Jim Gurnick and Peter Aro went kite fishing on Ninety Mile Beach with a Paul's Fishing Kites longline rig on the 7th of January.

They fished straight out from the camping ground at Shipwreck Bay.The pair put out three sets of 10 hooks baited with squid bait and fished from 8pm untill midnight.

They also attached three lightsticks to the gear.

One, placed on the kiteline under their Night Hawk kite was highly visible at 1000 meters offshore.

The other two lightsticks were placed at each end of the hook section.

Their first set returned with five good sized snapper, the next set caught another two decent snapper.

The monster snapper, which tipped the scales at 28.2 pounds (12.7kg), was the only fish caught on the last set.

Initially everyone was overjoyed at the catch, that is until the boys decided they wanted to get the fish mounted.

Before then, Peter's wife was really looking forward to eating the fishes enormous head and in particular the eyes, which are considered a prized delicacy by Maori seafood connoisseurs - a rare treat she was very dissapointed she would now have to miss out on!

Elaine Turner sent in this photo of what they caught while fishing from their 14 foot runabout off the top end of Muriwai Beach last Sunday. It's good to see the snapper are still there as there is a chance of southeasterlies next week.

Below : They caught 12 snapper and a gurnard fishing opposite fire lookout in the forest and between the top of south head and pouto point

We went to 90 mile beach with some friends over Anniversary weekend. We fished on the out going tide, the wind was south east and we easily got the Power Chute kites up and ready to tow the gear out.

We set 25 hooks and left it out half hour. When we brought it back in we had two sharks and found we had lost five hooks to others.

Our friend, fishing just up the beach also only caught sharks.

The next day we went out there again for more punishment. Guess what? Yes, more sharks! We were talking to another kitefisher and he had lost 20 hooks out of the 25 he set further down the beach.

We thought we would persist and decided to try again on the Monday as the wind was blowing easterly. This time we got three snapper, the biggest was 7lb 5oz, so we came home pleased not to get any more sharks.

We took home two sharks and had a friend smoke them for us. He cut them into steaks and it was lovely. I won't mind catching one or two sharks from now on.

Afer fishing at 90 mile we thought we would give Tokerau beach a try again. We went down in the day time and used the Power Chute kite.

Again it worked very well and in no time the kite longline rig was set out and fishing. We put out two sets and caught 10 snapper and three gurnard.

The fish were not as big as the ones we get when we fish here at night.

We used mullet and bonito the fish where caught on both.

Just a quick note to warn long-liners of a snag off Harrisons Cut Papamoa.

I fished there a couple of weeks ago and got hooked up for the second time, I had been told by a local the snag was gone, yeah right!.

First time I lost approx 800 meters nylon, hook section, kite line and kite. Fortunately I got kite and kite line back from Motiti Island. It was rescued by a friendly cray fisherman.

The second time I got hooked up I called mate with 12 foot tinny for a rescue mission. We managed to get everything back this time. (Thanks Reido. I hope you enjoyed the reward.)

The snag appears to be around 800-900 metres offshore in line with middle of Motiti Island.

An electric kontiki also got hooked up there a few days after my second incident. He lost 1500 meters of nylon, hooks etc, and had to make a sizeable donation to the local surf life saving club to rescue his torpedo with thier IRB.

We fished Pakiri Beach about a kilometer north of the main entrance.

We had a kite mysteriously vanish while we were pulling the fish off the hooks. The kite had been wound right in and would have only been flying 30 meters offshore.

The end of our line showed a perfect cut, we suspect one of the locals is sabotaging kites. I read that it happened to someone else in the last report.

There was no way this was a slipped knot or a break because of the force of the wind. It was a clean cut slightly diagonal that would have made the kite blow offshore and fall into the sea through lack of load.

I am sure nobody would have had time to have stolen it as we were only 20 meters away.

A few people appeared as we wound it in.

The worst thing was that it was my first set with a Paul's Fishing Kite, I had only bought it on the Friday having been introduced to kite fishing on a cheap Ryoshi purple kite.

Ed : I had a kite longline cut off by locals around 16 years ago while night fishing just south of the gate at Pakiri Beach. I wasn't sure what had happened until friends at Leigh told me. The culprits had bragged about it to the locals. If you are correct, it is dissapointing to hear it still happens. My advice is to keep close to you gear, and keep an eye on anyone who approaches your gear, if you fish there.

We fished the Picnic Area of Rimmers Road from about 4pm to 8pm on the 30th of last month. Using squid for bait we caught a 30cm snapper and two kahawai, the biggest was 55cm.

Using the fresh kahawai for bait we caught another three snapper between 30 and 35cm. There were kite fishers either side of us, both caught nothing.