Parore - how to target this species

Bugger bait fishing!  I've had enough of scrubbing the death out of my fingernails, of trying in vain to remove that last little bit of pilchard and tuna odour. In the same way that my stomach churns at the mere mention of a rolling, diesel-fume-belching launch, so too do my fingernails curl up at the sight of another bait board full of pilchard-cubes. I've had enough. Bait fishing simply doesn't do it for me any more. I've had to find other fishing persuasions away from the greasy delights of a bleeding tuna or the sun warmed slime of a pillie bag. Luckily for me such pickiness only narrows my options slightly.

It would in fact appear that there is a growing number of like-minded souls out there. A whole trade is emerging in the Bay of Islands, amongst our many and varied charter boats, for people fishing saltwater fly down a berley trail. This is 'no-stink' fishing. People doing it cut no bait nor bathe themselves in berley. A small amount of pounding in the berley pot is as dirty as it gets; and the deckie does that! And they get to catch just as many great fish as the guy who chooses to strayline a pilchard-chunk. Sure, they might have problems with too many kahawai or find difficulty sinking their fly below rampaging schools of trevally, but do you hear them complaining?

Many of their captures are released to fight another day, and many of these are handled carefully in salt-wet hands. The fish is traumatised to a minimal degree and the smell? Well, let's just say that it is about a hundred-fold better than decomposing pilchard flesh and almost pleasant to boot. Obviously you can see where my sentiments (and my retirement) lies.

Which brings me to parore fishing with Wattie's diced carrots, peas, and corn. This is a sportfishing persuasion tailor-made for old sunburnt salts like myself with developing allergies towards stinking bait. For this is bait fishing of the non-smelly variety. In fact, the bait is so clean and resoundingly odourless that you do start to wonder what the fish see in it. Yet it does work, and the spotties and sprats love it too.

Standard parore fishing tackle, a small float, small hook, and cooked carrot cube puts you in with a chance. Just buy a standard packet of frozen diced vegetables from your local supermarket and use them straight from the bag. We berley with small amounts of fresh bread and drift the carrot cubes down the trail. When the float goes under, strike! Frequently the line will tear off with a spotty on the end. Now and then though you hit heavier resistance and a big paddle-tailed parore starts thumping away.

You'll see a bunch of photos around here someplace of fish that have fallen to this method. These were good fish as far as parore go and surprisingly tasty (Josh insisted we eat them). Most fell for the carrot cube simply because it was the longer lasting bait. Sweetcorn attracted more bites but many were of the spotty variety and peas were too big a hit with the sprats. Berleying with mushed-up peas and corn whilst fishing with carrot cubes seemed to be a good way to go. But we had to make sure we didn't over-feed the fish. Past experience has shown that this sort of fishing requires minimal berleying, and the more mushed-up the berley is, the better. This is why fresh bread mushed-up in a bucket of water works so well as berley. It puts a milky-sweet flavour through the water without overly feeding the fish.

There are strong parallels with coarse fishing with this type of activity. And it is just as pleasurable. The only difference is the effect of tides. Parore always bite best on a full tide, retreating to deeper weed edges around the rocks as the tide drops. It is possible to fish for them there on the low tide, if you can keep hooked fish out of the kelp. Like a tench burrowing in the weed at Lake Kareta or a big brownie doing an Aniwhenua netweed roll, you can rest assured parore that head for the kelp frequently gain their freedom. It keeps the less aggressive parore fishers among us on the wharves and along those sandy estuarine channels.

The bit I really like about parore fishing, apart from the sweet bait, is the float watching. Any sort of float fishing is quite addictive: the heart-stopping twirl of the float as something toys with the bait, then the reflex jarring 'down' as the float disappears from sight. Both are things that keep drawing you back for more. Especially when that float goes down and stays down. It gets a fisherman's blood running whether they're drifting a nymph for big rainbows, soaking a corn kernel for a solid tench or hoping to pull a big parore out of the big, wharf-hugging spotty schools.

I like to use my five-weight fly rod and a floating line when parore fishing. To this I pinch on a small amount of split shot around 100 mm above the hook and tie on a small cube of closed cell foam onto the fly line as an indicator float. The great thing about closed cell foam as a float is that it grips the fly line and consequently can be adjusted up and down the fly line if greater or shallower fishing depth is required. The aim is to have your bait hanging just above the bottom. The deeper it is the more split shot weight that may be required, otherwise sprats can hold your bait up in the water column and refuse to let it sink.

The other useful thing about closed cell foam indicator floats is that when cut in an oblong shape and tied at one end the float will stand up out of the water when a fish is playing with the bait. Everybody holds their breath when that little orange peice of foam flicks into the air and threatens to dive into the depths. Many times it doesn't, but the anticipation is still there. And that's what parore fishing with non-stink diced vegetables is all about: sitting, waiting for a bite, right on the edge of your seat. Oh yes - and not smelling like dead pilchard for the rest of the week!

	This article is reproduced with permission of New Zealand Fishing News 1999 - by Craig Worthington Re-publishing elsewhere is prohibited