there at the moment, just the odd fish.
Had a fish around the pipeline but nothing biting so had a look south of wavebreak, plenty of bait there but no fish. Came back had another go for tarpon, managed one hit but that was all. Time for a break and relax, next important time was at midnight and the target was bigeyes.   At midnight I headed back to the pipeline and sure enough the bigeyes were on the job, the next 2 hours were top fun with bigeyes hitting plastics and poppers with wild abandon. Size was around 35-45cm I did hook 2 better fish but both times I got sharked and I didn't even get the lures back. They just left me with an abraded trace and a sliced curling end. Scratch two limited edition chrome rapala skitter pops. The fun ended with a pod of dolphins coming through chasing the bigeyes putting them down. Had another go for tarpon but got zip. Took another break until 4am, dawn.

Went back out to the north wall and had another shot at the tailor, they were on the job again but weren't real interested in poppers though I did manage one decent one, they were hanging deeper and preferred twisties and minnows. Size was similar though, fish a cast for about an hour and a half.

Once the sun was up I headed into the broadwater for the next opportunity, surface feeding GT's on the last of the runout. Didn't take long to spot some fish but they looked like kingfish towards the end of the northern most point of the wavebreak sandspit but were refusing all offerings. I tried all manner of lures and eventually put on the smallest slug I had a rios slug about 2cm long. 2nd cast with that and I hooked up and the fish took off, because of the lightweight hooks on such a small lure I had to take it easy and it took about 15 minutes to get him to the boat, unfortunately not the kingfish I was expecting it was a GT about 68cm, nice fish though. They only came up a couple of more times then the tide changed to run in. I moved up towards wavebreak and spotted some more kingfish busting into schools of large white pilchards, threw lures at them at least half a dozen times but not even a looker, bloody fish. Called it a day at 9am. So a pretty good overnighter probably near 50 fish landed overall even if there weren't many big ones. There is tons of bait around and plenty of fish if you are in the right place at the right time.

There is 2 sizes of bait at the moment, the larger white pilchards around 5-7cm long and small ones around 2cm long. If the fish are chasing the smaller stuff you might need some tiny slugs to tempt them so keep that in mind before heading out.

Date	Time Fished	Tides
Tuesday 15th January	2.30pm - 1.00am	0409 0.08 1051 1.62 1713 0.06 2316 1.21
Wednesday 16th January	4.00am - 9.00am	0458 0.20 1132 1.47 1754 0.13