Biting Back in the Bay with Pinky Green

Last weekend Western Bay anglers had difficulty finding fish in the inshore fishery, but out wide fish remained plentiful.

At Papamoa Beach last weekend kontiki fishers and surfcasters found very few fish. Our veteran kontiki fisher during the week brought in a few snapper, but at the weekend managed only one. Surfcasters in considerable numbers over three nights landed not a single fish.

Russell Anderson (Bugger) with two other anglers on Saturday found the Tauranga Harbour fishing spots all dried up. Fishing randomly they landed in total just three snapper and three kahawai. Then Russell fished for two hours at the Kaituna Cut to land one kahawai.

Early last week Garth Le Lievre (Deepstar) and the anglers aboard at Mayor and the Puka Grounds found the fishing ‘pretty good' landing good bluenose in the 15kg – 26kg range, and some good tarakihi. Midweek they again got good bluenose, as well as some gemfish and a 15kg bass.

Brett Keller (Manutere) and those aboard last week found fishing outside Motiti ‘okay'. On Sunday back to Motiti they found the fishing there still reasonable and ‘pretty steady'. They landed mainly tarakihi, snapper, but also some red snapper and trevally.

The New Zealand Contractors' Federation Tauranga One-Day Six Species tournament Saturday April 28 saw 89 anglers weigh in 103 fish. Michael Brock fishing from Force 5 landed the heaviest fish of the tournament – a 6.295kg snapper. Other heaviest of species winning catches included Darryl Reihana's 3.74kg trevally, Robyn Pederson's 2.31kg kahawai, Bert Vermeulan, 1.45kg john dory.