The dawn chorus of birds were singing as my alarm pulled me from my sleeping solitude and as the haze of sleep lifted, I remembered why I was waking at 5:20am, then the energy and excitement of another Jetskifishing session charged me up to explode out of bed and get me on my way. It was not long before I was in my wetsuit and appropriate gear and hooking the weapon of choice my black Yamaha FXHO WaveRunner behind the car. I am sure if you look closely you can see it twitching on the trailer wanting to unleash its power and muscle as it gets a sniff of the ocean exiting my garage. The ice went into the chilly bin and after a quick check that I had everything required to for an effective Snapper slaying session I got on my way. Within seconds (30 exactly) I am backing the beast down the boat ramp at Bucklands Beach and slipping it in next to another Jetskifisho, Eddie whose in the process of launching. As the WaveRunner glides off the trailer into the water and enters its element, it floats poised to get it on. Dave is also there with his WaveRunner waiting to bark into life. Innsie text me early on, overcome with excitement and was already on the water and stalking our fishing ground destination. As I push the start button the 1.8 litre high output engine fires with a sound and feeling that sends adrenalin flowing through your veins. The conditions were 10knots from the west, which made for wind against tide chop the whole way to Crusoe Island, situated between Motuihe and Waiheke Islands. The 3 skis headed away from Bucklands Beach and it was not long before the throttles were squeezed and we were on our mission. At 80kph I approached a solid rolling wake from a launch in front of us that formed a beautiful ramp that my temptation could not resist, with speed maintained I was effortlessly launched 6ft in the air, and had a moment of complete flight and silence as I released the throttle to then land like a hot knife in butter. It was back on the throttle as I said to myself, man I love this!! With the cruise control on the WaveRunner set at 75 kph, it wasn’t too long before we were at Crusoe and the scouting around for schools of fish started, we split up with one eye glued to our fish finders looking for the all-important marks of Snapper holding on, or near the bottom. It was not long before I had located a solid school, although the fish looked on the small side this was a worth a shot as the surrounding areas where barren. The drift direction was difficult to pick as the current was flowing south with the wind direction from the west, so depending on the wind gust strength, the repeated drifts often ended in slightly different directions which made it very hard to place the ski and my softbaits over the top of the fish, resulting in many quick retrieves of my bait, for a reset of the drift. It’s hard conditions like this, the hunter comes out in you and natural instincts with experience, influence every decision. Luckily after several drifts the GPS tracks started giving me some form of trend as to my movements. With the tide flow it was critical to use at least a 1oz Jighead to ensure my Gulp Softbait could get down and hold in the strike zone. Within 12 minutes the 4 inch Gulp New Penny Minnow was hit after a twitching retrieve 2 metres from the bottom resulting in a nice pan sized snapper which was quickly netted, ikied and chilled in the icy slurry sloshing around in my chilly bin. Then it was a quick ride up ahead of the school to target the action once again, but many more missed attempts followed with my direction constantly taking me away from my prey. After further analysis of my GPS tracks, I finally got the position right and the wind threw no big gusts at me, which allowed a perfect drift over the school and my softbait to do its thing right in the middle. As seconds passed, my rod loaded up with a nice solid fish which made some runs beyond its actual size, using every bite of current to its advantage. After many more fruitless drifts, I changed through 8 different coloured softbaits and lost several smaller fish. I decided it was best to move around and scan the bottom contours and pinnacles for more promising targets. Innsie had picked up a couple of fish as well, but it was relatively quiet all around. I scanned a wide area between Crusoe and Park Point on Waiheke for 15 mins looking everywhere and things were not looking good. So I made the call to head to where a group of 4 boats where anchored and drift between them as this usually results in hooking up on a solid fish and the onlookers catching no fish are puzzled, confused and left wondering what just happened. The boats were quiet as they straylined fresh baits down the current with little success, then one guy came up solid on a very nice snapper. Paying attention to the angle of his line he was well out the back with a lot of line out, far more than the other boats, which indicated where the fish may be. I had now changed my softbait to the Gulp 5 inch Jerkshad in the Sapphire Shine colour. Within 20 metres of drifting past the back of the boats the Gulp was smashed hard with a more solid snapper unleashing all it had to get away with solid thumping runs and braid screaming off my reel. The current was carrying me fast in the direction of an anchored boat so I put as much drag on the fish as possible, to get it too the surface and in the net. Just as I got it in the bin Myron (aka Hotbodz) gave me the heads up of how close I was to the anchored boat, just in time to start my ski and manevoure away as I apologised to the boatie for getting so close. So now I was on a mission, the fish sign was good where I had hooked up and I quickly shot up to assess if it was holding, which my fish finder confirmed.
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