Patience is a virtue

Snapper after dark

(Left)Andrew Kennedy with the snapper that experience and patience helped him rescue from the foul. (Right)Catching, handling correctly and then using live baits can be a very effective way to get reluctant big snapper to bite.

Big snapper have quite a set of choppers, equally suited to catching fish and bottom grazing.

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As I nosed the boat round the point, the spray from the small easterly swell created a partial rainbow momentarily over the rocks.

I had been past here hundreds of times, always out just a bit to miss the shallow patch and rocks off the headland, and with one eye on the sounder confirming the suspected depth. The terns were still here, wheeling and dipping onto the surface. Not that they ever left; why would they, as these plankton-rich waters kept them well fed?
I

 was feeling tired and frustrated; the crew too. A solid day’s effort had started before sun-up, which until now, as the late afternoon sun dipped slowly towards the land, had not produced a single worthy fish. Yes, we had caught fish, but these snapper and reef fish had all been small and not the specimens we had prepared for, travelled for, and laid in wait for. We were getting splinters in our finger from scratching our heads! Why won’t these damn fish feed?

Hunting big snapper in contests for sport and fun can be frustrating – and we all know that – but it still irks when you put in the effort and don’t get the pay-dirt. It was becoming clearly obvious, too, as the swell rolled in and wind whipped the spray off the sea, that we wouldn’t be fishing the deeper reefs on the drift, a technique that had stood us in good stead in the past. Instead, it was going to be a close-in mission and a reversion to ‘old school styles’. In close was where many of us learnt to hunt for snapper in the first place.

Some days we’d have to push the dinghy away from the rocks with the oar and we could see the bottom; these were places where the perfect cast could get you the perfect fish, so we had to prepare.

Earlier in the day, an hour or so before sunrise, we had been sitting anchored in good current, hanging with the breeze, berley flowing, and big baits staggered out the back – you know, textbook stuff, really. But we’d been plagued by the ‘razor gang’, those dirty ole ‘couta – the snakes, the barstools! And to be honest, although we have caught big snapper when the barracouta have been chewing the gear apart, it was as if they owned the coast this day. Nearly every bait was picked up, either on the drop, or shortly after it touched down some 40 metres below. It wasn’t as if just one or two showed up once the berley started, either – the place was riddled with the beggars, and they sure were taking a liking to the three dollars’ worth of gear that went down with the baits (two good quality 8/0 hooks, a ball sinker and a length of trace).

This was getting expensive, as we had each lost about $20 worth in the first hour! Needless to say we moved on – more than once, too, as the silver, toothy mongrels were everywhere. Well, everywhere we went...

So here we were, miles away from the other end of the island where we had started, tired and frustrated.

Seemingly the only thing going our way was the smell of the three McCains pizzas the boys had fired in the oven for the journey to anywhere that was far away from ‘Snake Gully’.

We found our next location without too much trouble. Let’s face it, the outer islands of the Hauraki Gulf offer plenty of likely big snapper spots. In fact, one of the crew on this trip reckons there would be a big snapper lurking in close about every 200m along the coast.

Courtesy of this unhelpful but probably true remark, he was one of those chosen to go and collect a few kina for the berley trail, since we had fed the barracouta the first eight berley bombs earlier in the day. However, it’s one of the old rules of the sea not to ask your crew to do something that you wouldn’t, so they all volunteered me to help gather the spiky tennis balls, too! (I secretly didn’t mind though, as it gave me a bit of a look at the lay of the land and any fish that were stupid enough to swim past a noisy free-diver.)

It was shortly after, in the shadow of the cliffs, with a tummy full of Hawaiian pizza, and quietly picking a kina spike from a thumb tip, when things started to look a bit better. The first decent snapper of the day showed up, and not only that, it took a live bait set about two-metres below a balloon near a submerged rock. It steamed off, stopping a short distance away, then headed into cover.

“Strange move for a kingie,” was the call.

Fortunately, Rob managed to prise the fish free from its hidey-hole, and after a few quick winds on 10kg gear it lay in a bed of previously unused salt-ice. At about 5kg and quite a dark fish, it was a sign that things could indeed be on the up. I crossed everything.

Giving the odd kina a crack with the knife and lobbing it in, along with a shake on the berley rope, rigging baits and releasing the small fish soaks up a bit of time. Before we knew it the light was beginning to fade and the sea turned a golden yellow, while the white water on the coast outside of us seemed whiter and brighter than it had all day.

