A little bait n berley bash in the farm – catching fish safely out of the wind

Another day and more wind meant Stevo and I would once again look for a bit of shelter while fishing in the little Osprey. The good thing about staying at the Top 10 in Whatuwhiwhi, there’s plenty of places to still fish even when the wind turns up. With a 25knt S/SW blowing we made our way around the coastline towards a mussel farm where it would be sheltered for a big bait and berley bash. We flicked a few softies around in here the other day and caught a few nice fish so the plan was to come back to flick a few baits.

The mussel farm can provide you with a good feed of snaps and trev’s but some big donkeys can turn up here as well so we knew even though we were in a sheltered bay it didn’t mean there wasn’t a chance of a big snap or two. We’ve caught some double vig fish here before and even if they don’t show you usually have a fun day catching here. We started off with no berley and we pretty much both hooked up straight away on our first baits – the mussel farm already has its own berley and draws fish in.

My first fish was about 40cm and had swallowed down the bait so ended up in the bin while Stevo’s a bit smaller went back. With fish showing up straight away we set the berley in motion in hope to bring in a few better fish and maybe some big trev’s. Dropping another bait it was hit before it reached the bottom. With my rod buckled over it had that thumping tell tale sign of a big trev, then Stevo hooked up beside me on a kahawai. The fish were turning up and the farm wasn’t disappointing….

Fish after fish we were hooking up left right and centre, there were some nice snaps to 50cm coming aboard with the odd 40-50cm trev, the place was on fire. The wind was just relentless but catching fish took our minds off it most of the time. Nothing big had shown up for us but we were having fun and soon we had schools of rat kings, trevs and snaps swimming in the berley trail. Stevo managed snap of the day going around 55cm which he decided to let go and we both had landed a couple nice trevs. With the wind not giving up and 8-9 nice snaps in the bin and a couple trevs we called it a day – but not until we had fed the rat kings and trevs schooling under the boat.

It had been another windy but fun day in the north and we were wondering if this wind was going to be with us for the whole time while being in the north – we were hoping not…

Tight lines