New Zealand kingfish

[BrettP]

Hi guys, I want to go to NZ Next year to chase some xl kingfish. Has anyone been? What time of year is best and where?

[Volitan]

Twice, but not for the XL models, more the L models.

 

1. about three years back. To Bay of Islands. I went out on 3 morning kingfish specialty charters. I caught about 4 or 5 kingfish per trip. Mostly about 10-12kilo but not monsters. pm me for the name of best charter, I don't think I can put it here. Very easy convenient fishing and highly recomended. There is a growing shark problem. I want to go back - maybe this year. I went in April which is apparently best time - fishing is good and weather is most settled. It's fairly deep fishing over  submarine pinnacles so you don't see much of what is happening.

 

2. Two years ago to Whitianga. Whitianga has larger fish. I went out on one all day charter and caught 4 kingfish but again only 10-12 kilos. Not good for the area, the benchmark for a good fish is 20kg but the big ones weren't on that day. Still a good charter and a brilliant day out. A week later I was booked to go out with Epic (leading charter company) but it was cancelled due to weather - couldn't reschedule.

 

The only downside is these trips are fairly deep fishing so you don't get the thrill of the chase, you don't see the fish before hookup - just get your bait down to the right zone and hope. It does take skill though - the main thing to understand is that you are fishing with circle hooks so you need to let the fish take the bait, mouth it a bit, then swim away with the bait in its mouth and the circle hook will rotate in its mouth and imbed. The fish loads up the line till it is pulling from the reel and you don't strike, if you do you will mostly pull the bait out of its mouth. It can be hard to control the impulse to strike or pull back early and some people never seem to learn this, so they miss out. All this while the line is 60 metres down with a live bait on the end and a good sea running, it takes a bit of learning to interpret what is going on.

 

i'd love to go back and do a live-aboard Three Kings or White Island trip - where the really big fish are - but I'm scared of spending the whole trip seasick - I'm hopeless at sea. Maybe wHitianga next time for a couple of day trips, and see if I can get me one of the 20kg models.

 

cheers

Arron

Edited February 25, 2017 by Volitan

[BrettP]

Thanks Aaron for the detailed response. I was thinking live aboard, but nz is such a beautiful place, going back to shore each day is also not a bad option

[Volitan]

5 hours ago, BrettP said:

Thanks Aaron for the detailed response. I was thinking live aboard, but nz is such a beautiful place, going back to shore each day is also not a bad option

If you can do the live-aboard then that will be much better. More fish, bigger fish and probably more economical too.

Use the day trip style of charter as a fall-back position in case the live-aboard is cancelled.

[Phil82]

Hey bro. If you're after big kingies you need to go to White island or Three kings. 

Cheers

Phil