Geoff Thomas: Snapper move to deeper water after cold snap

Photo / File

Look for the work-ups with dolphins and gannets or schools of kahawai and trevally, and then fish under them. That is where the snapper are in good numbers now. We are back to typical spring fishing.

The best results are coming from deeper water following recent cold southerly winds, which push a lot of fish out of the inshore shallows.

That isn't to say all fish have disappeared. They can still be caught in the channels. One angler who left the Takapuna ramp and ran into some birds stopped and caught a limit of snapper without hardly getting the engine warm. It has been the same off the stream on Pakiri Beach in 15m in the evenings.

But fishing all the way up the coast from the Bay of Plenty to Whangaparaoa and up to Little Barrier Island is better over pinnacles and reefs in 40-50m. Kingfish and kahawai are also still abundant, and the pattern could well continue through to June.

On the west coast, good snapper are coming from 35m but some anglers like to fish much closer off Hamiltons Gap and Cochranes.

The Manukau Harbour has fished well for snapper up to 3kg on the ebb tide in the deep parts of the Papakura Channel, according to Manukau veteran angler John Moran.

He tells a story about making lead sinkers and running out of moulds to pour the molten lead into. "So I used a half mussel shell and stuck a swivel in one end. They came out beautifully and I painted them green to look like a mussel. They work well, too, and the shape is sort of aerodynamic to slip through the water," he said.

But heavy sinkers are needed when the current is running strongly in the Manukau, a bit like at the Graveyard on the Kaipara Harbour. Some local anglers have been doing well using soft baits there, which has turned many sceptics into converts. The style here has always been to use heavy sinkers and long traces, but a drifting boat and heavy jig heads on the lures allows this new approach to be used successfully. Like soft plastics, larger snapper are caught on the lures than when using bait.

The Firth of Thames has had a bumper summer season - like most areas - and is still fishing well with snapper to 5kg-6kg right through the firth from the shallows out to deep water. On the Kaiaua side, large kahawai are in close, besides snapper; skipjack tuna (skippies) can still be found at the top end of Wilsons Bay.

In the Bay of Plenty, skippies and albacore are still running, with the occasional meatballs to be found, but yellowfin tuna are scarce. Bottom fishing in deep water is producing bass, hapuku and gemfish, with snapper still running well closer to shore.

Kayak fishermen are doing well around the rocks and headlands - the quiet, stealthy approach is well suited for this style of fishing.

Marlin are still being hooked off the Northland coast, and live baits are preferred to lures - not just for the savings in fuel costs. The most popular baits are skippies which are trolled slowly. The down side to using livies is the number of sharks which are hooked. Their abundance this summer could be because of the lack of long-line tuna fishing in the South Pacific. A lot of sharks are caught as by-catch in the international commercial tuna fishery, which sees a million hooks set on thousands of kilometres of long-lines on the world's oceans every day.

Some lines are 97km long. In Hawaii, 17 sharks are caught for every 1000 hooks set, of which 0.2 per cent are kept - the rest are discarded.

The biggest trout caught in the recent Rotorua police tournament was 4.1kg, from Lake Rotoiti, but fish to 3.2kg are coming from Lake Tarawera. The Hinehopu end of Rotoiti continues to produce well and, on Lake Okataina, stags can be heard roaring in the early morning. It is hard to decide between taking a rifle or a rod when heading down the lake, but extra care is needed because a lot of hunters are out chasing the stags.

More fishing action can be found on Rheem Outdoors with Geoff, 5pm TV3, and on the new internet television channel, FishnHunt.Tv.