Trailer Boats 2025

Click Here for Fish Tally.          Click Here for Prize List.

This year we had an almighty 58 trailer boats and 140 anglers taking part which was great to see. The tournament was generously sponsored by Makaira Boats, the club, Fusion, Okuma with some lovely rods and reels, Garmin, Trailparts, Pacific Motor Group, Narva, nettl, Cule Marine, Lusty Blundell, Red Gill Custom Lures, Showcase Jewellers Kerikeri, Seakeeper Ride, Advance Trident and U-Dek.

Day 1 of the tournament, and boats lined up just outside the harbour for the 'shotgun start' to go and find the flag buoy, which was found and picked up by Campbell Druce on Kaos II, which earnt him a Trailmaxx winch sponsored by TrailParts. During the day, Campbell also had the luck to tag and release a striped marlin. Another striped marlin was weighed in by Jackson on Bill Collector, which unfortunately just missed the mark. There were plenty of snapper, with the heaviest of 8.55kg caught by Jayden Froome on Siobhan Tulloch, but there was a good 2nd place snapper of 7.35kg landed by Bryce Hills on 8kg line, on Playmate. There were also a few kingfish weighed in, the heaviest of which was 11.05kg caught by Cheryl Silich on Shifty II. The heaviest 'other' gamefish for the day was a mahimahi of 9.8kg, caught by Bryce Helms on Blue Hustler.

Day 2 of the tournament was a bit lumpier outside the harbour, but fishable, as we still had a striped marlin caught on Reel Deal by Luke Judge which weighed in at 97.6kg. Iris angler Glen Beh also had a great catch of a yellowfin tuna weighing 53.1kg, an awesome effort taking nearly 2 hours to boat on 24kg line and caught in 91m off the back of Stevies.

We had some good snapper as well, with Denise Larmer on Liberator bringing in a fish of 8kg and caught on 6kg line! Heaviest kingfish for the day weighed 12.3kg and was caught by Saber Farzami on charter boat Albacora. There were also plenty of tagged kingfish by Denise and Linda Bradly on Liberator, and Paul & Dianne Sullivan on Rough & Ready. Paul  also caught a good kahawai for the day, of 2.5kg.

Prize-giving and Tony Newman got off to a good start, winning the $500 spot prize. Jayden Froome won the snapper section with his 8.55kg fish, Saber won the kingfish section with his 12.3kg fish, Glen won the tuna section with his big yellowfin, Campbell won the top prize in the tagged billfish section, and Luke won the heaviest billfish section with his striped marlin of 97.6kg, which was also the fish worth the most IGFA points.

A very happy Ian Rouse on Dun Blockin won the early bird cash prize, and an equally happy Lisa Grayling on Sassenach won an early bird prize of a Garmin 12" Echomap. Big thanks to Allan Shaw and Makaira Boats, and all the sponsors for the contest, and for Graeme Heapy MC. We hope to have good weather again next year, and an even bigger contest which is growing in numbers year on year.