By PETER JESSUP
Tuna are starting to stream down the east and west coasts of the North Island and predictions of a good gamefishing season appear to be well-founded.
There have been good catches of yellowfin reported in the Far North for a couple of weeks and big schools of albacore and skipjack have been moving south.
Multiple yellowfin tuna have been landed at the Bay of Islands, Whitianga and Whakatane.
The Whangaroa Big Game Fishing Club has weighed four shortbill spearfish already this season. The small sailfish are usually caught later in the year and four are about a season's worth. They boarded their first two striped marlin in the past week, one a tag-and-release and the other 92.6kg.
The commercial boys apparently had a hard time filling their holds with skippies off the Bay of Plenty last week but this week there have been plenty.
Yellowfin have been taken this week off both Mayor and White Islands and the first stripey was caught by the charter vessel Cova Rose off Waihau Bay. It's all good news for the Whakatane club's tuna tournament which runs from next Tuesday to Saturday.
A 156.6kg striped marlin taken off Cape Brett in an 8m tinny may take some beating this season.
The fish was hooked early on Monday morning and the anglers, including local Chris Cowen, were back ashore by lunchtime.
Most spectacular catches have been by kids, and the Whangarei Deep Sea Anglers club has a world-record claim in with the International Game Fish Association on behalf of Kevin Brasting, 10, who landed a 133.6kg hammerhead shark on 24kg off the boat Bwana II.
It was Kevin's seventh gamefish. At age six he took a New Zealand record with a 119.8kg hammerhead and he has since boated two marlin and three makos.
Sister Helen, now 12, has a world record for a 110kg mako in the girls' small-fry class.
The hammerhead was hooked between the Hen and Chickens and it took Kevin 45 minutes to play it in.
In the same juniors contest Stephanie Moreton, 14, set a Whangarei club record with a 163.2kg mako caught off Taiharuru, on the way south to Whangarei Heads, from the boat Conchita.
At Whakatane, Tanya Hammond, 16, caught a 185kg mako from the boat Phantom.
The snapper fishing is hot, with one proviso: go in the evening. The fish are in close but wary during the day.
Trips well off-shore have not produced better results than people fishing within 200m to 300m of land, but it's only on dark and the bite-time is brief.
Terry "Tinboat" Newcomb, who runs the Island Water taxi in the Bay of Islands, tells of a hard afternoon's fishing, then stopping in 18m of water 200m off the Robertson cliffs.
"We got five fish ranging from 5kg to 8.5kg in less than 30 minutes, right on dark."
That is the pattern from the Far North down to Whakatane, nowhere more so than the Hauraki Gulf.
