Thanks to Capt Cook’s mix- up our prized fish is not what is seems
Our most popular fish, the snapper is not actually a snapper, and it has many names.
We can thank Captain James Cook for the mixup; for when he saw his first snapper in New Zealand waters in 1770 he thought it was one of the snapper he had encountered in North American waters, and named it accordingly.
Our snapper actually belongs to a family of fishes known as porgies, which are commonly caught in shallow inshore waters in North America, and is the only member of that family found here. Our member of that family is also found in Australia and as far away as Japan.
True snappers include 14 different species found in north and central American waters, and include names like mutton snapper, cubera snapper, Guinean snapper, mullet snapper, red snapper and yellowtail snapper. Most grow to about 12kg but the monster is the Pacific cubera snapper which tops 35kg.
Our heaviest official snapper catch was 16.8kg, caught by Mike Hayes fishing out of Tauranga in January 1999. Larger specimens have been caught but not officially recorded.
In Western Australia, it is called pink snapper, while young fish are known as cocknies, then red bream or pinkies while the spelling schnapper is sometimes used in Victoria. The Aboriginal people of Port Jackson called them wollamie, while early settlers in Australia knew the fish as a “light horseman” as they felt the fish’s skull resembled the helmet of the soldier.
The Maori name for snapper is tamure, and it was an important food source for the people as it was so widespread and common. They don’t inhabit super deep water like hapuku, but can be found from the top of a harbour, off beaches, and all the way out to 200m of water. They are everywhere — although many anglers might argue that when fishing is hard. And they are numerous, with one survey by divers counting fish recording an average of 6700 of all sizes for each kilometre of rocky coast. That was in the Leigh area, and of course the marine reserve is quite handy.
Scientists say there are two separate stocks — on the west and east coasts, and those on the west side grow faster than their eastern cousins, which can be attributed to their environment. But the greatest concentration of snapper is in the Hauraki Gulf, right on the doorstep of more than a million people.
They are found predominantly all over the North Island and the top of the South Island, occasionally turning up as far south as Banks Peninsular and Greymouth.
Snapper spawn when sea surface temperatures reach 18C, which can be any time from October to February, peaking in December and January, and they will spawn several times in a season. What determines a successful year’s spawning and survival of the larvae is the water conditions they encounter; temperature and the availability of microscopic food.
The young fish grow slowly, and the smallest snapper generally seen are about 2cm long and probably several months old. At this stage they are already perfect miniatures of the adult fish, complete with tiny blue spots along their back. When using tough baits like fresh yellowtail or kahawai, add a cube of pilchard to the hook as a sweetener Bite times are 3.35am and 4pmtoday and tomorrow at 4.25am and 4.50pm. More fishing action can be found at www. GTtackle. co. nz.
The babies continue to grow slowly, attaining a length of 10cm at the end of their first year, and do not mature to spawn until four or five years old. On the east coast they are likely to be 5 years old at the legal takeable size of 30cm. They all start out as females, but before maturing sexually about half change sex to become males.
At 6 years our snapper average 35cm and thereafter continue growing about 1cm a year. Growth rates vary considerably depending on local conditions of food availability, water temperature and density of other snapper and a 5kg fish may be anything between 20 and 50 years old. The oldest recorded was 60 years of age and the maximum length 1.3m and weight 20kg.
Snapper are opportunistic feeders which accounts for their abundance, and also makes them such a user- friendly fish when it comes to sport fishing. They will eat most baits, will readily attack metal jigs, rubber lures, live fish, boiled potatoes and even strange concoctions like beef liver soaked in kerosene, wild duck meat and tripe.
They have large and effective teeth with sharp canines in the front of the jaws and rounded molars further back, and can pry loose and crush almost any shellfish. Our trout are not native to this country. In fact there no members of the salmonidae family found naturally below the equator. Everywhere trout or salmon are found in the southern hemisphere they have been introduced. In New Zealand we have rainbow and brown trout, and brook trout in limited locations, and quinnat salmon which are both land- locked in places like Lake Wakatipu and sea- run in the Canterbury rivers.