Lloyd, took Ray and I out on his boat on 2 June 2009.

We left at 11 am, as we boarded we got a safety talk, was issued with a life jacket,which we wore the whole time we were on the boat. Lloyd explained that the sea bed of Opotiki was very flat and that a number of connected deployments were being established by him and he would shows us the benefit of having an a set of connected deployments in an area.

We went out to an area called community reef. We knew we were on top of it as the fish finder clearly showed it at a depth of 15 meters.

Ray and I started to fish and within a minute I had hooked my first fish, under Maroi culture your first fish is released, I was a bit sad but no sooner had my hook hit the bottom again than I had another bite. In the next hour we landed a further 13 fish. We were quite sad to leave the community reef but to see the difference we went to a control area of the same depth 5 KMs away. Fishing here was very slow and it took us nearly 20 minute to land our first fish, though we did catch 7 in the hour. A great time was had by me.

Lloyd an observation for next time might be better to fish in the controlled area first, because nobody really once to leave the Reef area when the fish are really biting.

I would really recommend any one to take this tour and if you have money to invest in a section of connected deployment I highly recommend it! Because the reef will be a great benefit to the whole community for many years to come and the fishing was twice as good!

Reviewed over 3 years ago and experienced in June 2009