Saltwater fly - targeting Red Moki

‘Reluctant’ might not be the right word, as red moki are rarely considered a fishing option at all.

Some people spear them or net them. Most just leave them alone. They’re fairly slow growing, easily fished out, and taste like a kelpy version of the editor’s boots. So who gives a toss about red moki anyway?

Well, suddenly, I do. Principally because I caught one! It came as something of a shock. I had noticed the medium-sized red moki scuttling backward and forth in the berley trail and wondered what on earth it was up to. It couldn’t be feeding, surely? Red moki eat crabs and chitons and other things that live under rocks. They don’t scoot around in berley trails fighting with blue maomao and small trevally over scraps of pilchard. Or do they? 

This fish followed my saltwater fly down behind the kelp and into the un-polaroidable depths of a big dark hole. Then a heavy hit registered. Something had the fly in its jaws and was now powering off along a deep, weedy ledge. Whatever it was had some speed and plenty of weight, with a good measure of that ‘sideways body pressure’ thing thrown in for good effect. Not once did I think it was the moki. To have that fish follow the fly was unusual. Surely it couldn’t have eaten it?

To my surprise it was the red moki. It came spiralling up from the depths and intermittently powered back down towards the bottom. He (she?) had nearly buried the line in the kelp a few times and put up plenty of dogged resistance, despite not being very large. This was one unusual capture that could fight!

Now anyone who knows me knows I’m a bit nutty about species hunting, and particularly species hunting with a fly rod. To catch a new species, and catch it on the fly, was cause for celebration. Especially since I struggle these days to add new fish to my species list. Most of the easy fish have already been done and the hard ones, well, remain hard!

When your list is pretty full you start examining things like silver drummer and bluefish in order to add some more. The truth is, New Zealand has an excellent but somewhat limited array of ‘home’ species, and if you want to add species to a species list in a hurry, then you have to travel. The ‘Kiwi’ list remains a little bit small and limited, but equally stands proud as the most important list of all. Scratching in red moki was as big a kick as some guys get hanging a world record off the scales. Passion takes many forms.

This was only the third red moki ever that I had heard of being caught on a hook. The other two were caught on bait flies. Once I remember a friend caught many years ago at Whatipu on Auckland’s Manukau Heads on the west coast, while Cole Whitehead caught another at Spirits Bay. Mine was taken on a yellow and white fly tied on a 2/0 Gamakatsu SL12 hook. It appeared that small and medium sized white flies were the best way of taking red moki on a line.

The odd thing was, I now had red moki on my fly species hunting list, but not their more abundant and bait-hungry cousin, the porae.

Porae are similar to red moki in that they eat small invertebrates: crabs, shrimps, brittle stars – that sort of thing. And yet, they’re a bit more ‘onto it’ than red moki. Underwater, porae will beat red moki to a smashed-up kina berley trail by hours. Okay, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but red moki are definitely a fish that you would not label as being mentally ‘fast’. They seem slow to get out of bed (usually a cave under a rock) and slow to lock onto any potential food sources. By the time your average red moki figures out that something is going on, the porae have usually cleaned the place out.

The big difference between the two, and possibly the factor that makes porae difficult off the rocks, is one of shyness. Red moki might be slow, but they’re certainly not shy. This is their undoing when confronted with teenagers with loaded spearguns. Porae, on the other hand, are a little more wary underwater and positively skittish in clear shallow water beside a rock-fisher’s ledge. They are most at home over a deepish sand-and-shell flat that has a few sponges and the odd scrap of weed. The majority of my porae bait captures have come out of green, low visibility water or water over twenty metres deep. They like dawn and dusk, and prefer a bit of dullness in their water before venturing out. They will hide in holes, but are principally a fish of the open shellfish flats near rocks and reefs. They’re not at all difficult to hit with a spear underwater, but do not seem to like the sight of humans walking along rocks. Red moki, on the other hand, are certified shallow-water reef dwellers and simply ease back into one of the many rock holes they call home at the first sign of danger.  

The result is that I rarely see porae when sneaking along the rocks with Polaroids on, but I see red moki all the time. This is despite porae being equally numerous along Bay of Islands shores (they are common on the sand and shell patches in enclosed bays). A porae is seen usually as nothing more than a disappearing streak of blue. The red moki generally just sit there or slide quietly away. One species has been scared witless, while the other is more inquisitive and willing to hang around.

It is possible to catch porae off the rocks in shallow water, but make sure you’re casting a shellfish or squid bait well away from shore over a patch of sand. The best porae fisher I have ever met used a small, tough portion of squid tenticle, cast it well out in those small pebbly beaches between the kelp, and then just lay back on the beach with his rod in a rod holder. He didn’t catch a lot of fish, but he certainly caught some whopping great porae.

The consequence of all this is that the great plans I once had for stalking and catching porae on the fly rod off the rocks have gone out the door, while the possibility of stalking and catching red moki has taken on new meaning. I have some home-made crab flies and ‘crimp’ flies (crayfish crossed with shrimp) that I want to show a few red moki along the rocks. Maybe then we’ll see how reluctant these red moki really are.

	This article is reproduced with permission of New Zealand Fishing News 2008 - by Craig Worthington Re-publishing elsewhere is prohibited