Had a couple of frustrating days when not hooking fish properly.  Rig is a Nitro stealth 3/0 1oz jighead with a 4" zman paddler.

 

Getting plenty of hits but a lot of them turn into nothing.  Had a couple on the weekend where I had the fish on for 7 to 10 seconds and it was peeling line etc. but would then just drop off.  Only thing I can think of is the rod I was using had a reasonably light tip and maybe the hook wasn't penetrating well enough but other than that only thing I can think of is that the fish were just grabbing the tails and not being aggressive.

 

Any thoughts?

 

Cheers

 

True, it was around the full moon on the weekend and the bites were generally soft, have also found it in the past but did seem to be worse on the weekend.

 

Snapper weren't big either only around the 40 to 45cm mark but it felt like the ones I did loose were better models hence why my first thoughts were I wasn't penetrating the jaw very well.

 

Tried squashing down the barb too but didn't seem to make much difference.

 

Fishing was around Motuora and back a little towards Tiri.

I use 1/0 as well. Find 3/0 too big. Not sure the fish care but I don't like them on a 4" lure. This weekend I was hooking alot of fish around the mouth using a 1/0. Other days they'll inhale the lure. On Sunday, I started playing around with a 1/8 oz, size 1 hook with 10lb trace and 3.75" lures. It worked better than anything else catching the most and the biggest. I had more problems getting the hook out of the fish than into them. I'll definitely be ordering more.

Could just be lots of smaller fish?

Could also be just plain bad luck too.

Defintily try using a worm hook and a ball sinker, it does result in a better hook up rate