Story by Mark Hume, with Photography by Nick Didlick

The Kingfish runs deep, peeling 30 pound mono off so fast I am transfixed by the sight of it. The drum on the Penn reel spits out sea spray. Salt water splatters across my Polaroid sunglasses and gets in my eyes. The thick, short, fiberglass rod is bent double, its butt thumping me in the midriff as I struggle to jam it in the fighting belt. Suddenly I’m afraid the fish will rip the rod out of my hands. Then I see myself going overboard, the rod in a death grip, the boat a dwindling shadow above. . .

“If he runs out behind the boat you’re OK,” skipper Steve Butler says calmly, leaning forward to get a look at how much line has been taken. It’s a lot. And it’s going fast.

But the Kingfish doesn’t go out behind the Earl Grey. He runs not for the dark waters of the open Pacific, but instead turns towards shore, and dives. Somewhere down there in the deep is a huge rock, shaped like a pulpit. The King knows where the rock is. And so does Steve, who’s guided on the waters of New Zealand’s Bay of Islands for 21 years.

“You’ve got to turn him,” he says. “Get some line back. Even a half turn.”

But the King keeps going, punching me in the gut. I brace against the gunwale with my knees, lean back, pitch forward, dropping the rod tip, to grab back a few precious feet of line. The King feels my movement - and yanks back so hard the rod tip dives into the water.

Steve lets out the breath he’s been holding and casts a frantic glance at the Impulse sounder that’s painting a monochrome outline of the bottom.

“We might have a chance,” he says, “if we get the anchor up and go after him.”

We’ve been catching Kingfish all morning aboard Steve’s 20 foot sports fishing boat, which he runs out of Paihia, a small tourist town perched on the northeast coast of New Zealand’s north island.

He gave us the crash course - and we thought we were ready for it.

The day started brilliantly with the Earl Grey, pushed by a Mariner 125, cutting a wake across the dead calm waters of the bay in the darkness before dawn. First we learned how to catch bait, because without the bait, in this hungry sea, you are not fully armed.

Steve takes out fly fishers and light tackle spin casters. But if you want to hit big fish, and get lots of them, he says there is only one way: you hook a jack mackerel through the skin behind its head and slip it over the side with a weight just heavy enough to take it down. So we signed on, setting aside our trout rods for a day, to get a flavor for the place. We thought it might be amusing.

As the day begins, we slice in behind Motuarohia Island, cutting the motor when the sonar shows a spray of black speckles on the screen.

“Here we go,” says Steve, handing up light rods rigged with strings of tiny yellow jigs. “Get into them as fast as you can,” he orders. “We take our bait fishing seriously.”

Over the next 40 minutes, the boat shifting location whenever the bite goes cold, we haul in about 30 mackerel.

“How many do we need?” I ask, knowing we’ll only be out until noon.

Steve laughs. “All we can get, all we can get. Keep fishing. If we get outside and a school of barracuda goes through - bang, bang, bang - they’ll strip you off. And by then we’ll be too far out to run back for more bait. ”

The mackerel are slipped off the tiny hooks with a quick twist and dumped in a live bait tank.

“The boat is really designed around the bait tank,” says Steve. “It’s built so that whenever we stop running a shot of water goes in there. I don’t have to use a pump and the fish stay nice and fresh.”

Just as the sun comes up Steve decides we have enough. The Earl Grey spins in a neat arc, and heads out across the bay for a solid wall of black rock known as Cape Wiwiki. Beyond lies the open Pacific.

Over the past two decades Steve has seen the fishing pressure increase, even here, in this out of way place at the bottom of the world. The commercial gill net fleet, which isn’t supposed to take Kingfish, has been pounding the rich reefs along the coast, taking whatever they can get. It’s the type of rampant, commercial harvesting that globally has been eroding great sport fisheries.

That it should happen in a place as remarkable as the Bay of Islands is a disgrace.

Steve says the local sports fishing guides have protested, but the government’s fisheries department, as yet, has done little to curtail the harvest. He hopes the fisheries managers will wake up before any serious damage is done.

“The inshore fishing is harder than ever, but off the coast, where we’re going, it’s all governed by tides and the moon. Out there it’s as good as it was 20 years ago. In the Bay, I have to admit, the fishing isn’t what it once was.”

As we power up, full throttle to the rugged cliffs of Cape Wiwiki, Steve assures us there is a way through. Moments later a gap opens in the wall and we go through to a blue, open sea, chopped by a light offshore breeze. Clouds that are barred like a mackerel’s skin stretch off to the horizon.

“Yellowtail Kingfish is our prime target. But when we’re out there - anything goes.,” says Steve, flipping on a Lowrance Global Navigator, that uses a satellite system to track us. Programmed onto the gray screen are a scattering of black fish and a few anchor sites. Steve will drop the hook on an invisible reef where the Kings cruise up from deep water to intercept drifting squid and an array of bait fish.

A Tug-of-War with a King Fish

“The more you’re on the water the easier it is to track the fish,” says Steve, a full-time professional guide who spends more than 260 days a year fishing. “This is where they are, or where they will be. You can never know for sure, of course.”

One other charter boat has reached the reef before us. Soon two more pull up. Steve growls under his breath. He hates crowds. But he wants to get us into fish.

It doesn’t take long . Something rattles the end of my line, pulls the rod down - and I jerk to set the hook, which is a natural thing to do when you’re fishing, especially if you’ve been trained on salmon and steelhead in British Columbia.

