After having given softbaiting a fair thrashing for the last 10 or 11 years, I've returned to my old favourite, straylining.
What I have done is apply a lot of my softbaiting techniques to straylining, and it's being spectacularly successful.
One example is in getting line free when a fish has gone into the kelp and weeds. The fish in the picture below got itself into the kelp below us and was so obviously stuck that guys in a boat who'd stopped to watch the fight said, "It's caught in the weeds - just cut the line." My response was a Russian word (ends in "off"), and after about 5 minutes or so it came free, and then after a bit more of a fight, boated.
And having said for years that I never take pix, on Sunday I took a photographer out with me. The 12ft dinghy and 2 1/2hp motor don't give me a hell of a lot of range for a morning's fishing starting after 8am...fishing my feet again. You can see where I launched from in the background here:
I was targeting bigger snapper, caught 5, nothing under 65cm at all. This was the middle sized one of the 3 I kept. I also caught a few kahawai.