While offshore gales forced an early closure for the four day Tauranga Game Fishing Club One Base competition on Saturday, club manager Grant Holley says the competitors seemed happy enough. “Four days continuous fishing is a long time,” says Grant. Marlin. “It is so much longer than when you had to come back in every day. In the three days out there, they had more fishing than in the old days when they had to come in at nights.” It also allowed the competitors to More...

The 2010 Tauranga Game Fishing Club’s One Base fishing contest is over due to bad weather forcing cancellation of the tournament’s fourth day. Club manager Grant Holley says final results will be released Saturday afternoon. Snapper. Leading the competition on Saturday morning was Mavis Bryant, who on the first day caught at Astrolabe reef the heaviest Kingfish at 28.7kg. In second was Gary Wood who caught a snapper at 12.04 kg on the second day. The first yellow fin tuna More...

The heaviest snapper to be weighed in at the Tauranga Game Fishing Club’s One Base fishing contest so far is a 12.04kg fish caught at Cape Runaway on the first day of fishing. Gary Wood from Team De Coro caught the snapper and drove the fish up from the Eastern Bay. Neil McConnell shows not all the hooks were taken by the fish. Two kingfish also made the weigh in yesterday, the heaviest being an 18.3kg fish caught at White Island by Owen Scott on board Bean Freight. Greg Wyman, More...

Twelve kingfish, a snapper and a marlin have made it to the scales from the first day of the Tauranga Game Fishing Club’s One Base competition. The four day contest began at 7.30am on Wednesday and continues until Saturday afternoon. Snapper. The marlin was just over the 90kg qualifying weight at 91.1kg. The biggest kingfish was 28.7kg and the snapper 7.34kg. There is a qualifying weight of 5kg for snapper. The snapper was caught at the Astrolabe reef, the kingfish at White Island More...

About 500 fishers set their lures a trailing in the Bay of Plenty waters early Wednesday morning as the four-day Tauranga Game Fishing Club’s One-Base competition began. A rule change allows teams from the 150 boats entered to begin fishing at 7.30am, which meant there was no massed start as there has been in previous years. A Marlin. Club manager Grant Holley says about half the boats put to sea on Tuesday night, following the briefing. “A lot of the trailer boats headed for More...

Bay of Plenty shellfish remain contaminated with paralytic shellfish poison, says Toi te Ora Public Health’s Medical Officer of Health Dr Neil de Wet. “The health warning is still in place,” says Neil. “The most recent tests were carried out on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. They already show the levels are still in the area of the health warning. “The levels are still over the limit for human consumption and there are no signs showing anything is More...

A 39 year old Welcome Bay man will undertake 200 hours of community service as sentence for catching 98 undersized paua, despite walking past signs detailing catch limits beforehand. Riki James Miritana was sentenced on Monday at Tauranga District Court by Judge Harding after he and an associate were caught by fishery offices as they walked off the walking track around Mauao. When checked by the fisheries officers, Miritana had 99 paua and 98 were smaller than the legal minimum size of More...

Tauranga sailor Peter Burling and fellow 49er crew Blair Tuke were knocked out of the 2010 BMW Auckland Regatta on Saturday when the multi hull they were crew on flipped. Frantic Drift, skippered by Olympic sailor Dan Salter with Nathan Handley and up-and-coming Olympic class sailors Blair Tuke and Peter Burling’s trimaran flipped near the end of the opening race. Frantic Drift under tow. Picture: Ivor Wilkins Offshore Images. “We were just coming in to the finish of the More...

Department of Conservation is encouraging Bay of Plenty residents to get to know their local marine reserve at Mayor Island, Tuhua, during Seawekk, March 7-14. Tuhua Perch. Photo by Kim Westerskov. Seaweek is an annual event run by the NZ Association for Environmental Education that encourages New Zealanders to come together and celebrate the sea. It provides a wide range of opportunities for people to learn about our fantastic marine environment and share their experiences of it.  More...

Four days of continuous fishing begins next week with the start of the Tauranga Game Fishing Club’s One Base competition on Wednesday. Entries were looking like being down a bit this year, but club manager Grant Holley says reports of marlin in the Bay this week has prompted a flurry of late entries. The charted competition ground. “It’s going off at the moment,” says Grant. The rules have been changed this year to remove mandatory daily reporting. It means More...