NZ Fishing World

Spawning Snapper Secrets

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I think it’s just God's sense of humour that he wants to deliberately rack us up at times. This has to be the reason why when you can see there is a truck load of snapper showing on the sounder, when the moon phase is good and the wind and tide are perfect and you know you just have to be in for a great days fishing. Why is it that you can’t even get a bite? When snapper are in spawning mode they can be either incredibly frustrating or easy to catch. Why is this?

As snapper move in on the coast to spawn they tend to form into schools of predominantly either male or females and, being in a state of flux, become very fickle and fussy when it comes to eating. Prior to and during spawning, snapper will spend quite a bit of time off the bottom in mid-water, looking very much like massive schools of bait fish on the sounder. When up off the bottom they are not in a feeding mode but will hit soft baits, jigs and ledger rigs more out of aggression than for food. Coming across a school of fish in mid-water, go up current and drift back through them, covering your bases with soft baits, jigs, bait and also a sabiki rigs. Then you can quickly identify what the school of fish below actually are.

We all have to bear in mind that every fish we take during spawning is a fish that will not get to breed. So no matter how good the fishing is, please just take a feed and give the rest get a chance to breed. This is the one time of the year when there is a visible difference between male and female fish. Males tend to have darker brownish/red markings from the underside of the jaw to around the gill plate where as the females remain mostly pure white. Personally I release most females.

There is a bit of a fallacy that snapper spawn more than once but in reality it is just Mother Nature’s way of protecting the species. For snapper to spawn, the water temperature needs to be 18 degrees and remain at that temperature. Snapper rise to the surface and race about releasing spawn which, when hatched, remains on the surface, living off a food sack for 54 days. All snapper are born females before some become males and head off head for the bottom. Should the surface temperature drop dramatically, that release of spawn could die off. This is why snapper do not release all their spawn in one hit.

Over my lifetime of fishing I have always found that from the early start of the spawning season until around early December, the best results always come from the slack water for the first hour and a half of tide run and from then on it's a matter of pulling the pick and finding the fish again. During the main flood of the tide the snapper are constantly on the move, not holding in one place for more than 15 to 20 minutes at a time. You have a couple of options open now; one being to stay put until the next run of fish come through or, as is my preference, to move. By following a contour line on my chart plotter I find the snapper seem to hold longer in one spot on the down side of the drop-offs. However, you may only get a few fish before they move on.

During this time, cover your bases with a range of bait and sizes of baits. Tide pressure can affect the way that fish eat. Smaller half baits will get hit more when there is less run while big baits get hit more in faster water. During the month when the moon phase is bad, the tides are small and the fishing is hard, I find getting out into deeper water where there is a sandy bottom is a good place to find fish. The fish will be more spread out on the bottom but a wobbly pot full of berley lowered two thirds of the way to the bottom will top dress the area with scent. Chopped up chunks of pilchards or old bait tossed over every 10 minutes or so into the berley trail will help to draw the fish in. Being very light on the bite it is best to cast a lightly-weighted bait as far away from the boat as you can. Once it hits the water, slowly let the weight of the bait sink so the tide takes it far away from the boat. Hold the rod so the tip is in a straight line with the line and it sits on your finger. You will feel a change in line pressure when a fish picks up the bait and starts mouthing it. As the bait may well be some 50-60 metres out from the boat, strike the fish hard so the line stretch comes out to set the hook.

Again there will be times when a heap of snapper are showing on the sounder that are hard on the bottom, looking as if they must be feeding, and nothing you offer them will tempt them to bite. I tend to think outside the square at times like this and if fish are anything like people, even if they are not hungry they will nibble on peanuts so why not try a ledger rig with tiny bits of baits. 'Bingo', I was instantly hit and landed a 3kg snapper. Next drop the same and so on. Bombarded by questions of what bait I was using from all the boats around me, I could not help myself by telling them I had been using 'cheese'. I swear that there was a bunch of people ripping open their sandwiches to see if they had any 'magic bait' as I headed off.