Fun weekend up Muriwai - Prt 1 - Sat arvo Kontiki set

An absolute ripper of a weekend fishing Muriwai

With Stevo buying himself a new Seahorse electric Kontiki he has been chomping at the bit to head up Muriwai for a couple of sets, with an Easterly wind blowing out West for past few days and with the weekend looking similar with just a half mtr - mtr swell we decided to head up the end for the weekend. I use to do this often as a kid with the old man setting our own Kontiki, any chance I get I try to get up there even for just a flick off the sand.

Muriwai (as well as other West coast areas) are special places for me as I grew up fishing them since the late 70's - it is a place that I don't mind spending the day even if I didn't get a bite it would still be a great day for me. We left Saturday arvo just on the other side of the tide, hitting the beach around 4.00 the plan was to get a set in late evening then surfcast into the night. We would have a couple hours rest then get back into it for an early morning flick off the sand again before doing a morning set before we hit the road back.

As we headed North along the beach there were masses of workups - 100's of Gannets and what looked to be Shearwaters in a Massiv feeding frenzy, as we drove even further there were more workups. Coming across a few Kite / Kontiki fisho's we stopped to see what people were catching, it didn't look good (well depending if you wanted Kahawai coming out ya ears). It looked like with all the workups just a couple hundred mtrs from shore they were full of Kahawai only. We kept going until 10-15 odd K's along where the workups thinned out - we decided to do a set where there were no big feeding frenzies.

We set up and the torpedo was on its way out just after 6.00 - we decided to let it fully go as far as it could in hope the Kahawai were just in close with all the Gannets. With Steve coming up from Tauranga it would of been a bit disappointing to come all that way for just Kahawai, we stopped it around 2K's out and let it soak for a good hour. Bringing the surfcasters along we had a flick wile it soaked - didn't get much but it's still great fun while you wait and the plan was to head to the end for a night fish any ways.

With the hour up in she came - with Steve already done a few sets now he said it felt a little heavy and we thought maybe it was choker of Kahawai like everyone else sets we had seen on the way in. The first couple of hooks cam out of the water debated, then the next and next then we got to see the familiar shape and red of a nice little Snapper make it's way in. Another couple debated hooks then another Snap and so on - we couldn't believe we didn't even have a Kahawai yet - Another Snap then another then more debated hooks. As the last few hooks came in we ended up with 6 nice Snaps, nothing big but good eaters with most around 45cm.

Cleaning up we had about an hour before dark so we headed to the end for a flick into a nice little channel on dark - with the tide already on the move we only got a couple of baits before we got pushed to far back, we managed only one more for the bin. We found a little sand mound to hide behind for a couple of hours sleep - knowing the tide will be back out and fishable around 3am we were back up and flicking baits once again.

REEL KIWI Fishing Fish Whisperer #lovemyfishing