24/03/2026
Trip Report - Yellowfin Tuna and Big Snapper 13km Offshore
A pretty incredible trip WAY off the coast.
The weather came together with glass calm conditions so me and a mate ventured out to Post Office Rock. An area which is 13km offshore and some very large fish have been caught here, especially big game-fish like marlin, mako sharks and yellowfin tuna. In years gone by it was a sure fire spot for Hapuku, but they are no longer a common sight anymore.
The water temps were pretty good and after we found the blue water at 78m (really far out for this time of year) We then realised just how fishy it was. Anchovy and whitebait schools thicker than the sounder could read through and mixed kahawai and skipjack tuna across the surface, shearwaters and gannets diving. All through a very big area.
Both of us trolled deep-divers around but could only produce kahawai, despite wanting to connect to a tuna. Once the fish went down we decided to fish around the main structure.
There were some decent fish on the bottom, and plenty of kingfish on the surface smashing into saury, which was a sight to behold. Fish flying out of the water and i managed to land one of the soft-bait rod after my lure got inhaled. We both then caught a nice kingfish each on mechanical jig .
Once that was out of the way, i wanted to go track down a big tarakihi, so i set to dropping my smaller 3/0 KL hooks to try and tempt a few.
Fishbites are great for fishing deep water, as i was now dropping into 90 - 95m. It'd be a chore to pull the line in if the baits came off without a fish. After an hour of looking for tarakihi, all i had found were barracouta, and big sea perch.
I moved a little shallower between marks and hooked what i thought was a half decent hapuku. As it began to float i got a bit excited, but looking down into the blue water a pretty solid snapper appeared instead!
Easily my biggest snapper from this section of coastline at 66cm
I continued making drops and pulled 3 big Gurnard in a row out of basically 90m. There's a heap of them at this depth usually but no less weird to pull them out of such deep water!
As it was getting on in the day we decided to turn around and look for some tuna on the way home, with all the bait we knew we would run into something. But when a 30kg + Yellowfin leapt 3 metres into the air just to our right we knew we were about to witness an incredible few hours.
Tuna are very fast swimmers and we had no hope of keeping up with them, but we tried our very hardest to close the gap to try and make a cast into the busting fish. Yellowfin tuna are something I have rarely seen in 3 seasons but today they were on the bait hard. at least 15 fish over 20kg smashed the saury in front of us. and went down as soon as we arrived to troll lures past.
This continued as we turned back to land as more tuna busted up on this epic line of blue water meeting the green. It was holding heaps of fish. We kept heading back to land and both albacore and more yellowfin could be seen with the shearwaters.
Why we weren't getting hit on the diving lures who knows. Possibly because they were too keyed in on the surface bait and had plenty to already grab. Man it was frustrating. When you have hunted them for so long and then they just say no when they are right there laughing at you.
The line kept producing tuna bust ups all the way in to 75m where the blue water turned a very dark green. Still no takes and two very buzzing but disappointed kayakers turned for land and made the 7km trek home to the beach.
It was a day we both will never forget, and the image of a 30kg yellowfin metres in the air will likely not go away for either of us.
I doubt anyone on this coast has paddled unassisted to Post Office, so it was good to finally tick off a place that really can only be accessed in the best of weather.
Hopefully they stick around through April and i can have another crack at them 😁
