Softbaits - fishing from the shore Part 2

There is magic in learning a new fishing technique. It’s as if you’ve never caught a fish before.

There is a thrill that comes with every strike, and every fish is a gem, no matter what its size. Think about the first kahawai you caught on a lure, or the first snapper on bait when you were really fishing for them.

Soft-bait fishing from shore offers those same thrills. Who knows what is possible? Certainly one of the biggest drawcards is the fact it’s possible to catch a huge range of species on lures. My shore-caught soft-bait captures now include over 15 species – and there are still plenty more out there to catch, too.

The fishing is simple. Just select a target species, choose a suitable soft-bait to imitate what the fish are likely to be feeding on, pin it on a rig that will get the lure to the fish, fish it from a rod and reel that will do the job, and you are away.

Sounds easy – and it is. It is so easy, in fact, that this is a great way to start fishing. You can’t do anything wrong once you have an idea of where the fish are.

Kahawai are New Zealand’s number-one lure taker and a great place to start your shoreline soft-baiting.

So where do we find them? Kahawai like current, so hang out around river mouths, estuary mouths, in the lower parts of some rivers, up tidal creeks and are also present in the active surf. And if there is a concentration of baitfish, even in still shoreline waters, they will show up here in no time, too.

They are easy to fool with soft-baits, and a minnow-type tail on a jighead is a good way to do this. However, you will need to find the right weight jig-head to suit your rod and reel to ensure good castability.

Try a 4- or 5-inch Nuclear Chicken or Mango Ripple ‘Jerk Shad’, and if there is a kahawai around, you will probably catch him. Instead of casting and fast retrieving, as you may have done with a hex-wobbler-type lure, try letting the soft-bait sink a little before starting a steady retrieve with a series of twitches. Keep the lure moving all the time and change the speed of retrieve occasionally.

If the kahawai are there but not taking the lure, try another colour. This is really less important than the retrieve action, but can sometimes make a difference (just ask a trout fisher about ‘matching the hatch’).

You need to make sure that the fish are seeing the lure, so be patient as you try different depths from the top to the bottom of the water column. This method is so good that if you are covering fish, you will probably hook them.

Other species may require a slightly different approach. Gurnard, for instance, spend a lot of time (but not all of it) on the bottom looking for food, so it stands to reason that you should offer your soft-baits to them down there, too. The jig-head approach will work fine most of the time, but if you are forced to fish off a high spot, such as a wharf or bridge, then it can be painful trying to keep your soft-baits on the bottom.

A better approach might be to use a sinker that trails a soft-bait on a half- to one-metre leader; the more current present, the shorter the leader. This will keep the bait down deep and allow you to fish the rig right to your feet.

If chasing gurnard or snapper in the surf, wading and casting with a jighead and a 4- or 5-inch Jerk Shad is as good as it gets. You can cover a lot of water and really enjoy the casting and retrieving. Kahawai and other species will show up in your catch as well.

If you suspect that the fish are well out, maybe out of range of your soft-bait behind a sandbar, then you can bring out the big guns. Your 14-foot surf rod with 6kg line and a shock leader will let you cast out to such spots, and you can use a couple of different rigs to get the most from your soft-baits.

Try a ‘Gary’s Longcast or Extreme Distance rig’. Put your chosen soft-bait on the hook instead of a bait, and clip it down before casting. This streamlines the rig so maximum distance can be achieved off the beach. Then, when the soft-bait hits the water, it unclips, and you can retrieve it through the likely fish-holding water.

If using a soft-bait ‘peeler’ crab, you can just leave it there and let the Gulp! juice attract a fish to it. With other tails, just use a slow, twitchy retrieve – and hold on!

I am working on another rig at present that will be even more effective when soft-baits need to be cast long distances, but more on this later as it develops and grows. It really is an exciting time.

You might find that soft-baiting allows you to fish seriously where you may not have tried before. That, of course, means more fish to cover and ultimately catch.

A recent trip to the Far North saw my fishing buddy and I forced off the coast, with huge swells rolling in on the east coast and flat seas and few fish on the west coast.

However, the Far North has so many corners and turns to its coastline that there are always spots to try. The weather was wild, but so was the fishing in the end.

Our trip was to turn around after finding a spot on the edge of a mangrove creek, where the fertile water from the creek ran into a large clear-water harbour. It looked shallow and we were not sure what to expect, but it was fishable when other places were not.

So we donned waders, grabbed our soft-bait spin gear and a belt bag full of tails and jig heads, and waded out towards the drop-off into a channel, where I expected some fish to be lying...

The humbie but hard-fighting kahawai often introduces shore-based anglers to the delights of soft-plastic fishing and casting soft-plastics from the shore can prove productive on snapper, too.

	This article is reproduced with permission of New Zealand Fishing News Aug 2008 - by Gary Kemsley Re-publishing elsewhere is prohibited