(1) Cool Weather Cephalopods
Squid seem to be cool water animals. We catch our biggest and best examples in the Bay of Islands from August through to Xmas, at that time of year when the local water temperatures are at their coldest. Never before have I regarded them as Autumn prospects. That was until this year. For some strange reason there have been heaps of medium to large squid hanging around the local rock spots during April and May. This is in water that is still eighteen-degrees Celsius. It just goes to show that you can't count on any hard and fast rules in the ocean. I have particular problems with squid. This is specifically because they love saltwater flies. A well dressed saltwater fly fished slowly through mid-water depth will quickly be attacked by any squid in the area. And this stops you catching fish. Few fish are into competing with squid for flies. So when the squid are around that is all you'll catch Ñ unless you throw a squid jig in on another rod and clean the beggars out!
A squid jig by itself never has the same appeal as a fly. Consequently, I use the fly rod to draw the squid close in to my feet then I flick the squid jig in front of them once they're within range. Smearing the squid jig in fish oil helps immensely. A strike on the jig will be transmitted as a dull weight. Then you've got to swing the squid out in one smooth movement and watch out for the great gallons of ink it is going to squirt everywhere. Catch two large squid and you've got enough squid rings for a substantial meal. Catch four or five or six and you'll be eating squid all week. Yum!
Generally I find catching three or four is enough to put them off the bite and fulfil my gastronomic desire for squid dinners. After that you can get back to the serious task of catching fish. Sometimes though, the squid refuse to go away. One memorable evening I caught fourteen of the damned things. They were fun to catch but I still cursed constantly at the need to keep picking up the squid rod. Simpler would it have been to just pole them out on the fly. It is almost impossible, though, to impale squid on a large single hook. I have caught a few by trailing a tiny nymph behind the larger saltwater fly but it is difficult to lift hooked squid out of the water on such a tiny hook. Forget to take the squid jig and you may spend the whole evening totally frustrated by these ten-tentacled monsters. Make sure you put it at the top of your list.

(2) JUST A SKIPPY OR TWO
I had the pleasure of fishing with the Editor and Deputy-editor the other week. Better fishers you have never seen. Myself and a pommy bloke called Daniel made up the rest of the crew. We represented those fishers with more tangential angling interests. Both myself and Daniel are heavily interested in saltwater fly. Need I say more?
Anyhow, yours truly was suffering. I'd recently been attacked by a rampaging sea urchin. The deeply-inserted kina spine that resulted left me with a badly infected middle finger. Stupidly, I delayed going to the doctor. Eventually a medical-type butcher dug the horrible thing out. Prior to its removal though, I could not flycast without aggravating the finger badly. Using heavy stand-up tackle posed similar problems. Boat driving (with my left hand) or farting around with the two kilo spin gear seemed to be the best option.

To my chagrin the whole Bay was alive with big schools of hard working skippies. These were nice fish too. Four kilos was perhaps average size. Not the sort of tough fighting sportfish you really want to deal with a gammy hand. Mark, with all digits in full functioning order, took it all in his stride and absolutely blitzed us all with some fantastic work on Raider lures. John also hooked up regularly on various 'other things' and caught some nice fish. I made an occasional connection on ultralight but failed to land any while Daniel persisted valiantly with the fly gear but couldn't get a hook-up.
This added to an ongoing sequence of saltwater fly failures I'd been having on the skippies and led me to wonder what would be the secret that would eventually lead to their regular capture on saltwater fly. Given that the tuna were feeding on an abundance of tiny whitebait-like fish fry we felt sure a small fly would better imitate this specific prey than the great chunks of metal Mark was using (and using very successfully). It was not to be. These fish were really fussy. Either you had to turn them on to something else (i.e. a fast moving and heavily vibrating metal lure) or expect disappointment.
There is some suggestion that an extremely fast moving, flashing, pulsating, fly will do the trick, but achieving that sort of speed on saltwater fly is not easy: the cast is short in comparison to standard fishing tackle and fish peel off when the short duration high speed retrieve gives out at the rod tip. I personally feel it is silly too, trying to emulate with a fly rod what is easily achievable with high speed spinning tackle. Fly rods are very good for some things but bad for others. I'm a firm believer in using them only for what they're good at. In this case that means fooling these skippies on a 'match the hatch' principle. It hasn't worked yet but I figure it is only a matter of time. A tiny silicon smelt fly and a slow retrieve across the surface are the next avenue I'm considering. Watch this space.

