Cornwallis

I have been spending quite a bit of time on the Manukau harbour as i am now closer to here than the Waitemata and I have been finding it difficult to find areas not so muddy. I have found that to get the cleaner water you really must be past Cornwallis. there is some good looking water here but once again needs a bit of time.
I headed out last week on the high thinking i would head round the rocks but found they were a bit too high to navigate so with no other option headed onto the wharf to see what's happening. after some talk with a guy there I headed back to the car to get my rod with the idea of jigging my fly. I cast a couple of times out with no success as I found I was not getting the depth required so added a bit of bait. yes I know sacrilege as this is not really fly-fishing. the bait disappeared pretty quick but what was left was a number of fish busting all over each other to get my fly. why this should be I am not sure but the first one I hooked fell off soon after but the second took off for the end of the wharf and three quick wraps of the pole I was stuck. one of the guys had a look and confirmed the fish was still on. now what! the same guy declared he would go for a swim to try and catch or untangle the fish but after about 1/2hr to 1hr the fish finally broke off. I went back to fishing but couldn't wake another and i tried other techniques and flies to no success.
as the light started to fade a couple of guys came down to fish off the end and within minutes one of them was on a brought in a 50cm trevally. it goes to show there are a lot of fish around here and what may be needed is a kayak

After this I have some ideas about adding some extra weight to jig my fly closer to the bottom or looking at what other areas around here that may be more suited to fly-fishing. after seeing the bay at low and full I think half tide may be best although when the fish came on it was right on high. not sure if there was something in this or just dumb luck.

Waiheke Re-Visited

I headed off to Waiheke again last weekend on different tide so i wasn't sure how the fishing was going to be compared to last time. The first spot i didn't spend much time in but the main point I did. At first it was quite slow but as the tide changed and started coming back in I managed two snapper with one being legal. I moved my round the ledges but came back to the first one. I switched flies to an interceptor and immediately got another 2 in quick succession then all went quiet. There were quite a few work ups going on but just out of casting reach. By one o'clock it was almost time to go but decided to head round the bend a bit. there was nothing at first but i could see the water was deeper so i put on a larger heavier fly and got a small snapper then just as i was about to finish for the day something solid came on and started screaming off. my reel has problems with start-up and usually end up in a birds nest so i kept my fingers around the line to control the drag. this worked well but i was soon in the backing and getting worried. I held on tight and managed to get in some line before it peeled off again. i reeled in again and this time got some decent amount of line back on the reel. By now I was getting confident that i had it in the bag. I saw the fish take a leap and there was no denying it was a kahawai of a decent size and when i got home and weighed it, it was 5lb.

The day was certainly a learning experience and i learnt a bit more on using heaver weights and larger sizes. i was using a size 1/0. my flies have been getting larger every year. To think my first flies i caught fish on were size 4 clousers.

I have been experimenting with the weight of the dumbells i use on my flies and I have found if i am fishing the inner harbour lighter flies with smaller dumbells work best if not just because they hit the water lighter but in open side of sea with deeper water larger dumbells to get down deep are better.

Here is a rough guide to my fly size to dumbel ratio
inner harbour. clousers in size 2 with small to med dumbells and size 1 to 1/0 interceptors with small to med dumbells
open sea with deeper water size 2 clousers with med beads and 1/0 interceptors with med to large dumbells.

having the same fly with a couple of different weights give the options for different water.