Well, making excuses about no reports because of neverending bad weather, I did write a December report, spent hours slaving over a hot keyboard and then lost it, due to fat fingers hitting the wrong button and having non existent computer skills to retreive it. So, now I use notepad and hopefully can't repeat the process.

Any way December was excellent, a continuation of the improving weather patterns we've seen in November/December for the last couple of years.

We were doing mainly day trips, and most of the time we were going to Town Pt at Maketu, catching  tarakihi, with the odd snapper, trevally and john dory amongst them. It's been the first time in years that we've even fished down there.The past few years there's been not enough down there to justify the steam down, but the increasing amount of northerlies and n.easterlies brought in a lot more tarakihi, as well as heaps of jellyfish and with them the sunfish. For a while we were seeing anything up to 10 a day quite regularly. Also heaps of skipjack tuna, that were being picked up on the lures all the way into 15/20 m of water, a lot shallower than is usual.

We also had some good fishing in shallow off Omanu, with an overnighter on the 15/16th, being particularly good, with tarakihi in daylight and then a lot of nice sized snapper coming on after dark.
 We fished until the weather forced us into shelter for the night, and as a couple of the crew were pretty crook, I gave them the option of steam behind Motiti, an hours steam where it would probably still be choppy; or go back to the harbour,40 min away where it would definitely be calm. The harbour won hands down, and when we got in there we still had to get off at Salisbury Wharf. When one of them said he didn't mind swimming to shore if  din't want to tie up at Salisbury, I took that as a sign they were reasonably serious about wanting to get off.

The rest of us spent the night anchored in idyllic conditions 300m from the wharf. I don't mind being a comfortable sook rather than a slop and roll sleepless hard man.

Next day I outsmarted myself by going to Karewa instead of just returning to the last nights spot, it's normally not too bad an area, but this time it was prett stink, and we scratched up a few, but nothing great. Still, the night before had been good enough to more than make up for it. Ahhh, self justification, it's a sad thing.

One of the spots we stopped at, where we did catch a few, we were being harassed by a couple of dopey blue sharks, stealing the odd fish, getting tangled in the lines, and looking like they were trying to eat a couple of albatrosses thet were feeding on bait being chucked over the side. After a few passes, one of the albies got sick of it, ducked it's head under water and gave the blue a massive peck on the head, the blue took off at full speed[about 5knots, they're not particularly coordinated],pretty funny to see.

We also did a hapuku overnighter, and that was another stinker, drifted about 8 different knolls for zilch, no sign and no fish. Good steady drifts too, but a heap of current, the lines were at 45degrees to the boat, and even steaming into the current, I'd say the sinkers were barely hitting the bottom. So, desperation time, and back to one of my tarakihi spots around Mayor, which fortunately paid off and we got back a couple of hours late, but at least with a decent feed. Some good big taras too.

We target tarakihi most of the time because they're such a good eating fish, people,especially from north of here[jafa, what's a jafa] seem to think that if it's not snapper it's not worth eating but the reality is that snapper's one of the most overrated fish around. It's nice enough if it's really well looked after, iced down straight away not bruised etc, but overcook it a smidgen and it's dry as, whereas tarakihi can be treated pretty ordinarily and still be a nice,tasty meal.

Some of my regulars still just put them in a sack until it's time to go home.

A few days off for Xmas and New year and that was December.