Five days since the last top water adventure, we were back out again. This time Steve brought along Rob and Carol. They are both pretty serious fishos. Rob has caught yellowfin trolling but never on a stickbait. We headed out of Whakatane towards the Motu. Word had it that there was lots of activity from 40 to 90 m depth. It took a while to find the birds and we had decided to put the trolling gear out. Of course that is when we starting seeing the workups and soon brought it all back in.
Rob was casting a 160 mm pilchard-like sinking stick bait. It was certainly getting attention and he hooked and landed his first tuna casting. We followed the activity to about 40 m and he was nailing kahawai after kahawai then got a keeper kingfish. We were about to move away when, boom, a tuna right in the middle of the kahawai. I was struggling a little with the larger 225 mm OOsh kohero top water lure. But I did pick up a few kahawai and a kingi there.
We moved deeper to get away from the kahawai and I got into a hard fighting tuna on a popper. There is nothing like seeing the smash on the surface. I was a very happy boy.
We each broke off another tuna and missed/dropped several others. Split rings on the lures failed also. We missed out on many more fish. We have since replaced the faulty braid the the best you can buy and all lures have been rigged wit appropriate split rings and hooks. It is a learning curve. But what a day! I cannot wait to get out again after Xmas.