But to start with Kingfish, you first have to forget all the rules.

“You pulled it right away from him,” says Steve. “You’ve got to wait. Let him mouth the bait. Let him taste it. Be patient. Let him take and start to run. Then you can strike.”

A second fish comes. Pulls. I pull back.

“Uh, uh,” says Steve. “It takes awhile, especially for fly fishermen. I hope you get another chance.”
We do. Moments later photographer Nick Didlick lets out a holler, as his rod tip is yanked under the water. He sets it into a huge bow. And the line starts to rip off.

A small 15 pounder comes in after a brutal fight. It has a golden sheen to its back, a brilliant white belly, a silver-gray head and it seems to be solid muscle.

Soon a King takes my bait. First I feel the mackerel going frantic on the line, doing the herky -jerky dance of death, then a huge weight pulls down. Slowly. I wait as long as I can , then pull back. The violent jerk that that movement unleashes catches me by surprise.

“It’s like hooking a horse,” says Nick, as the fish builds up a head of speed and crash dives towards the bottom. My arm starts to ache before we see the first golden flash, deep beneath the boat.

A baby comes in. Twelve pounds. Over the next half hour we pick up several more - and miss a lot. When they start fooling with your mackerel it is hard to lay back and wait. But if you get enough chances, you get the hang of it.

“When the fish are in a feeding frenzy everyone catches them. It’s when they’re not biting that it gets difficult. That’s when a guide earns his keep,” says Steve.

After the frenzy it grows quiet. We see bait fish flooding under the boat, yellow and silver flashes of movement.

Steve says that it has been a typical morning. A flurry of activity, then nothing , as a school cruises through. When the fish start hitting he works his clients to get the Kings in as fast as they can, so he can re-bait and get their gear back into the water.

“You gotta keep those baits down when the fish are hitting. You hold the fish in that way. You don’t want them going over to the next boat,” he says.

The limit on Kingfish is three. And most New Zealanders kill their limit as quickly as they can. Catch and release is still not practiced that widely, but it’s starting to spread, says Steve, who appreciates the conservation ethic most North Americans bring with them when they visit.

With four or five fish each to our credit, all released, Steve suggests we try another spot, to get away from the other boats and see new water. We search out some of the other hidden reefs, pulling in small snappers and a prehistoric beast called a John Dory, a silver-sided sunfish the size of a dinner plate with huge dorsal spines.

Then we drift over towards the hidden rock. The fish are there - waiting.

A 20 pounder tries to yank me from the deck. Then a 30 pounder pounds at me. When we bring it in Steve says: “That’s more like it.” We hold it up together, smiling, then slide it over the side. It vanishes in an explosion.

A Hammerhead slices towards us, its dorsal cleaving the surface, then dives, going down under the boat somewhere.

Minutes later Nick’s line takes a huge hit. The impact of the strike sends a jolt up from the deep green water, through the rod, along his arm and right into his shoulder. He yelps. The fish runs fast, faster than a King. And it starts coming up - we can see the angle of the line rising as the fish rushes towards the surface.

“He ‘s going to jump,” yells Steve.

Nick hands him the rod and dives for his camera. Just then the shark comes out - it’s not the hammer head, but a Mako, about six feet long. It does an ender, spinning up over the surface so that it is standing on its head, suspended for a moment against the blue sky, four feet out of the water. It twists violently as it falls, cutting the line with a hard jerk.

“They are great sporting fish,” Steve says later. “I had one jump almost over the back of the boat. He was higher than the rods. Busted off.”

Soon we are back into Kings. Their sulking, tentative hits are followed by stubborn, bullish runs.

“They love having a boat over them,” explains Steve. “Anything to cruise under. If there’s a mass of weeds floating they’ll gather under it. If there’s an old anchor rope covered with weeds and mussels drifting with the current, they’ll follow it, just circling round it. “

Heading home with sore arms and great memories

Sometimes they’ll gather under the Earl Grey in great shoals, until the water under the hull is glowing a dull gold.

We are talking. Waiting. Watching the birds. Listening to the waves slap against the hull as the boat tugs on its anchor line. It’s not fly fishing; it’s a long way from the dry fly trout fishing that drew us to New Zealand in the first place, but it has sure had it’s moments. We are both glad we came, and had a chance to fish with someone as pleasant and informative as Steve Butler. Just as we are about to call it a day, the rod tip starts to jump. Somewhere far below us a jack mackerel is doing its last dance as a Kingfish moves in, circling.

I feel the bait being sucked into its mouth. Feel the mouth close. Feel the head shake, and then feel it pull down, slowly. The rod bows. I wait. The line starts to run smoothly off the drum of the reel. I hold my breath.

“That’s a big one,” says Steve.

Then I set. And the fish explodes. He heads deep. And keeps going.

“Now you’ll see how the big ones get that way,” says the skipper, as he guns the motor and gets ready to slip the Earl Grey into gear.

The fish runs for the rock of salvation. And there is no stopping him. When he is way, way down there, the silver lining of the reel drum shining through the last turns, the line stops. It is too late to pull anchor and chase him now.

“He’s on the bottom. You’ve been done,” says Steve. We take turns straining against the rod, but nothing moves. It is as if we are trying to pull up the bottom. The fish has wrapped us.

It’s the last fish of the day. As we head in, the Impulse shades in the great rock, painting it in black on a small screen mounted near the transom.

“Your fish is right about there,” says Steve, tapping the screen. “If you want him, you’ll have to come back.”