Day Nine – Kingfish

I’m back up north, and this has to be my best day yet, no monster fish but beautiful conditions and a few fish caught including my first Kingfish…

I got up to Ngunguru about 5:00pm, unpacked the car, had a bite to eat and then decided to head out somewhere in the kayak, the conditions looked pretty good so I decided to head back to Whangaumu and see if I could get out a bit further this time.

When I got to the beach the sea was like glass, next to no wind, and a big rolling swell – the type of swell I love – it was a good 2 to 2.5m swell but it was a long lazy swell with a good 20-30 seconds peak to peak.

So I headed out into the centre of the bay as I’d been given a tip by an ex-local about a reef in the middle of the bay that isn’t shown on any charts, this is where the Humminbird Side Imagaing pays for itself, it let me scan some 100 feet along the bottom ether side of me, made picking up the reef nice and easy!

Dropped a bait down and nibble nibble nibble. yep I’m on the reef and so are the LeatherJackets… Time to move on! I saw a boat anchored off in the distance pretty much dead in the center of the bay entrance, with the good conditions I decided to paddle over and see where they were fishing. Got there, paddled past them and the side imaging said they were just fishing over the sand with nothing really showing on the sounder I decided to have a look on the chart and look for a likely spot.

That’s when I spied the wreck marked on the chart about 1km away, marked it on the GPS so time for more paddling…

Got there and never really found a wreck as such but found plenty of foul on the bottom, and quite a bit of fish sign, dropped a bait down and bang hookup, Snapper, legal size but not big.

Drop the bait down again and it feels like I’ve hooked the bottom, just a long slow pull, then it comes up quite easily but the weight is still there, strange, then the line goes slack, whatever it was just got away… I bring the line up to check the softbait, half way up the weight comes back… continue to wind the line it until it’s about 10m from the surface then the fish wakes up!

Off it runs, straight out to the side, then down, then to the other side, got to be a Kahawai I thought, I keep playing it until I get it to the surface… It’s no Kahawai, it’s a Kingfish! Only a little one but hey it’s a Kingfish, as soon as it sees the kayak it wakes up goes crazy trying to run every way it can so I just keep playing it for a while to try and tire it out a but before I try and bring it on board.

So here you go, my fist Kingfish in a kayak, I’m still smiling hours later.

I try a few more drops and pick up another small Snapper but that was all no more Kingfish.

By now it’s nearly 9:00pm, sun has long gone and it’s getting pretty dark, or so I thought until I took my sunglasses off, haha, but no it really was getting dark and I’m still about 3-4km from the beach so time to call it quits but I’ll be back… Actually sooner than I planned, when I got back to the house I couldn’t find the house keys anywhere … must have dropped them out of my PFD between the kayak and car on the way back… its probably lucky it was dark as the beach was empty and the keys were still there on the sand, phew…