Snapper off the rocks - Part 2

Make mine on the rocks

A bit of patience enabled Brett Patterson to nail this nice snapper first spotted in the berley trail half an hour earlier.

A long-handled net enables fish to be secured from a safer position.

Gaffa should be long handled to reduce the potential dangers faced when gaffing

To make the most of the spot, establishing a berley trail is essential.

Relevant offers

Articles & Reviews

Guide to Auckland boat ramps Hooking fish on circles Give me sand, lots of sand... Horsey girls on slow-jigs Gearing up to go hard The humble kahawai Groper grappling Just a tease It's better on top! The kings of the sea

Last month’s feature looked at the gear and rigs necessary to target snapper from the rocks – now it’s time to head off and cast out some suitable baits.

However, before racing away, it pays to ensure you have the accessories necessary for a safe and successful trip.

Rock-fishing accessories
Suitable footwear is perhaps the most vital; wearing the wrong ones can see you slipping over, and when this involves something as unyielding and jagged as our typical rocky coastline, some degree of injury is generally the result.

I therefore recommend sturdy walking boots ideally fitted with metal spikes and/or (perhaps surprisingly) felt soles to provide improved grip. Those that come up high enough to provide added support for your ankles are better still.

Having the right clothing is less easy to define, but basically you’ll need attire that protects you from the cold, the sun and the rain – conceivably all in one day! For those who come straight off kayaks, staying in your wetsuit can be the best move, as it gives protection from the various elements, as well as from falling over onto the rocks or into the water.

For those who walk in, I suggest investing in a Sospender-type buoyancy aid, as these unobtrusive devices can be worn without them getting in the way and they could also save your life.

Wearing a broad-brimmed hat is highly recommended; there’s rarely much shelter on the rocks, so you can get roasted. Caps are only a partial solution, as the sun often strikes from angles a cap’s peak doesn’t cover.

You’ll also need a tramping pack to accommodate your tackle, food, drink, bait and berley on the way in, and your tackle and catch on the way out. There should also be a basic first-aid kit, sunscreen and a spare set of sunglasses, as well as more practical things, such as rock spikes, a big bucket (useful for a number of things), some heavy-duty plastic bags and a knife or two.

Finally, you’ll need a gaff or large net, with your mode of transport to the rocks determining which is more suitable. However, both should be long handled, as this makes securing catches less dangerous when the swells are up.

Settling in
Upon reaching your rocky destination, the first move is to deposit your equipment well above the high water mark, even if the sea looks calm at the time.

The second priority is to deploy the berley. Frozen and long-life berley make this a relatively straightforward task these days; simply place it inside a mesh bag or, far better, a robust plastic container with holes drilled in it. Then, tie it in place securely around a rocky outcrop with a sturdy rope. Ideally the berley container is set so it washes around the rock face with the swell, as the tumbling action helps to create a stronger berley trail. This means you will probably need to alter the rope’s length as the tide rises and falls so that the berley continues to disperse effectively.

If you don’t have a pre-made berley source your chances of success will be reduced, so it pays to look at other ways of creating one if you don’t have any pre-made products for some reason. This usually means making a ‘berley soup’ in a bucket from items such as bait scraps, fish frames and perhaps kina, and regularly distributing the resulting slop, or creating a steady chunk trail using mushy pilchards and the like. Although both methods can be very effective, keep in mind someone must take on this role of berleyer, and that will intrude on their ability to fish well.

Make sure your reel’s drag is set correctly before you start fishing, as you do not want to be mucking around with the drag pressure after striking. Too much pressure can lead to the line breaking, while too little may fail to set the hook properly or could allow the fish to run further and reach the refuge of thick weeds or line-cutting reef.

The ‘correct’ drag pressure is a rather subjective thing. If confident your line is in good shape, your knots are well tied and the terminal tackle strong, it is possible to set a lot of tension – more than is commonly advocated. Although the usual quarter to a third of the line’s nominal breaking strain is a sensible and safe setting for most anglers, snapper do not run so fast and long that you need to take the effect of water pressure on the line into account. Therefore, depending on the circumstances, competent fishers can set their drag to half the line’s breaking strain, or even more.

If in doubt, and there are no scales around, simply rig up as normal and get a mate to run some line off in a simulated run. An abrupt ‘snap’ of the line will indicate too much drag, while a barely bending rod suggests there’s too little (or that the rod’s too powerful for the line weight being used).

Baiting up
I often like to use soft, oily baits such as whole pilchards or skipjack tuna strip-baits. In addition to distributing plenty of enticing scent into the water, hooks can be placed deeper within them, so the points are less likely to catch snags, but their softness ensures that they still achieve a solid hook-up when fish bite.

For most situations a whole pilchard is a decent enough bait, especially if it’s a big, healthy specimen, but I’ll often place two, or even three smaller pillies together on my hooks, especially when they’re a little softer than ideal and I’m trying to introduce more scent in the water. Such a bait tends to splatter upon hitting the water after being cast, so parts of it float down with what remains of the bait afterwards. There’s usually enough left to cope with the attentions of pickers and small snapper for a while, and their activity and the scent released in turn attracts bigger fish for a closer look. It works pretty well.

However, sometimes the attention of maomao, mackerel and small trevally can be overwhelming, stripping the hook bare in seconds. At such times, tougher baits, such as fresh kahawai/trevally cut-baits, squid and whole mackerel can be handy.

I like making two or three big, juicy baits out of a decent kahawai fillet. If you go to the trouble of skinning them, they can be rigged in a similar way to pilchards and skippie baits (i.e. with the hooks mainly hidden within the bait), but are still harder to bite and rip off. The physical size of these baits tends to intimidate the smaller fish and pickers, leaving them intact for the big ones that come along.

As for squid, I mostly use them whole – particularly those of a reasonable size with a nice, fresh, brown-cream colour, which snapper seem to find almost impossible to resist. However, it is the tentacles that attract them the most, so make sure your bait has them, and if not, create some with a sharp knife.

However, yellowtail mackerel is probably my favourite bait. Most are just the right size to cast well and entice good fish, and as they also come pre-wrapped in reasonably tough skin, they resist ‘nuisance’ fish quite well, too. I often butterfly the first ones of the session so extra scent is released into the water to get the fish excited and feeding. Once this has been accomplished, I leave the rest whole, as they resist the attentions of small snapper better than the flapping fillets of butterflied mackerel.

Since a mackerel hooked head-first slips through foul ground more easily than one rigged in reverse, that’s how I rig mine (especially as the tail-first baits involve a half-hitch or three around the tail wrist, which is very risky, as a mackerel’s sharp scutes can cut through thick nylon when under tension).

Now, with your bait sorted, it’s time to consider how best to present the bait in the snapper’s watery world, hook up any fish attracted to your baits and then bring them onto the rocks successfully – topics for next month’s article. 
 

- © Fairfax NZ News