Tips and tricks in hunting snapper

With season in full swing until May, some advice from seasoned anglers

The snapper fishing season is in full swing, and will continue right through until May, and in this country we have the best snapper fishing in the world.

Snapper are found all around the North Island and in the top part of the South Island, also in New South Wales and South Australian waters with a closely related species occurring in Japan.

Scientists identify our snapper as separate families — those found on the west coast of the North Island, at the top of the South Island, and the east coast of the North Island.

These families display different characteristics tempered by their environment, for example colder water in the south, and they do occasionally intermingle.

The Hauraki Gulf is the most important snapper nursery on the east coast. It also supplies around 20 per cent of the commercial catch, the Bay of Plenty around 30 per cent, east Northland 17 per cent and the west coast of the North Island 13 per cent.

Ninety per cent of the recruitment of baby snapper on the west coast comes out of the Kaipara Harbour.

When it comes to putting our favourite fish (in the North Island) in the fish bin, there are many tips which experienced anglers will often pass on to help others.

Over the years we have collected a lot of tips and tricks, and the following are offered in the hope that occasionally some of the combined wisdom of many will make some individual efforts more successful.

How often do you pull up a yellowtail while snapper fishing? It happens all the time, and smart fishermen will keep it for bait.

Where you find yellowtail — or more correctly jack mackerel — you generally find snapper. So look for schools of yellowtail, which show up as a dark mass in the middle of the fish finder.

Don’t lift fish out of the water with your rod. It will likely snap.

A rule of thumb with sinkers — use only as much weight as is needed.

If sharks are a problem when bottom fishing, try mussels for bait. They work well in the Firth of Thames, and salting them down for two or three days toughens them up.

Change baits at least every 15 minutes; preferably more often. Fresh is best, as old baits lose smell.

Snapper kept in a hatchery provide clues to their feeding habits which can be useful to fishermen.

When eating soft foods like pilchards, the snapper will invariably swim around holding it in their mouth. They often expel the food and then take it in again. This emphasises the importance of allowing fish time to nibble at a bait and swim a short distance away before striking.

If bites stop it usually means the bait has gone but it may also mean the current has increased and you are no longer fishing on the bottom. This can be checked by letting out more line, before checking the bait.

When rock fishing try a pilchard with a small sinker suspended from a float (a tennis ball wrapped in stocking is fine). It keeps bait out of the rocks.

When a soft bait loses its tail, take the body off and split lengthways and use it as makeshift tail on another one that has no tail.

Try a big bait to replace the sinker on a ledger or flasher rig when there is no current. It floats down through the water column, fishing all the way.

In a strong current when you get bite on a long trace, drop the rod tip rather than strike. This gives a little slack line and will often result in a hook-up.

Try flounder for bait. All predators like to prey on baby flounder, or dabs, and they work well as a whole bait for large snapper. One angler fishing off Muriwai found 1cm chunks of flounder in the stomach of the snapper he caught. It makes sense to try chunks or strips of flounder flesh as bait.

One good technique when fishing in a current is to put the bait in the water and strip off a lot of line, letting the current take it out; then, with about 10 metres of line out, clip on a sinker and drop it.

This slowly pulls the line and bait down, which fishes through the whole water column, and when it hits the sea bed the bait is waving around in the current.

This is effective with baits like a whole pilchard or squid, and works well in water up to 10m deep.

When live-baiting for kingfish a soft bait lure can be hung on a hook set above the live bait as a second attractant.

The swimming action of the bait will impart enough movement to the lure, and it will often hook a john dory or snapper.

When using soft baits the fish will bite off the tail. This may be a way of incapacitating the prey, which is how sharks attack game fish like marlin, so it makes sense when a bite is felt but the fish is not hooked to drop the soft bait back to the sand.

This will often trigger another bite, and it is usually from a large snapper as these are the fish which will prey on small, whole bait fish.

When rigging a live bait for kingfish or john dory you can solder a safety pin on to a 6/0 hook or 7/0 hook, and use the safety pin to hook the livey through the skin under the dorsal fin.

This does less damage than a thick hook and the live bait will last longer.

Don’t lift fish out of the water with the rod, as it can result in a broken tip. Put the rod down and lift the fish on the line.

Freshwater

Lures and flies can be rigged in tandem when trout fishing, for example a fly sitting above a small swivel a metre ahead of a trolled lure like a toby or cobra acts as an attractant and also hooks the occasional trout. Or a small metal jig can be used in place of a sinker when jigging.