Fishing: Get down to your local (wharf)

By PETER JESSUP

Warmer waters and school holidays mean it's a great time to take the kids fishing and there's no better way of getting them into it than from the local wharf.

It's like kindergarten. It's where the kids can learn how to rig a line, tie a knot, present a bait, use some tactics and play a fish. And if you're going out on the boat later, what better lesson could there be than catching your own fresh bait.

Start with gathering pipi or tuatua so the kids get the idea of the food chain. The wharves around all our harbours are feeding grounds for baitfish, providing shelter from predators while they feed on weed and barnacle crustaceans attached to piers and the invertebrates that live among them, plus any human detritus.

The secret is light line and light hooks. Leave your gear at home, Dad. If you want a feed, target piper - they're delicious and a dozen can be a meal for four.

The baitfish around wharves are often feeding on smaller fish - whitebait and anchovies. Lures work well. The standard Japanese-style sabiki rigs work well but often carry too many hooks for the small fry to use, encouraging tangles, time out of the water, frustration and a bad day all round. So cut them in half, sacrifice a hook from the three on each half and you have a more user-friendly set-up, and nylon left to re-attach a swivel or sinker.

A small piece of pipi or other shellfish added to the hooks adds the attractant of smell. The jigs, sinker on the bottom of the rig, should be dropped to the bottom then returned to the surface with small jerks of the rod, winding as it comes up. Vary speed and action to find what works.

Use light swivels and sinkers too. Even if you do spring a kahawhai it's unlikely to be over 2kg. Heavy traces and terminal tackle will almost certainly ensure a slow day.

For piper, take bread and a flour/water dough and use both a float and a small sinker. The bait needs to be held in a range 10-20cm beneath the surface. The float also acts as a bite signal and kids need to strike to get the mini-marlins.

When you get them home rub the skin with a knife to remove the tiny scales, gut them and follow the gut line to the tail to split the fish, roll it gently with a rolling pin or glass milk bottle flesh-up, after which you can pull out the backbone in one piece. Roll in flour and fry in butter - it's up there with the best white-flesh fish you can get.

Piper are prevalent off Devonport wharf at times and will be found with schools of sprats and mackerel at Okahu Bay, the inner-city wharves and all the ferry wharfs around Auckland.

They are less common at Cornwallis on the Manukau but the west side of that wharf is often alive with other small fish.

The wharves in the smaller harbours more regularly produce fish such as kahawhai and occasionally kingfish - Mangonui and Houhora are famous for the latter - but a more regular visitor is the John Dory. They like the clearer water and, when you can see one, it's always worth dropping a larger jig right in front of him. A fresh sprat attached to the jig can virtually be dropped into their big, sucking mouths sometimes - what a thrill for a small fisher.