Fishing: Leave spawning snapper to build up stocks

By PETER JESSUP

Some anglers have been scoring plenty of snapper, others spending their time throwing back undersize fish or getting nothing more than nibbles.

Success depends on where and how you are fishing.

On the Waitemata Harbour, through the Hauraki Gulf and inshore from Northland to Bay of Plenty, many of the snapper are flat slabs with no condition or colour. These fish, just finished spawning, are not the best sport because they're low on energy and fight and aren't the best eating. They should go back, too.

Hauraki Gulf expert Bruce Duncan says that as they come out of that condition, they will move to eat in the faster-flowing current areas.

If you agree with the old saying that 10 per cent of the fishermen catch 90 per cent of the fish, then place Duncan in the top 1 per cent of the elite anglers.

"A lot of people don't know they're getting bites at this time of the year. You have to be more onto it. The fish will crush the bait and suck it off. People think they're getting nibbles from small fish or paddle crabs and miss the strike."

Duncan advises using a running-sinker rig on a half-metre trace. Use smaller baits - half a pilchard or squid - so you are better able to feel the fish feeding. Fish with the rod tip down to the water and line drawn over your forefinger, "in touch" with the bite. When you get persistent interest "lean forward, then strike upwards hard".

Duncan said the fish were bait-picky, sometimes going for pilchards, other times squid, sometimes fresh kahawai or piper. See his excellent guide Fishing the Hauraki Gulf, published just before Christmas, for more detail.

On the west coast, fishers using fresh-caught baits are the ones scoring. Mullet and kahawai are prolific in both the harbours, and surf and netting produces good returns. Otherwise cast-and-retrieve with a light lure - Tasmanian devils are good on the kahawai. Anglers using squid and pilchard are taking mainly kahawai and sharks.

On the Manukau, flasher rigs are the secret. Use small cubes of salted bonito on the hooks.

In all areas movement will work. Try a slow retrieve. Jigging might work when nothing else will, and drift-fishing is best as the schools are spread all over sandy areas. Herald photographer Paul Estcourt took a 5kg fish dragging a jig while on assignment at the America's Cup course.

Kite-fishing pioneer Paul Barnes swears by new floating beads that can be attached to the traces of long-lines so as to lift baits clear of the sea-floor, where they fall to paddle crabs and sea lice. Feedback from kite-fishers leads him to believe that bigger fish will take the baits not on the bottom.

His best anecdote involves Aucklander Paul Morris, on holiday at Whangaroa. Morris apparently landed several snapper bigger than 10kg after laying a long-line out of a canoe. Using five traces with floats and 20 without, he caught nothing bigger than 5kg on the latter.

Pressed to tell where he was catching the big ones, he finally revealed the location to a mate, commenting that the mate wouldn't better his catch because he didn't have the right gear. The pair had a bet on the outcome.

Morris laid his long-line around the mate's runabout. The boat fisherman caught nothing bigger than 5kg, but Morris hauled a fish in excess of 10kg from beneath them.

"Gurnard will rise to eat the floating baits," Barnes said. "And for anyone fishing at night in areas infected with sea lice [like the Firth of Thames] it's brilliant because it keeps the lice off."

Entries for this year's Furuno Snapper tournament are well up on usual and organisers have advised anglers to get in now to secure places for the March 27-29, limited-entry tournament.