Kingfish at White Island

[Lionel Korach]

What a blast this year has been from a fishing perspective in the Bay of Plenty New Zealand. White Island a famous location for targeting XOS Kingfish, has once again lived up to all expectations. Generally Kingfish are caught deploying livebaits down to the reef structures and drifting them slowly untill they are engulfed. Other methods are high speed jigging 2-300 gram lures, which involves dropping lures while drifting to the bottom or into the sounded region, and then retreiving the lure at highspeed thus enticing a bite. This year to date we have not missed once on our many trips to the Island. For those of you who are not familiar with this type of fish, they grow to in excess of 50kg and are one of the toughest fish pound for pound you will encounter in NZ waters. We generally fish the waters around White Island with stand up game tacle generally 24-37kg tackle, however in saying that there are numerous opportunities to experiment with lighter tackle and indeed with salt-water fly, just be prepared to lose a lot of tackle.If anyone is interested in knowing more about how to catch these fish or would like some advise on charter trips available or accommodation etc.. I am only to happy to help. My contact details www.memorymakers.co.nz

[Big Bones jones the fish]

Nice one Lionel!
I was over for the Lions tour last year and took in a two day trip to white Island with Rick Pollack on Pursuit. Had a great time even if the weather did do its best to smash us. Had KF, hapuka, Bass, teriaki, and lots of other fish.
Had a great time in NZ and with Rick and the boys from Auckland who we booked the boat with!