The CRA4 area is notorious for its bad weather, which severely restricts the amount of sea days.
Mark Peychers and I made a three day familiarisation trip around CRA4 early this month, meeting our fishers there.
The shot shown above is an unbelievably calm day’s launching from Ngawi Beach, which is down the bottom of the East Coast of the North Island. T
The boat is the’ Elan’, and is the largest of that small fleet that we service down there.
This area is notorious for its bad weather, which severely restricts the amount of sea days available to vessels of this type to catch their ACE.
We visited the other launching areas along the coast over those 3 days, and endured winds from 45knots to 150km/hr at Castle Point. Not much action on the water possible under those conditions.
We talked with various fishers about their business, concerns, highs and lows of industry, and were well received. The general consensus was that when they can eventually get to the gear, the fishing is better than the previous season.
Expectations for the coming weeks were quite positive.
