Well, I’ve just got back from a 5 day trip to the Three Kings islands off the northern tip of New Zealand onboard “Pursuit” with Rick Pollock. The Kings are famous for fishing, in particular yellowtail kingfish jigging, and it lived up to its name. To say I was happy with the trip would be an understatement, it was awesome and I’ll definitely be going back again. As I was a single booking, Boulder from Boulder Guiding http://www.boulderguiding.co.nz/ helped me get on a boat as it is pretty hard to get a spot without booking the whole boat. He arranged everything for me, including the use of a heap of good gear including Jigging Master and Jigstar rods, Jigging Master, Accurate and Shimano reels, plus a full arsenal of 37kg trolling gear, lures, jigs, hooks, spare line, EVERYTHING!
We boarded Pursuit on a Tuesday afternoon at the beautiful Mangonui wharf and met the crew- Rick, Zane and Sam. The rest of the charter was made up of 5 other Kiwi’s, all great guys including Josh who gets on here a bit as “Accident Prone”. We had an absolute mountain of top notch fishing gear that would have conservatively totalled over $75,000. Needless to say we ran out of rod holders pretty quickly.

A early departure the next morning and we were jigging a reef off North Cape by lunchtime where we all pulled up kings of varying size, with the highlight being a 20kg (I think, we caught that many they all blur into one) fish by Josh on his 150g Synit rod and Stella 6000. We departed shortly after as we had another 50nm to run to the Kings where we arrived in the dark. Pursuit travels at a pretty economical 9-10kts so we trolled a spread of marlin lures everywhere we went.

While we were blessed with awesome travelling weather, the forecast changed suddenly overnight and we woke on Thursday to lots of rain and an easy 30kts of wind so it was decided to hang in close to the Princes Group, where we discovered something we were hoping for but not expecting- surface lure action on the kings. Josh started us off by chucking a Fisherman stickbait and landing a great king of pretty close to 30kg after a tough fight on a 8’ rod.

We ended up getting over 10 kingies for the day, with over half coming off the surface and the others on livies fished down deeper. The weather for that night blew up even more, meaning a pretty sleepless night for Rick and Zane, who had to keep re-anchoring the boat and maintaining an anchor watch so we didn’t end up somewhere we didn’t want to be.

Friday came with clearer skies and a fast improving forecast, so we started with a little in close fishing where I nailed probably my fish of the trip, a 13kg kingy on a popper cast at a wave washed bombie. Rick and I saw the strike and were stoked when it came aboard. That was something I definitely wasn’t expecting.

We did a little more surface stuff, plus a little sight seeing. The Three Kings sit at around 34 degrees South, which is about the same as Bremer Bay/Albany, and you can see this in the type of coastline.

With the weather improving by the minute, Rick made a big call we were all stoked with- we were going to spend the arvo on the Middlesex Bank- one of the 2 main banks around the Three Kings. This is where big fish live and it didn’t take long to find some. The first 2 fish up were good Hapuka, them Boulder managed to extract a 52kg bass (wreckfish) from the reef. There are photos around but I don’t have them so you’ll have to use your imagination. We all got amongst some bass on both bait and jigs, and Bear snuck down a soft plastic on a Saltist 20 with 20lb line and had on a 15kg bass before he hit the bottom.

Fair bucket of fish meat!

Saturday we all voted on hitting the King Bank to have a marlin fish, then chase some of the bigger kings we all wanted to land. Upon hitting the bank, Rick called out “marlin!” and we all jumped to attention. The boys had put me on strike because they had all landed striped marlin before, and as I was clipping the belt on we watched a 110kg stripie dart and slide amongst the lures. It was not hitting them so Zane lobbed back a livie which got mouthed but failed to hook up. Bummer but no one was too disappointed, we still had kings to catch and besides, if I landed everything first trip I wouldn’t have an excuse to come back.

We pulled the lures in and Rick found some bottom, first up were quite a few bass, not what we were really looking for but good fun on jigs nonetheless. A short shift and the call was kingies, and they sure were.

These were all 15-30kg fish and were pretty keen on the jigs. It isn’t like sambo jigging where you drop, lift and you’re on, you actually have to jig well and think about jigs and techniques, but the rewards were there. We had multiple hook ups and Josh landed the biggest again at 30kg.

Rick tags all of the kings he releases and has had recaptures all over NZ and even on the east coast of Australia, which is a straight line swim of over 1100nm or 2030km. Pretty amazing for kingies.

The next day was our last and we had plans for a blue nose (blue warehou) fish on the way home but seeing as this is done on 350m of water, old Huey had other ideas. Steve and I had big kingies flashing in our eyes again but we all decided to have a soft plastic snapper fish instead. Drifting along in 40m of water in Parangarenga Harbour (place names are hard to say over there), we landed around half a dozen, with the last fish taken by yours truely at a “pretty happy with” 9.2kg or 20 good old fashioned pounds taken on a “fanta” coloured McCarthy placcy and on light gear.

We tied back up at a drizzly Mangonui wharf later that arvo and my long awaited trip was over. As we were unpacking 3 or 4 Orcas (killer whales) came right along the boat chasing stingrays and put on a show for around 30 minutes, catching a few and giving us a good look at them from only a few metres away. It’s a real pity it was raining as it was the perfect photo opportunity.

Like I said earlier, it was an awesome trip with things to do in all weather, Rick and the crew couldn’t have been better, the boat was perfect and the company was excellent. While we didn't get any massive kings, I am going again and am keen to take some WA people along too. Rick wants to get some West Aussies over to confirm which fights harder-kingies or sambos, so why not. We could probably fit in a trip in May 2011 (March and April are booked out) or if you want to wait a little, get March or April 2012 for the more stable weather and better marlin numbers. For info my whole trip cost $2600AUD total for 8 days away (5 days fishing, 2 flying, 1 driving). This includes all flights from Perth to Auckland, food, charter, everything! Compare that to some of the Australian trips and it is the best value charter in the world I reckon, I know I’ll go again. So, who wants to come???? PM me if you do and we can have a little pow wow about dates and numbers.
ps. Kingies are tougher, they fight all the way to the boat.
Catchya,
Tim