Fishing: Current events

Greg Hornblow, left, and Derek Taylor struck a good bite in the Rangitoto Channel. Photo / Geoff Thomas

Successful fishing for snapper is all about working the currents. With tides now forecast so accurately along with the heights of the tides, which affects the strength of the current, it is not difficult for a canny fisherman to predict when the good snapper fishing will come on.

Some people won't even put the boat in the water unless the tide on the Waitemata is 3.3m. A 3.5m tide is as high as it gets in a normal year.

If you study the tide tables you will note that for two weeks of the month you will have small tides, in the 2.7m to 3m range, and for the other two weeks of the month you get the better fishing tides, from 3m to 3.5m.

For half of the year the small tides will coincide with the new moon and the large tides with the full moon, and conversely for the other six months.

For example, this month the big tides on our favourite playground, the Waitemata Harbour - for that read Motuihe Channel and environs - were around the full moon this week and the small tides were leading up to the new moon two weeks earlier.

The tide times calendar is a good source of information as it gives tide times, bite times, moon phases and moonrise and moonset times for every day.

These extras are important because the fishing is better when the moon is visible, in other words when it has popped over the horizon, and at key bite times, which are when the moon is directly overhead (the best one); or is directly underfoot, beaming down on China or somewhere exotic where the snapper fishing is probably not of major concern to the local population.

So with all this data at hand it is not difficult to plan fishing trips well in advance, once you know what you are looking for.

The main factors are the size of the tide, the position and phase of the moon, and the timing of the tide in relation to the weather. The optimum conditions are when the wind and tide are running the same way, which will happen for at least six hours of each day. It is always good to start fishing at low tide and fish the incoming, providing the wind is favourable. When this coincides with first light in the morning, it does not get any better.

It is not how much time is spent on the water that matters, but how much quality time is spent working the tides.

The summer fishing season, which is starting to wind down, has been a strange one with snapper proving elusive most of the time. The fish can be there, with schools showing up on the screen of the fish finder, but they won't bite.

Or the bites are so tentative they are attributed to baby fish. In fact, they are often good-sized snapper, and when using a short trace the strike is not even discovered until the line is wound in to check the bait. What has happened is that the fish has swallowed the bait and swum up the current towards the boat and when the line goes light, it reacts.

Seasoned Auckland charter skipper Alan Viskovitch likens it to playing with a kitten and teasing it with a fluffy ball on a string. "If you pull it away the kitten stops playing, but if you just move it a tiny bit at a time the kitten follows.

It is the same with snapper at the moment. If you strike hard at the first nibble you are just pulling the bait away from the fish.

The trick, he says, is to let the fish chew on it, and just move the bait very slowly so it thinks it is getting away. The approach works, as his charter parties find every day of the week. The other factor is to use bait which will resist the attentions of small fish, so that the activity will attract larger ones. Squid is one of the best, but cut into thin sections - like the squid rings that arrive on the plate - and then threaded on to the hook as many times as possible so it is not easily pulled off by small teeth.

Then there are all the fresh bait options like kahawai, piper and yellowtails or other mackerel. But, again, the frustration of fish behaviour is displayed when many baits are ignored and the snapper accept only squid. But that is what makes the game so challenging - and rewarding when everything comes together.