How we like to target gurnard off the bays - harvesting our east coast bays carrot patch.

Harvesting our east coast bays carrot patch.

The plan was a catch up carrot sesh with Pea in the little FC off the bays, it's a great time of year to try and track down a few of these succulent morsels. The snapper thin out and the carrots move in, over the years they have taken up residence off the bays over winter. When we first started catching them a few years ago we would get 2-3 to every one snap, now that we target them a lot more when the snapper have thinned right out it's pretty much a 100% catch rate. It's pretty cool to head out and target a certain fish and only catch that species and nothing else. With a high around just after 10.00 we launched around 9.00, the plan was to fish that last hour of the tide and into the slack. I do like fishing them on the slack but you get them right through the tides.

Arriving at our spot and with the wind not to strong we decided to start with a few drifts using softies and micro jigs, it can be a lot of fun catching them on the light gear. Pea was running a little micro jig and I was on a soft bait, part of the plan was to trial a few different techniques to see what works best when targeting them. I do prefer the good old bait and berley and really think you can't beat it. We caught a couple on our first couple of drifts then dropped a few over the next 2-3 drifts so the micro jig and softies worked well even though we had to work a little more for them - it is fun drifting and hooking up..

After a few more drifts and no takes we changed over to drifting with baits but as the tide slackened the wind picked up and it got a little to difficult to fish on the drift, it was time to drop the pick and berley and let the fish come to us. Although a lot of fisho's hate the mess of bait and berley I still think that old school fishing is one of the best ways to target fish if you are wanting to land good numbers. Don't get me wrong I do love a bit of softbaiting and micro/slow jigging but only when it is the time to do so. This time of year in the shallows or just off shore bait and berley comes into it's own.

Setting the berley we dropped our first baits, cubed pillie is one of my favorite ways to catch them - just the right size to fit in their mouths. It normally takes a good 10-15mins before you start to get any inquires, we normally get a few little nibbles with the odd hook up or miss then 30-40mins in they can really come on the bite as the berley kicks in. Our first few carrots were of small size but at least we started getting a few, but as stated above the bites came on more and more and soon we were getting bites within seconds of the bait hitting the bottom. I stuck with the strayline rig but Pea was starting to get hammed on the Ocean Assassin flasher rig which he likes to use when targeting gurnard.

Our east coast carrots are a little different to the west in the way of size, we can get some goodies but off the bays they probably average around 35-40cm. We kept the ones reaching over the 30cm and soon we had a few more hitting the bin around the 32cm. There were plenty there for the taking and after adding 5-6 to the ones we got on the drift we had a big front come through and drag us off our spot. It gets a little annoying especial when they are on the bite and after resetting a few times it went pretty quite for us, we managed a few more once we stayed put and better ones around the 42cm.

With the wind up and a good 10-12 carrots in the bin we called it a day - our carrot plan came together perfectly and it was a great catch up gurnard sesh with Pea.

Tight lines

Видео How we like to target gurnard off the bays - harvesting our east coast bays carrot patch. канала REEL KIWI FISHING FISH WHISPERER