(3) A SESSION IN THE SHALLOWS
We managed to ignore the skippies after awhile (it was hard to draw ourselves away). The wind was wild and the sky brooding and black. Opting for a quiet snapper fish sounded like a good idea. Somehow we hit 'the spot' without even really trying. Snapper and trevally from eight-inch nuisance fish up to three-kilo beauties were hot to trot. And they were great fun to catch in the shallow water we laid a berley trail across. I persisted with the two-kilo gear, and had some fun, but the pros once again caught the better fish. Daniel continued to fool around, and not very successfully I might add, with the saltwater fly gear. The boy obviously has a problem.
Naturally, it was John that scored the big run (he always does). Something grabbed his bait and burned for the horizon. At first we suspected that 'tin bum' had done his usual and was connected to a quality fish. Then the fish changed up a gear and his little ABU absolutely howled. Line melted from the spool. Only a few turns remained when the run finally came to a halt. The fish was near the surface and still swimming very strongly. The smiles on the faces of the rest of the crew said it all: eagle ray!
Now don't get me wrong Ñ I'm not about to go putting eagle rays down, for a stronger fish in the ocean there is not, but locally they are known as tackle destroyers and best avoided. I've seen grown men pulled to their knees by the rampaging beasts, other grown men cry when the damn things steal all their line, and a group of boat fishers frightened by a high jumping eagle ray that was connected to a rock fisher by four hundred metres of skinny nylon. Our hilarity was based on the fact that John would have to pull this ray as close as possible to the boat to ensure that he would get most of his line back. To bust off with the fish at full distance would be to risk an empty spool. We hoped he would have his hands full for awhile!

(4) ON THE BEACH WITH LIGHTER TACKLE
Fishing continued by myself, on a nearby beach, some days later. The two kilo spin stick was light and easy to use and didn't upset the gammy hand too much. It had caught quite a number of fish during the straylining session several days before but suffered slightly from a hook-up problem on the bigger runs. The little rod was too soft and the two-kilo nylon just too stretchy to sink the hook home at a distance. I caught enough but also missed enough to find myself wishing I'd spooled up with a non-stretch line.
Here on the beach I wished for a suitable non-stretch line once again. I was casting out little thirty gram angler lure jigs into the surf and retrieving them slowly. With a bit of sea up there are sometimes a few kahawai off this beach and they provide some amusement on light tackle in waters so clean. Basically though, I was fooling around.
I kept casting for awhile but failed to achieve any connections. A change in style was called for. Instead of doing straight retrieves I now cast the lure out, let it settle onto the sand, and then jigged it slowly back in. On my second cast the rod whacked over and a strong little fish started pulling hard on the other end. Yes!
Almost immediately I knew it was a snapper. Not a big one, obviously, as no line had left the spool, but a snapper nonetheless. I surfed the ten-inch fish into my feet, de-hooked it, and directed it back out into the briny. Now that was okay, I told myself, "a snapper on a lure in the middle of the afternoon off a clean sand beach". I wondered if I could catch more. I did not have to wonder for long. The rest of the afternoon was filled with multiple strikes and aggressive little snapper. Most were in the eight to ten inch bracket: a little under legal size. They were still excellent fun on the two-kilo spin tackle and angler lure jigs. The number of fish I failed to connect with, though, was a great annoyance. I'd whip the rod into the air on the strike, even run backwards up the beach winding furiously, but sixty percent of the time the hook-up wouldn't stick. There was simply too much stretch in this gear when trying to connect with lure-munching fish on the outside of big casts.
In the end I started to look a tad ridiculous tearing out of the water with my rod held high, running backwards madly in an effort to connect with the fish. The dog was standing behind me on one strike and I fell completely over it on my mad backwards dash. There was a momentary feeling of extreme silliness as we rolled in the sand, but this turned to annoyance as I realised the fish was gone. "Damned dog!" I said. It was all his fault. Seriously though, I think I should have modified my tackle.

(5) ANGLING OPTIONS
I never see a lot of people up this way using light tackle. When I do they invariably turn out to be American tourists. And they are more than happy when they hook up on a hard-fighting kahawai off a beautiful shore. Locals seem to be lacking the same appreciation. There just has to be a whole heap of angling options around here that we Kiwis don't get into often enough. Time is short and experimentation is time-consuming but finding new angling options can be extremely engaging just the same.
I've recently found a whole heap of big grey mullet in a local creek. I'm given myself the challenge of once and for all sorting out how to catch these hard fighting fish on hook and line. With this angling option so close and so accessible it is simply something I can't ignore. Perhaps there are others who think similarly. Somehow though- I don't expect to be killed in the rush.
END