More good bites and short runs. These fish were ‘soft’ on the bite, not coming in and picking up a bait with the aggressive nature we have all seen and felt, but rather holding and maybe even shaking the bait. We nabbed a few to about 4kg by striking hard when the bite was first detected, and these fish all came up hooked just in the meat of the lip and no more. I guess heavier gear may have pulled the hooks.

Wayne managed to pull out a couple of lost-looking koheru, and added them to the live-bait tank. One was soon used as a bleeding snapper bait.

The current had eased, so we used no weight at all, preferring to let the baits settle, or, in some cases, wiggle and bleed their way down between the patches of kelp and rocks sometimes breaking the surface behind us.

Not a single ‘couta was seen, and we all hoped it stayed that way, especially as we were nearing the ‘golden hour’.

When fishing right in close like this, I tend to try and keep things quiet, both visually and audibly. We try not to drop stuff on the deck, knock a rail with a rod butt, or bang the berley pot on the side of the boat. But we also try to keep it visually quiet. I’m not a big fan of whacking out 1000w of spotlight onto the bait-station, or flashing up a spotlight for the crew working hard across the transom. In the bay at night catching bait, sure, but here in the shallows, where we had basically made camp for the last four hours, keeping quiet and berleying up with good, fresh baits on the go and the odd fish coming in, it sort of goes against my grain. I kept the lights off – all but the light above the stove, which was now doubling as the bar light.

A reel screamed and a rod (god knows whose, as mine was in hand) lurched until half-bent in the corner rod-holder. The shape of a man in mid-flight flashed to the back of the boat and clicked the reel into gear, further adding to the bend in the rod. I could hear the drag doing its job until the ratchet was turned off, and the battle ensued with what sounded and looked – from the rod-tip indications and the short screaming runs – to be a good snapper.

Looking across, I could see the angler was no longer in mid-flight, his thighs now wedged under the rail, left hand high on the foregrip of the buckled-over rod, and putting in a few quick winds when the fish let him. I could also smell spilt rum and coke, but the punishment for such an atrocity could wait.

The fish was shaking its head or whacking its tail on the line, and was clearly transmitting to the rod tip. With each shortening run and series of big thumps came the “ooooohs” and “aaaaaaarghs” that commonly accompany these shallow-water battles.

One thing stood between man and fish, and it was that submerged rock. Directly behind us, the snapper was heading for it and no matter what rod angle was used, the fish wouldn’t change course. Andy battled on for a few more cranks before coming up solid. “Blast!”, or something similar, popped out of his dry mouth.

The second hook on the two-hook strayline rig must have got caught, or as some ‘friendly’ onboard piped up, “He’s reefed ya, mate!”

Andy, hoping the hook was firmly lodged in the fish (it should have been, since he put the screws on it right from the start), backed the drag off the reel, and was willing to let the fish try and run off and free the hook.

The fish was now hooked to the reef and Andy’s line, and everything was hanging in the wind.

We waited. A couple of the others had gone inside to the ‘light’ for some quenching reason. What do you do in this situation? Do you lean on the fish and hope it pops free? Do you leave the reel in free-spool or on a reduced drag setting and wait for its next move? Do you try both for a short time, then bust off, or pull the fish free and continue on with the fight?

We quickly considered the options in the dark, took on a fair bit of useless advice from those at the light, and by the time we had weighed up all the pros and cons, the fish – albeit as confused as we were – had swum a few turns off the spool and headed back for the bommie.

But it felt pretty sluggish Andy reckoned, and by the time he had turned the fish, led it carefully up one side of the wash-covered rock, I could see why. The fish had brought salad with it in the form of a large kelp tree, which the second hook must have caught. And not only that, the leader was wrapped around the stalk, too.

Netting this fish wasn’t going to be easy, as the net wasn’t really designed for bagging kelp trees with snapper attached, but we managed.

The right option had been taken. We – well Andy, really – had let the fish decide what to do when connected with the bottom. No panic – other than the understandable initial surprise of not connecting with a ‘snake’ – and taking the time to ease the drag and feel what the fish would do, rather than going in ‘rip, squat and bust’, enabling him to continue on with the fish afterwards, along with its new-found appendage. It could have worked out a whole lot different, though… 

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