Most of the local beaches in the Napier area are much of a muchness. I usually set up with end tackle that cover the two most likely specie to be caught: gurnard and kahawai. My bait is pretty standard, a headless anchovy tied with bait elastic (not bait cotton) so the gut cavity juices can leach out.

This rig is ideal for general fishing, admittedly I am not likely to take a lemon but I do have a lot of success. Sometimes I get the surprise of trev taking the bait, or very large YEM or a couta. I do not complain about such a happening as I am fishing and I am being successful. I know this set up works well and I am happy with my catch rate. However, now the sea temperatures are dropping, I intend to introduce a second hook, slightly smaller, and target red cod, this is called the Wessex rig. Having discovered they are excellent table fare, I also intend to target spiny backs. Some anglers hate both species, I don't they are fish, and with little cooking knowledge, both make damn good eating.

We don't really have natural rock outcrops other than the town reef, so I don't fish for Moki. They are available but just targeting one specie holds little appeal. I now have three good rods so for serious fishing over the colder months I will be using the third rod with whole green prawns.

A local torpedo fisher, a guy who is always very generous with up to the minute information, told me this bait can work well in the winter. Lemons are quite happy to accept a prawn cocktail as a main course. Another small change I am going to try is use a small tippet of squid skirt, just a five centimetre sliver as an added extra to my baits. The lovely strip of white flesh acts as an attractor the same way as beads and orange floats do.

I don't know if any of this information is of any relevance to fishing the Wellington coastline, all I can say is Napier is reckoned to be a hard place to fish. Over the last two years I have no complaints whatsoever, fish taken surfcasting figure regularly on my menu and I have no issues over fishing the local beaches.

On days when I have non fishy company, I then take the torpedo. This has proved great entertainment for us all and I have learnt a lot from the experience. The fish I catch a kilometre off shore, in the right conditions, will usually show up close in shore. This was proved to me when one afternoon my son-in-law and I had a very welcome surprise of landing a Kingfish on the kontiki. About three days later the sea behind the Napier aquarium was alive with Kingfish smashing into bait fish no more that eighty to one hundred metres off the beach. I guess the lesson behind this is always expect the unexpected, the joy of fishing is you just never know what may take the bait of the very next cast.