| White Island and surrounding waters are home to Kingfish up to 60 kgs. The extreme reefy bottom can make it a real challenge to land these fish which are extremely hard and dirty fighters, and those wishing to target them need to bring plenty of terminal tackle. Our methods of catching these fish range from drifting both live or dead baits, (Mainly Makerel, flying fish or squid)around reefs 30 -120 mtrs deep using running lines and ball sinkers. Tackle 15 kgs upwards. This above fish however was caught by Raewyn Rodgers whilst we were trolling a Rapala CD22, tackle 24 kgs, fish weight 24kgs. | |
| This Kingi 15 ks was caught on 10 kg tackle at Whale Island on a conventional ledger rig and a squid bait. | |
| Choppers light tackle (4 kgs) Kingi marathon was berlied up and succumbed to a free floating baby squid, took 20 minutes to land and circled the boat 3 times. | | |
| This Kingfish was caught by myself about 500 mtrs of the Whakatane bar entrance on 8 kg tackle with a strip of squid bait on a running line. It was by far the smallest (27kgs) of 4 which entered our chum trail whilst bottom fishing for gurnard and snapper. Fortunatly the bottom was sandy and we were able to quickly retrieve the anchor before the fish found the rope. | |
| Davids Kingi (15kgs) was caught at the Tasman reef on a large Kahawai live bait. | |
Although not a huge fish, the real challenge is boating the fish before it frees itself on the craggie bottom,... well done chopper.
In New Zealand the minimum legal size for keeping these fish is 750mm, at White Island due to the size of the fish local Charter Boats have agreed on a minimum takeable size of 1000mm (1 Meter). | | |