As you will have seen from the recent videos and live broadcasts, Paul Senior and I headed up to the Far North last week and enjoyed a great time with snapper-fishing legend and charter skipper (Houhora Fishing Charters) Rob Parker last week, despite reasonably tough conditions (for there) at the time.
Paul was keen for me to try our latest Knife Jigs, as they have been absolutely smashing the snapper in 20-60 metre depths (even better than the Sliders some days!). However, things didn’t quite go to plan; my first ever drop into 45m with the 80g Blue-Lumo Knife Jig saw me hanging on just seconds later with my line smoking out as a big king (est. 20-25kg) raced away – to eventually bust me off. That turned out to be the first of around 20 mostly legal kings encountered, but only one of two that busted us off; we landed the rest to 11kg while we were there. We were stoked to be hooking these big, tough fighters on our light outfits and lethal lures so easily, and they didn’t take too long to land on our whippy little OA rods either – Paul had the OA Micro Jigging rod and I had the Powerflex Titanium, a rod designed for slow-pitch jigs – never more than 10 minutes. Best of all, the were SO MUCH FUN to use!
When the wind got up a bit Rob took us in to 12-25 metres over acres of weedy foul near Hendersons Bay, and although bites were harder to come by, when the fish could be enticed into biting – generally during the lure’s descent, so it paid to keep good contact – they tended to be good ones. This resulted in snapper to almost 7 and 8 kilos over the two days, along with two dozen smaller specimens. They were taking the usual colours: Motor Oil; Bruised Banana; and Rob’s favourite, Nuked Pilchard (which, incidentally, was responsible for the biggest snapper of the trip). All the bigger fish were successfully released thanks to the depths involved at the time.
So cheers Rob – you really showed us some of the Far North potential, and although we didn’t add to your boat’s 13 snapper over 30lb tally, we were more than happy to put up with our ‘little ones’!
