Advice & Info: Kayak fishing - using traditional bait methods

A comment I often encounter during winter is that the bite has 'shut down'.

Recently these comments have been from kayak anglers casting soft-plastics (and soft-baits, but to save confusion here, I'll group them all as soft-plastics). Often the frustration is that the recently purchased 'specialist' outfit has seemingly been rendered redundant until warmer water puts the fish back on the bite.

Now before I get started on using real bait on your soft-plastic outfits, let me say this: I catch snapper, kahawai, trevally, john dory, kingfish and other species year round on soft-plastics. When the bite has 'shut down', a little more perseverance might be required, but these soft lures definitely still produce, and produce well! All that's required aside from persistence is a good understanding of the lures you're using, and what the fish are up to, so you can fool them into biting.

That said, this article is about using those great pieces of recently purchased technology to cast or strayline real bait instead of the artificials they've been 'designed' for. I use this technique year-round (as I do soft-plastics), but in the colder waters at this time of the year it can offer a number of advantages.

Real bait, the real thing

Artificials are very effective, but there are definitely times when the real thing will outperform them. A whole pilchard or squid looks exactly like what it is - a whole pilchard or squid. Further, it tastes and feels exactly as it should. Also, unlike soft-plastics, the kind of action used to move the rod or twitch the line to get the bait moving is less important. Often a dead drift from a rocking kayak is all that's required!

When using baits instead of soft-plastics in this situation, a little extra care in selecting and handling them is definitely warranted. Firstly, only first-grade product is acceptable. Baits shouldn't have any freezer burn, should have all their scales and, when thawed, be pleasant to use: in other words, as near to food grade as possible.

The next part is to thaw them slowly. At this time of the year I take my bait from the freezer at least 12 hours before I expect to use it, and leave it to thaw in a fish bin in the garage. This slow, undisturbed thaw gives the best texture, and allows me to use the soft-plastic rod to present it correctly.

In selecting baits, the only exception to the 'fresh is best' philosophy I've found are Magic Arrows. This is a unique product, manufactured in Northland, which consists of individually marinated squid filled with pilchard and skipjack berley. It works exceptionally well for me, and I think this is in part due to the stuffing giving the whole squid the right shape in the water. Of course, the berley filling is certainly going to help!

Give it some action

Even though I've already mentioned that dead drifts will work, I think giving baits a little action with the soft-plastic outfit is the key to success. This technique of 'swimming' real baits on light tackle has netted me nearly all my trophy fish, including several snapper over 13.6kg and trevally over 7.0kg. Kingfish are also partial to pilchards and squid presented this way.

The object is the same as when using soft-plastics. By twitching the rod and varying the retrieve, the dead bait mimics the action of something struggling in the last throes of life. All the hunters of the ocean find this irresistible!

Since I like to use clips and a rapid-change system with my soft-plastics to vary jig-head weights, tail shapes and colours (adjusts sink rate, action and appearance), I use the same with my baits. By changing sinker size especially, I can dramatically alter presentation, from targeting fish on the retrieve (light sinker) to swimming the baits on descent (heavy sinker). Obviously the speed the bait is presented at is also altered.

Slow presentations work

One of the handicaps of using soft-plastics is having them survive when slow retrieves are required to target lethargic fish. Slow your softie down and leatherjackets, wrasses and others make a meal of them. Frustratingly, this mini razor-gang seems to know just where to nibble to render that valuable bit of plastic inoperable!

Presenting whole pillies and squid on a slow retrieve doesn't do anything to slow these little choppers, but baits don't only rely on their action through the water to attract desirable fish. As mentioned, you can't beat the appearance, taste and texture of the real thing. In addition, I believe the attentions of the smaller fish often helps induce the larger fish to strike when investigating real baits.

Even when the frustrating little plastic destroyers aren't a problem, slow retrieves of soft-plastics may not induce enough action to trigger a fish into striking. I know some of the scents used in these lures are extremely effective, but time and again I've done a quick change to bait, repeated the cast with an extremely slow retrieve and hooked a moocher. On occasion I'm actually watching them on the Humminbird 787 or 797 Side-Imaging sonar and can see the lack of interest (movement) until the pillie or squid drifts nearby.

Shallow or deep, it doesn't matter

In the mid 1990s, as a newly converted saltwater kayak angler (from land based fishing - I had been using kayaks in the fresh since the mid-1970s), I started fishing the structure in front of my favorite possies. This technique of swimming and working my baits quickly became the ultimate way of fooling the big residents, without having my gear foul in the shallows. It never ceases to amaze me, then as now, how the presence of kayaks doesn't seem to bother some fish.

In the late '90s I started fitting fish-finders to my kayaks, opening up deeper waters for exploration. My passion for plumbing the depths was born. Since the swimming style of presenting baits had proven so successful, I continued with it. The only modification was the use of a little extra weight to get the baits swimming at the correct depth.

Use circle hooks

One thing that did come to light was the value in using circle hooks when fishing with fixed-spool (spinning) outfits. With free-spool systems I prefer to use two suicide-style hooks and to strike quickly on a hit. Fixed-spool 'soft-plastic' reels don't allow the same degree of sensitivity, especially just after a cast (in shallow water) or as the bait descends (in deeper water). To compensate, I use a single circle hook through the nose of pilchards or the 'arrow points' of squid.

This makes striking a hit unnecessary. Once you detect a take, drop the rod tip and let the fish run a little before closing the bail and lifting the rod tip again. This will (usually) engage the hook in the corner of the fish's jaw. Since I like to release fish, this technique also ensures as little injury as possible is caused.

A sting in the tail

On rare occasions, if the fish are really lethargic, baits may get robbed from standard circle hooks without hooking up. At these times I use a rig with a sting in its tail: two fixed 18R longline hooks. Especially effective when using squid-type baits (they don't choke the hooks), I use the same drop-back-and-lift technique with the rod to hook up.

The shape of these little hooks gives the same 'hook in the jaw' action as the larger circles. The top hook keeps the bait in the right shape for best presentation and action, while the bottom one pinning the head to the skirt of the mantle does the damage.

This rig is also extremely cost-effective when the razor gang turns up. It doesn't matter if you're fishing soft-plastics or baits, 'couta arriving in plague proportions in colder waters can become expensive. This rig gives me the chance to recover the hooks from the corner of the jaw or simply cut the trace short if this isn't viable. It's certainly cheaper than cutting away Mustad Demon circles or jig heads and worm hooks.

Give it a go

Even without the reasons above, it's fun experimenting with different techniques. Just because something has been purchased as a 'soft-plastic' rig doesn't mean that it won't make a fantastic bait outfit. Check out the photos; who would have thought bait fishing a Daiwa Sol 3000 on a 2.1m (7') Sol rod would have generated so much fun and success on snapper and hapuku to 11kg!?

	This article is reproduced with permission of New Zealand Fishing News September 2008 - written by Stephen Tapp RE-PUBLISHING ELSEWHERE IS PROHIBITED