Well you may have noticed I haven’t been around lately and with good reason. I’ve been enjoying an extended stay in New Zealand visiting family. We’re finally home now and I have a chance to write up a report about one of the best day’s of my trip.
My cousin was kind enough to take me out off the north east coast of New Zealand to fish for Snapper.
My uncle picked me up in his land cruiser and then we headed over to get the boat and off to the beach to launch directly on the beach.
The day was beautiful and as we started out it was a bit choppy, but not too bad. We had a few bumps, but it was only about a 45 minute ride to our fishing grounds.
The method used for snapper down in New Zealand isn’t like what i’m used to when I go out and fish for salmon in BC, we head out and drop anchor and simply drop a line over the edge with 4-5 oz weights, and a 6-9 inch leader with a few hooks and some bait on it. Let your line go to the bottom, reel up a few winds on the reel and simply sit and wait for a bite!
After about ½ hour of fishing, we had our first snapper on the line, as we brought it up we saw it was a 2-3 pound red snapper, good enough to keep! We thought this was a good sign for the day, but as fishing goes sometimes, this was about as good as we would get for the day.
We get it in the boat and I ask my cousing where the “Bonker” is, and he proceeded to laugh so hard he almost fell in the water. You see, “Bonker” in New Zealand had an entirely different meaning than what we use it for. To have a “Bonk” is to have a Shag down there, so to interpret what I said it would have sounded like, “Where is the hooker”. Was very funny. My cousin then proceeded to “Bonk” the fish in the manner that they (Or at least him) does in New Zealand, very effective but a little more butcher like.
Once this snapper was in the cooler the fishing died off and we didn’t have much luck for the rest of the day, but we certainly enjoyed the scenery. We went to the back of a small island and enjoyed the shipwreck that was sunk for some divers. The beauty of the south pacific is just breathtaking.
Enjoy the rest of my pictures!
Author
Topic: Fishing off the coast of New Zealand in the south pacific (Read 3601 times)