2008 TGFC ALBACORE AND HAPUKA TOURNAMENT
16th September

We had the Albacore and Hapuka tournament this past weekend, which we took out 1st place in the Albacore section.

All in all the fishing was hard for all boats fishing the competition, with only one albacore being caught (by Glen Mathews on the Manutere) for the entire competition. There were a few good Hapuka, Bluenose and Bass caught around some of the Mayor knolls which was good to see. Results for the competition are at the bottom of the page.

Throughout the two days of the competition the water was extremely dirty, full of krill and a strange jelly of some sort which was over 100m deep. Very strange indeed. Boats were experiencing this around Mayor and well wide of Mayor. We went out to the Ranagatira knolls once more to try and escape the massive amount of jelly which seemed to be keeping the albacores mouths well shut, but unfortunately it was thick there as well. It was so bad alot of the boats thought their sounders were playing up.

We did some Hapuka drifts across the tops of the Rangatiras for a few pink mao mao, but couldn’t find any Puka. We drifted some of the deeper knolls around the area for much the same result. After an unsuccessful mornings fishing we decided to make our way down to White Island to see if the jelly was still in abundance down that way. So we set the lures to see if we could find some albacore before having a Hapuka fish at White.

About halfway between the Rangatiras and White we came across some really thick krill which we could see as red balls on top of the water. As we were passing one of the balls of krill the two starboard rods started unloading line. One of the fish promptly fell off, so it was down to Glen keeping the pressure on his fish. Shortly after we saw some colour and the fish was safely netted and put on ice.

By the time we got to white everybody was ready for another Hapuka fish, which timed in perfectly with the tide change, but all we could manage from the deep drifts was a few Gemfish, and pretty small ones at that.

We spent a nice night in the lee of White, and were up early for another day of, what would be, more of the same.

The fishing was very hard for us all day, and because of the distance we needed to travel to get back to Tauranga in time for weigh in, drift time was at a premium. We picked up another few Gemfish in amongst the miles of trolling, but we weren’t able to pick up any more albacore. Not exactly surprising considering the water on the 1000m line looking much the same as that at the middle ground. Not exactly confidence inspiring.

We will be looking forward to next year though.