March started off a bit slowly, with no shortage of fish sign on the sounder, but similar fishing to late Feb. short hard bursts of feeding then quite slow in betweeen.

Part of the reason, I think, is more current on the bottom. We're seeing a lot of fish sign in midwater, and that's generally an indication that the current where they'd normally be feeding is too strong for them to bother, and they're only feeding when it eases enough for them to eat without burning too much energy.
Still, they're going hard enough to more than make up for the slower periods. It just means that you have to be organised for when they are biting. A couple of spare traces ready to go, that sort of thing.

It was the One Base Compettion from the 4th to 7th, and a new stay away format rather than having to return to base each night. A good plan, saving a lot on fuel costs and cutting down on a lot of steaming time. Unfortunately it was all for nowt as  the weather turned to custard and they had to cancel all but the first and last days.

We had our usual good keen men, Ben, Dave, Glen, Tony, Trevor and Wade, but this year our luck wasn't in.

Despite endeavouring to catch live baits by the Container Wharf[water looking like chocolate] and then, slightly more successfully, under the lights in the Marina in the rain. A sight so sad you had to laugh about it [later, much later]. The kingies were no more interested in them than they had been in the jigs. Likewise any game fish in our lures, the fact that very few fish, including snapper, were caught was still pretty cold comfort.

Ironically, we had a day trip on the Monday after and caught more rat kingies and panny snapper, the best one about 3kg, than we'd seen all year. Some nice trevally and kahawai, tarakihi as well, made for a good inrteresting trip.

Plus we had a marlin harassing a school of kahawai, lit up and thrashing his bill around for a good few seconds right where we'd been towing lures during the One Base, it's all about timing, I know.

The 20th-22nd we took out the Romai F.C., overnighting at Mayor Friday and Sat.

we started off with an evening fish around Karewa, with a reasonable catch of snapper.

Next day we concentrated on drift fishing, and had  a good day on the bluenose and gemfish. To date there hasn't been much in the way of hapuku and bass caught, but hopefully we'll see them start to reappear with the increasing amount of northerlies and n.easterlies we're now getting.

Sat. night we anchored off N.W. Bay, beautiful condtions, but not much caught overnight.

A S.E. came away just before dawn, which made the Sunday's fishing a bit on the sloppy side, but no one was worried, as the tarakihi were biting hard [with a few 3-4kg snapper as well] and continued to do so until it was time to go. A good trip and even better when Mutu gave me a large piece of superb carrot cake when we got back to port.

The rest of the month picked up big time, with both the reef fishing and the overnighters going extremely well.

We were still getting quite a lot of current, but it only seemed to be on the top, with good fish sign hard on the bottom and long periods of steady fishing.

Mayor was also going consistently well, Wayne and the Fliways guys had a slower night at Karewa, but another good day's fishing around Mayor and back early for Neil and his group.

We gave Karewa a miss for the evening, and stopped at another spot on the way out,which was quite a bit better. We tried another spot around Mayor and that was firing with a lot of good sized tarakihi also. There was noticeably less current again, which is always a big factor in the relative success of the day.
So after the slow start, March ended up being a pretty good month after all.