kayaking the pacific islands. - Canoe & Kayak

Successful Winter Fishing
by Jason Milne
Kayak fishing guru Stephen Tapp of Limitless Ventures
recently invited me to join him and friend, Shamus for some
winter fishing off Bland Bay, 45 mins North of Whangarei.
It was an opportunity to learn from the best how to avoid
winter’s normal hard going and ‘fish smarter’, and a great
chance to put my new Mission Catch 390 through its paces.
I should have guessed, having fished with Stephen on
several occasions that the ‘catch’ was rolling out by 4.30am!
Try getting a good coffee this early in Whangarei!
Starting early and paddling for 2 kms or so , our first baits went down just after
sun up when fish are feeding eagerly. Almost immediately I landed some good
snapper. I secured a couple to the fish stringer and placed them under the
insulated cover in the stern. However Stephen was pulling in 20lb + snapper
not far from me so I needed to find out how to get one of those on my line.
I stayed close to Stephen and watched intently as he repeated the process of
paddling over the fish watching his sounder, spotting a fish worth targeting
then dropping the sea anchor to slow the drift. The previously baited rig would
be deployed and the moment it got to or near the target Wham!! The rod bent
and he was into the fight, which repeatedly produced Snapper close to & over
20lb. He released all that were not gut hooked.
Applying what I had observed I used my fish finder to spot the target fish,
paddled over them, set the anchor running rig with sea anchor attached and
dropped the bait. My slowed drift back allowed time for correctly weighted bait
to reach the fish. Then Wham!! Off went my line, I quickly pulled on the running
rig line to move the sea anchor from the bow to the stern and played this fish
out of its depth of 45metres to alongside my kayak. Out quickly came the gaff
when I saw, coming to the surface what looked like, and later proved to be,
my first 20lb snapper! This fish was promptly attached to the fish stringer and
stowed in the rear tank well under cover. I continued to apply this technique
throughout the day to great success, I started the day with 25 Pilchards, landed
16 fish and had 6 baits left over. If my bait had failed to reach the target’s depth
at the right time I would either have lost it to other fish or caught nothing, which
was happening earlier before applying this technique.
During the 9hrs and 25kms of paddling/drifting we chased Snapper, Kawahia,
Trevally, Skip Jack Tuna and Kingfish. This hunter-gatherer was tired and very
satisfied. Moreover my new Catch 390 performed well and proved comfortable
for the whole trip. A well-designed practical deck for fishing made this day’s
outing run smoothly. I look forward to applying this style of fishing to the same
success in my local fishing locations on the Whangaparaoa coastline.
Useful tip
Watch the sounder (fish finder). Throughout this trip my eyes seldom left the
view on the sounder. This kept me aware of the environment below at all times
heightening the chances of catching fish and giving a sense of truly hunting
the fish. A GPS unit is an advantage as I could easily mark the fish and target
them effectively. More often than not we were heading for GPS mark but never
actually made it due to spotting fish worth targeting on the way. My unit is a
compact black & white GPS chart plotter fish finder, conveniently mounted
on the deck directly in front of me, using the attachment kit specially made
for the Catch 390. The transducer and power supply are mounted internally
using the mounts provided with the Catch 390.
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