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Hi, My family and I recently spent 10 days in the Coromandel, we randomly chose a bookabach in Kennedy Bay 6 months ago, little did we know at the time what a great choice we had made. Pete McKenzie our host greeted us on our arrival and it soon became apparent that he was a great guy and made us feel welcome at his place and would bend over backwards to make our stay as relaxing and enjoyable as possible.
Pete asked what we wanted to do while on holiday, me being an avid spero replied “shoot a large snapper”. He straight away offered to organise a trip on his boat the “M.V Taiho” which was moored in Coromandel town but was required in Kennedy Bay for an upcoming charter. Pete suggested an over nighter to Great Barrier then back down to Kennedy Bay, doing both fishing and spearing, it took a nano second for myself and my brother-in-law Craig to agree and the trip was set to go two days later once Peter and had seconded his mate Rob Fort (Coromandel Kayak Adventures) to be my spear buddy and snapper spearing tutor.
I was soon to discover that this team was quite possibly one of the strongest fishing and spearing crews on the Coromandel, Pete with 25 years commercial long lining and Rob who has Kayaked, soft baited and speared his way around the Coromandel for the last 10 years. This meant my chances of landing a big snapper, either spearing or fishing, were better than average!
After setting off we trolled our way up the West Coast, no action until we hit the Channel Island , where large Kahawai couldn’t resist our lures and we soon had a number on board for the smoker and to use as bait. After arriving at Great Barrier in the dark (near Tryphena) it was time to snapper fish. Rob soon landed the first pannie on soft bait but as the current got underway (full moon) it soon became apparent that team “soft bait” (myself and rob) were struggling against the “bait boys” (Peter and Craig), who started pulling in some large schooling snapper around the 10-12 pound mark, Craig was in his element! After half an hour of watching team BB’s I had to defect and was soon rewarded with the largest snapper I have ever caught. After catching our fill it was time for Pete’s infamous “Bull Mince Curry”, prepared that morning at the bach, and a few vino’s to finish the day off nicely, then off to bed dreaming of shooting big snapper. Dawn broke beautifully at Great Barrier, flat and glassy with no wind, time to snapper snoop the Coastline with Rob, he went right and I went left, one 12 pounder and a Kingi to Rob and nothing for me until I returned to the burley trail. With 15m vis I swam down and shot a pannie, I was on the board but no trophy fish! We then set off for the Coromandel with Rob and I on the flying bridge and Craig and Pete cooking up a storm in the kitchen. Once we polished off breakfast it was time to set the auto-pilot while Rob and I recharged the batteries for our next spear. A few hours later we were ready to enter the water again expecting to hunt Kingi’s but the first thing I saw were snapper and they were out and about in force. Rob soon decided after shooting a nice sized solo Kingi that we should burley up for some big snapper, after finding a suitable ledge for snooping we smashed up a load of kina’s. Right, I was ready for action, under Rob’s tuition I went in, he gave me the correct line of approach to our burley. There it was a twenty pound big boy munching away unawares of the approaching spear shaft which stoned him dead. After lots of whooping, hollering, and underwater photos, Rob said go again and whoa there was his sixteen pound little brother and bang another snapper on the buoy line. Rob quickly added a nice pannie and a cray to his Kingi and then it was back to the boat for the obligatory photos holding the big fish. We finished the day with a couple of coldies as we steamed home to Kennedy Bay . What an awesome day!
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