Micro Jigging Back of Waiheke 18 March 2014
BY PAUL SENIOR
Had a great afternoon fishing today, not big fish tasty eating sized pan snapper, heaps of them smashing Microjigs and Jitterbugs.
We left at 4 PM and ventured out through the Motohuie Channel which was alive with terns and mutton ducks whirling around schools of bait fish, we tried for a quick drop , but were greeted with a large school of baby kahawai so kept on going and ended up here.
We came across a small work up with a dozen or so gannets bombing a ball of Anchovies, we pulled up and dropped our lures , Mike on Jitterbugs and myself armed with 3 shapes of Micro-jigs all around 35 grams a piece. I was using a specialist Micro Jigging rod in Spin and Mike was using a Slow Jig set up. We drifted and came across patches of snapper, quite a few small ones but enough 40 plus size fish to fill the bin with enough fish to feed our families. My journey experimenting with Micro Jigs continues, I was constantly changing between the three shapes I had onboard, and two of the three were catching more than the other one. Out of the two, one was catching more, however they were smaller, with the other shape not catching as many, however they were larger, interesting aye! Technique also made a huge difference, when I concentrated on fishing the drop, rather than fishing the retrieve I caught more fish, so a long lift with my rod with a quick flick at the top of the movement, to pitch the jig on its side, then a slow fall of the jig on its horizontal axis fluttering back to the bottom, would get smashed most of the time. I also played with Mechanical Jig style twitching and winding which would get the odd one it was not as productive as fishing the drop. After the twitches upwards another long flat fall to the bottom would usually result in a smash type bite. Thats the great thing about this style of fishing, the takes are aggressive , on light Micro Jigging tackle its an absolute blast, its a truly exciting way to fish and very addictive..
Micro Jigs out fished Jitterbugs today , which is now 2 trips in a row this has happened.
Maybe the storm stirred things up a bit, the sea was alive today unlike last week when it all looked a bit dead. Venture out to the area described and you should be in for a feed of pan sized snapper, remember to go light on the tackle and small on the lures, you proabably don’t have any Micro Slow pitch jigs, 40 g and 60 g Jitterbugs were also working. Micro Jigging New Zealand Have fun it all looked a lot better out on the briny today, lots of bird and surface action, along with large schools of snapper, the fish were on the chew whole time we were out today.
Cheers Paul.