Fickle snapper are hard work when also facing gannets

A day out on the Hauraki Gulf last weekend proved, again how fickle our fishing can be. All reports suggested an abundance of snapper have moved into the inner gulf as the seasonal migration from the northern depths gets under way.

Every year there is a flush of snapper from Bream Bay and waters offshore down the coast past Kawau Island to the flats where the water varies from 20m to 30m in depth.

Another similar wave of snapper moves past the tip of the Coromandel Peninsula into the Firth of Thames. A lot of fish remain in the shallows right through winter, but the bulk of them move around with seasons, driven by water temperatures.

So it was with high expectations that we headed out of Westhaven and turned towards Tiritiri Matangi Island. The waters around 30m deep north of Tiri proved beneficial during past springs, and a charter skipper on the radio reported filling quotas for his customers the previous afternoon. Two divers slipped into the water just inside Tiri, and 30 minutes later surfaced with catch bags holding a little less than the allowable limit of scallops. A 10- minute cruise took the launch out to just under 40m where anchored boats suggested fish, confirmed when a dense red mass appeared on the fish finder in midwater. “Those will be bait fish — pilchards or anchovies or mackerel,” said the skipper, pointing to the sign which now flecked the screen, “with snapper underneath them.”

Then the birds which had been circling suddenly started hurtling down like dive bombers. The gannets set their wings like those on a jet plane and they fold them and pierce the sur- face in a splash of white foam. They often surface with no fish and have to repeat the process many times. It would take a hard- hearted person not to get excited at the activity, and for the angler it is a scramble to get the baits into the water.

Some like to rig a whole or half pilchard, but this takes time and the bait will often be snapped up by a passing kahawai. Our rods were rigged with GT flasher rigs, the three recurved hooks baited with small chunks of pilchard. The 6/ 0 hooks can slip over the back of the piece of pilchard with the point emerging on the other side.

This will stay on firmly until a fish is hooked or the bait lost. With three baits sitting above the sinker, rather than below it as with a long trace, the bites are easily felt. But it is important to resist the impulse to jerk the rod up at each bite. This only pulls the bait away from the fish, when the object should be to make it as easy as possible for it to eat your bait.

By waiting until the weight comes on the line, then striking, a better hook- up rate will be achieved. But the snapper here were not hungry. With only three snapper to show for two hours it was time to try somewhere different. But it was not until 4pm that a massive work- up appeared and after half an hour the fish box was loaded. The Tongariro River at Turangi has been fishing well, with rainbows up to 2.75 kilos from both downstream wetlining and upstream nymphing. In the evenings a rise of mayflies makes it worth changing to a dry fly, but a lot of the fish are kelts — fun to catch but not good table fish. On Lake Taupo, deep trolling during the day is producing well with black toby and gold cobra lures.