Paul Hitchman The Bowentown Fishing Report www.sunlive.co.nz

Autumn has been kind to us, nice and mild so far. The Bowentown bar has been very rough lately and no-one has ventured outside. Water temperatures have started to decrease to around the 17C mark.

The Bowentown Boating and Sport Fishing Club had its harbour fishing competition over Easter and two Barracouta were caught and weighed in.

Old timers have told me that they have been caught in the past but not as a regular occurrence.

Barracouta are known to be around over the winter months when the water is cooler, but only in the open ocean so this is a very unusual occurrence for this time of year.

Plenty of snapper were caught in our competition with the winning fish in the 2kg mark. A lot of Trevally were caught, with a 3kg fish winning the competition.

The most successful fishermen have been using plenty of berley, anchoring in the shallows with the berley going back into the deep holes attracting the fish to them.

There are still plenty of kahawai around inside the harbour and they were schooling around Kauri Point attracting the birds last week.

In the open water, we have no recent reports owing to the rough season over Easter and just before Easter, results were patchy and those in the know were catching plenty of snapper at the 20-24 metre mark.

We did very well berleying back into Steels reef and catching better sized snapper with good sized octopus baits that deterred the smaller snapper from biting.

At this time of the year the bigger snapper stay on with smaller snapper heading for the deeper water.

I remember in the early 1990s, we caught the most good fish that I have ever caught up by Homunga around the 2-3kg mark in the first weekend of May. The Skippys have disappeared with the cooler water.

The Bowentown Boating and Sport Fishing Club are having two fishing contests next month: The Members only [full members] open water [weather dependant] on the 4-5thJune and then the Gallagher's competition held on the 25^th June open water [also weather dependant].

Both competitions have very good prizes. For more info look on our website www.bbsfc.co.nz or ring our office 07 863 5006