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No fishing ... but look at this record breaker.
Tue 15th October, 2013
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  I mentioned last report how quickly the time goes by … it doesn’t seem like it but it was 2011 that I last caught up with John Gregory . Big John was in town for a couple of weeks on a combined hunting and fishing trip while his boat PRIMETIME is out of the water for its annual maintenance.
We met up most nights for a beer and a natter in the bar of the Bridge Motel and it turned out a lot had happened in both our lives during the last couple of years.
John and his boat are well known internationally as one of the top big game outfits in New Zealand and this year alone took 94 marlin and twenty six swordfish. But in April 2012 the fishing gods smiled on him big time.
Together with his deckie of nine years Jim Gigger they were expecting to go out on a charter and had the boat all provisioned up and the gear rigged and ready ... but the clients cancelled at the last minute.
Disappointed, John decided they might as well go anyway and headed out for a pleasure trip to the grounds at Houhora where they’d caught big “swords” in the past.
When they finally arrived at the mark it was agreed that Jim would take the first bite and a 5 kilo skip-jack tuna was sent on its way. They didn't know it then but this was going to be their lucky day.
Jim soon found himself hooked up to a massive broad-bill and John said that during the ensuing scrap "it came out of the water like a marlin."
He's told me in the past about the fighting qualities of these big "swords" and for many sport fishermen ... John included ... they are the ultimate big game prize.
You may have seen him on one of the fishing shows a little while back, landing a 249.7 kg broad bill swordfish " solo " ... this time it was easy ... there were two of them!
Experienced angler Jim played the huge fish on a high drag setting for over an hour and a half.
"It was a bit like a rodeo bull ride and it gave massive head shakes. It was a tough fight in day-light but we always felt in control and everything went to plan.
Once I had the leader it became quite docile and hardly moved a muscle ... even when we brought it on-board.
As we looked at it in the cockpit we thought it was a bit on the skinny side until we measured the tail girth at 3ft and realized it was just the huge bulk of the fish's body that had given us that first impression."
When they weighed it at the Whangaroa club weigh-station the scales showed it was 404.4 kgs ... over 30 kgs heavier than the previous record broad-bill caught in 2003 by Kiwi angler Jerry Garrett on board the boat Major Tom ll skippered by Geoff Stone.
Jim's fish measured 14 ft 5 inches from the tip of the bill to its tail and was the 140 th swordfish to be landed on PRIMETIME.
I've never really understood why John still gets a buzz out of trout fishing ... but he does.
Because of his charter commitments and everything else involved in running a busy big game boat he only gets the chance to get down to Turangi in early October. Unfortunately its often wet then and there are days when the rivers are unfishable.
When this happened the last time he was here we headed for the canal at Lake O. It doesn't really float my boat because it reminds me a little bit of some of the places I used to fish in the UK but John has had some great sessions there and loves the place.
He can roll-cast further than a lot of anglers can over-head cast which is a big advantage at this venue and one of the reasons he always does really well there.
The fishing can be spectacular and when its on ... its on!
With the unsettled weather we had this week he's spent a lot of time up there and although it hasn't switched on every time, most days John's had some fantastic sport. He asked me not to tell you how many .. so I won't ... but it was a lot!
I was going to meet him there this morning but he just rang to let me know it wasn't happening ... yet.
Its his last day today and with the rivers out of action again I have a feeling he may hang around there ... just in case.
 
A little bit of a slow down on the river this week and much less angling pressure. Although there are stil some good fish to be had {like the two pictured here} only about twenty percent of the fish I caught were fresh run. The others were all kelts in different stages of post spawning recovery.
With the holidays over it was nice not to have to get up in the middle of the night if you wanted to be first through and on Monday I had the TRB of Judges all to myself until mid-morning.
The wind has put some anglers off and while its not pleasant, as long as you keep things simple its still possible to have a good day. As an added bonus you'll often have whole stretches of river all to yourself.
The heavy rain of the last twelve hours has almost stopped and although its still cool and very, very windy the sun is shining and its quite a nice "fresh" afternoon.
After falling back around 11.00 am this morning river levels are now on the way up again and approaching 530 cumecs.
This is the third good fresh in almost as many weeks and there are bound to be a few more new changes. So once levels fall it'll be time to go walk about ... again.
Tight lines guys.
Mike |
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