Winter is the most challenging but also fulfilling time you can spend on the water.
All set up and ready for an early start I awoke to find the 485 completely iced over, washing the ice off was a problem as even the hose had frozen. Once the ice was cleaned off the boat, I knew it was going to be extremely hard to nail a few fish. Why or how fish are affected by the wind chill factor baffles me.
Despite the day being calm and sunny, when faced with extreme cold the fish generally move out into deep water or hard in on the rocks and shallow reefs. Purely for research purposes I spend a bit of time slowly stooging around areas in the shallows [ 5-10 meters] that normally hold fish. Even in close very little sign was showing. Thinking back to my early days of diving, the biggest snapper I saw were in less than two metres of water hiding in the kelp. With this in mind I then started casting baits right into the edge of the kelp in less than a meter of water.
When fishing in very shallow water I don’t use any weight or even trace, fish need to be able to pick up the bait without any resistance or they will just drop it. Using big baits such as half and whole butterflied bait allows smaller snapper and reef fish to chew and its this feeding activity that draws in the bigger fish. The key is big baits take a fair bit of chewing but don’t get tempted to strike until the line comes up tight as in the shallows big fish will take the bait away from the smaller fish and then chew on it.
As the line starts to straighten out point the rod tip down so when you strike and hold the rod tip high it sets the hook and lifts the head of the fish. Work the rod at a high angle to prevent the fish taking you into the rocks, with the rod high let the rod do the work acting as a shock absorber as very often they only wake up when halfway to the boat. With the rod tip high it lifts the head of the fish and confuses them, often with them turning away from the shore to head for deeper water. If the rod tip is low, they simply power off into the kelp.
I will never forget a mate of mine who pilots big aircraft saying “ always believe your instruments “. When heading out last weekend for a shallow water fish the sounder lit up with sign where I have never seen fish before. Still tempted to head for where I knew we could pluck a few fish, I turned around and laid up as best I could with the wind and tide to be able to cast baits so they would be taken by the current back to the fish. Within twenty minutes we had a dozen good fish on board and heading home. What I am trying to get across is its only by spending time on the water are you able to recall history to know what where and how to catch fish in different conditions and time of year.
No two days are the same and you never know what to expect; a small tinny with a couple of keen young lads anchored close by hooked a turtle, slowly bringing it to the boat lifted it out in the landing net and released it. Over the years I have seen a few turtles but never heard of one being hooked and in the middle of winter.
Winter snapper are the best eating, and certainly smoked, as they have a very high content of body fat. This can make them more difficult to fillet as the fat sticks to the blade of the knife, particularly when skinning fillets, and if the blade is dull with fat it takes more effort.
Fishing around the inner gulf up to Kawau and the Omaha area has been surprising good in the last few weeks. Out from Kawau around the Rakino channel there are always a number of work ups happening, not big work ups or big kahawai but below hard on the bottom there are pannie snapper. Try soft baiting with small 3-inch jerk shads, best colours are white, light blue or brown/yellow.
My pick for the next few weeks is to look for the work ups or set a game plan to fish the one spot such a small area of shallow foul you can cast baits back into kelp. There are lots of spots along the shore line of Rangitoto, Browns Island or Rakino that you can target even close to town, I have always caught fish of St Heliers Bay and Bastion reef. It’s just a matter of breaking old habits and spending time on the water trying something new and as an added bonus recently I had a pod of orca come within a meter of the boat to say Hi!
Bruce Duncan, aka Captain Swish.
