It must have been about ten or so years ago. We were
chasing some fresh bait. The shallow bay in the Bay of Islands
was just about perfect for netting some piper.
At high tide the bay was little more than chest deep at the deep
end of the drag net, and the bottom covered in eelgrass.
So we quietly set ourselves up – me on the
shallow end – of course – and Ed the lad on the deep end
– as it should be. Ed waded first waded straight out, then
across the bay, pulling the net into a line across the beach,
then letting out rope as he waded returned to shore. We then started
to haul in the net.
As the net neared shore we knew we had scored.
The belly of the net rippled with fish. By the time we pulled
the net onto the beach we knew we had scored to well. We had scooped
up a huge school of sprats, hundreds of them. Far to many for
us to keep at our freezer-less campsite. Far too many to even
give away. We threw as many back as we could, but as sprats seem
to do – many died, apparently from shock. We ended up with
four or five big buckets of bait.
But all was not lost, nor wasted. The next day,
Ed the lad and I were to join a couple of friends of ours, on
their boat, for a spot of snapper
fishing. I had been doing some reading on tuna ‘cubing’
or ‘chunking’ (depending on whether the magazine was
American or Australian) and a germ of an idea had formed. The
time for the idea to germinate had arrived.
We reached the rock about mid-morning and anchored
up current. Ed and I then set about cutting a big heap of sprats
into chunks, about three chunks per sprat. Then we started to
feed these chunks over the side, two or so at a time. As these
chunks disappeared into the depths, another two followed.
Meantime we all rigged up with tiny ball sinkers
straight onto the hooks, pinned a chunks of sprat on the hooks
and slowly let the baits drift back behind the boat.
For the first half-hour, maybe more, very little
happened, and there began some low grumbling amongst the crew.
Towards the end of that time the grumbling began to turn into
mutinous rumbling, and ‘chunking’ was being consigned
to another one of my harebrained schemes. But as if on cue a couple
of snapper decided to bite a bait or two, and soon it was all
on – really on. Fish biting just about every bait that drifted
back.
The only break in the action coming when we realised
we had forgotten, in the excitement, to keep the chunking trail
going. But soon after the trail was started again, the fish began
to bite. A truly memorable day.
The idea did not die.
Sometime later I miscalculated the defrosting time
of a ten kilo block of pilchards. I was left with something approaching
ten kilos of mush. Putting the mess back in the freezer solidified
the problem till the next fishing trip. We picked up some good
quality pilchards, and with the mushy pillies in the bottom of
a fish bin we headed to the latest spot ‘x’. Anchored
up, Ed and I set up a chunk trail using the spoiled bait. Down
this trail we drifted chunks of our firmer pilchards. Soon snapper
in numbers and good quality began to hit our baits.
Another time saw the dregs and dross from the bottom
of the bait freezer come into play. It had to happen. Some of
the fish down in the deep dark depths of that freezer had last
seen the light of day too many years ago. It was not one of the
more pleasant jobs to come my way.
But for every yin there is a yang. I now owned
a solid base of fillets from kahawai,
trevally, and such to set up
the cubing trail from Hades. While the fillets were still malleable
I cut the fillets into cubes about 2 or 3 cm square, and froze
them in bags.
So all was ready, and the next time Ed and I headed
out in the tiny tinny the cubes came with us, and out they went,
in an unending stream. Down the trail we drifted cubes of skipjack
tuna loaded with a hook. We had great sport.
The technique works – and well it should –
it seems to have three key factors leading to success.
First the of chunks or cubes sets up both a visual
and odour trail that is attractive to fish. Second the trail is
dispensed slowly enough that it may well set up ‘competition’
between fish to get at the chunks as they drift down – this
may make it easier to tempt them with a hook laden bait. Thirdly,
the hooked chunks are drifting down at about the same rate as
the unhooked chunks – the hooked baits look as ‘natural’
as the unhooked baits.
There are a couple of factors that need to be taken
into account when using this technique.
It is bait intensive – you need heaps of bait
to set up a good trail, and you need to maintain it throughout
the fishing session.
The cubes or chunks should not be fed out too quickly.
Judgement needs to be used here, but a chunk or two every thirty
to forty seconds is often about right. But this is relative to
fishing depth and current flows.
The hooked baits need to be weighted, (or not weighted),
so that they sink at much the same rate as the free sinking chunks.
Resist the temptation to add more weight to get a bait back down
to the fish quicker. In my experience this usually just means
the bait falls below the trail and away from the fish. If fish
are directly below the boat in no-current situations this is less
of a problem.
The best technique for feeding out line is to have
the reel in freespool – with the thumb lightly on the spool –
pull off line at a rate that allows to bait to free-fall but not
to the point where there is too much slack wafting about in the
water. For this reason I find it better to use a freespool reel
rather than a spinning reel. It is just so much easier to control
the drift, and get the reel into gear when a fish strikes.
I find that using recurve (sometimes called ‘longline’
or JAP) hooks work best for this type of fishing. Because there
is – or should be – little or no tension on the line as the bait
drifts back, it can be very difficult to detect bites. Recurve
hooks are self-setting, relying on the fish biting on them to
push the point into flesh, so they are ideal for this job.
The breaking strain of the line you use is important
too. Too heavy a line – read too thick – and the baited chunk
or cube will not sink at the same rate as the unhooked chunks.
This is more especially true if the trail is drifting down in
a current. It also needs to be remembered that the cube or chunk
used as a hooked bait should be around the same size as the chunks
used in the trail. So too heavy a line will exaggerate drift problems
as there may not be enough weight in the bait to pull the heavy
line down.
Just a quick observation about bait size. In general
I have found that the hooked bait should be around the same size
as the chunks or cubes used for the trail – and it seems
to make little difference to the size of fish caught. I catch
small fish and bigger fish in around the usual ratio. But I also
as a matter of course fire out a really big bait, a skipjack head
or large fillet, or four or five pillies
hung off a 8/0 hook, way back down the trail. This has picked
up some very big fish.
As far as using a berley (groundbait) trail when
cubing goes, I have found it better not to. It is only a theory
of mine but I think that because a berley trail sinks at a different
rate to the chunks you can end up with two distinct trails. This
is counter productive. Besides a berley trail to often ends up
attracting hoards of small bait fish which eat the cubes before
they have a chance to reach snapper holding below.
Cubing or chunking for snapper can
be a highly productive technique, but it does need a little prior
planning and preparation. It also requires some patience –
it can take some time for the trail to pull in fish. The rewards
for that preparation and planning however can be spectacular.