The rod was not new. Numerous scars, bumps
and bruises gave testimony to a rough life chasing fish. The rod
had an action just short of broomstick. The reel had seen better
days, and it was filled with line around the 15kg. mark.
"This needs replacing, it’s way overdue,"
said the owner, a well out-doored man of somewhere between 50
and 60 years.
Without too much thought, I launched into the spiel
about the new jig sticks with their fast action tips, sensitive
materials, and light weight. Straylining was the way to go, light
weights, minimal tackle, etc. It is a good and accurate story,
for most people, at most times.
He was patient enough, for a few minutes, but he
soon bought my enthusiasm to a juddering halt. I had, for not
the first time, forgotten the best piece of advice I had ever
been given about selling. ‘The most valuable time a salesman
can spend, is with his mouth shut, and his ears, eyes, and mind
wide open.’ (Actually, this is good advice for anyone, anytime
– but I digress.)
"Where I fish, that gear is about as much use
as udders on a bull," he said.
It transpired, he lived a short row in his clinker
built dingy, from a headland around which flowed a fierce current.
He needed six to ten ounces of lead to hit bottom, depending on
the current. The current flowed over a floor of weed covered,
broken rock.
I could have launched into a story about how lighter
line is less susceptible to current and therefore less weight
is needed, less weight means more sensitivity to bites, etc.,
but the conversation that followed set me to thinking a little
more deeply, than when the conversation began.
His theory was very interesting. He was an avid
user of ground bait. Before Berley Mate, he had used frozen berley
dropped to the bottom in a heavily weighted PVC pipe, drilled
with many holes. Now he was a convert to the Berley Mate system.
He was well and truly sold on the benefits of fishing in the berley
trial. Right in the berley trail. His aim was to get his
bait as close to the berley pot as possible. His theory was that
the berley bought fish right up to the berley pot. The smell would
drive the fish to distraction, they found the source of the smell
of food, but no food. Competition for any food in the immediate
vicinity of the pot would be intense, so there would be little
of the tentative mouth it and see, of snapper in a less competitive
situation. In this scenario, light sensitive gear was not needed,
the fish basically hooked themselves.
This might be fine for smallish fish I thought,
and said, but what about big fish? Conventional wisdom seemed
to have it that the bigger fish hung back, they are shy suspicious
fish. True to a point, was the reply, but there does come a point
where even a shy fish cannot resist the potential for a meal.
His experience was that initially the berley attracted smaller
fish, but the longer the berley was in the water, the closer the
big fish would come to the pot.
There seemed to be a lot of sense in all this, but
the clincher was yet to come. Ground bait does not only draw snapper,
it draws bait fish in droves. They cluster around the berley pot
in a solid mass. If anything is going to draw in big snapper it
is this ball of food, a ball of food reckless about their safety
in the smell of food flooding from the berley pot. A bait jig
dropped into this mass of bait fish soon had a yellowtail on board,
impaled on a size 8/0 hook, and heading back down toward where
it was, pulled by the lead below it.
This crippled fish did not last long if big snapper
were about, and it was here that he brought the stump-puller gear
into play. In the territory being fished, no quarter could be
given. Even a meter of leeway would see the snapper into the weed
or under rocks. So it was a very heavy drag setting, and hang
on. Brutish and unsporting, perhaps, but highly effective.
It was this episode, and there have been many others,
that reminded me that there is no one answer, there are answers
dependent on the situation at a time and a place.
One of the more enduring "one answers"
has been the keeper hook answer from the first ‘Snapper Secrets’
video. There was Bill and Geoff sitting in the shadows of the
Harbour Bridge pulling in what they called ‘pan-sized’ snapper,
and if you held them close to the camera lens and away from the
body, I suppose they were.
Much was made of the ability of this 1 or 2/0 keeper
hook’s ability to catch fish. Too quickly the keeper hook theory
became for some, an unarguable truth, a one answer. It was not
of course. For catching ‘pan size’ snapper it is a valuable aid.
But if large snapper are the target, the ‘keeper’ hook may as
well be, and probably more effectively be, the same size as the
main hook.
Another enduring ‘answer’ has been the apparent
NZ fetish with huge reel line capacities. I am talking here about
basic bottom bouncing for snapper and such, not game or light
line fishing.
As a wild generalisation, most recreational fishing
for snapper is done in say 10 to 30 meters of water. Most reels
are filled by somewhere close to 300 meters of it’s recommended
line weight. So in 10 meters of water a fish has to pull off 290
meters of line to empty a spool, and then break the line off at
the arbor. That is a sprint, pulling a weight usually around 25%
or more of a snapper’s body weight, down three full sized rugby
fields. Give me a break!
Trout fishing is a quiet sport, right? Enter the
water quietly, make as little disturbance as possible. This is
the right answer most of the time, but it is not the
answer.
In early September, myself and another who had joined
me, were fishing the Haybarn area on the lower Tongariro. After
an action packed morning, things went very quiet. There were fish
there, we could see them. My fishing companion, a bloke in his
late sixties came up with a wild suggestion that had worked for
him in the past.
He wandered up the bank and came back with large
clay sods. The first he tossed with a huge splash in the tail
of the pool, the second exploded the quiet of the middle, and
the third shattered any peace at the head.
The fishing picked up immediately. "All they
needed was a stir up," my wise companion said, "after
the first section of their run up the river, they seem to settle
down and become inactive, they need a wake up." The tactic
worked that day.
When it all boils down, there is no single answer
to any fishing problem, or situation. There is an old saying that
goes like this, ‘even a fool must be right now and then,
even if by chance.’