I recently had a writer’s block, so put up a post on Facebook asking anglers what they wanted to have as a topic.

Quite a few came back suggesting I cover how and where to catch live baits. Good idea – I believe live baits offer the best way to catch decent fish on a regular basis.

I used to fish a lot of snapper competitions, and the first part of the contest always involved anchoring up and filling the live-bait tanks with wriggling occupants. These provided our number one way to catch big snapper, whether by drifting down deep baits or anchoring up and stray-lining in the shallows, and played a vital role in our success.

Several fish in our waters make great live baits, including yellowtail mackerel, kahawai, slimy mackerel, koheru and piper. This feature provides a few clues of where you might find them and ways to catch them.

Yellowtail mackerel

Arguably the most common type of live bait available, especially to more northern anglers, they are found in many different environments and are quite easy to catch. They are also durable and survive well in a live-bait tank, as well as when dangling on your hook.

When targeting these fish, I first decide how I’m going to catch them. The easiest way is by drifting along and jiggling sabiki bait flies, so start with this method first.

Use a light, reasonably bendy spinning rod, as mackerel mouths are soft so hooks easily rip out (soft-bait rods are ideal). Tie on a good quality set of sabikis; the small pink shrimp imitation types often work the best. Next, tie on a sinker – and this is where a lot of people go wrong – around 2oz. I find lighter sinkers catch less fish and lead to the sabiki rig getting tangled more often. I believe the extra weight helps hook the fish by creating some resistance.

I look for mackerel in bays or out on the open areas with some current. Depths around 10m to 20m seem to be about right. The two methods I use to locate mackerel are via the sounder or by birds. Birds are the best, so get out the binoculars and look for any terns or shearwaters, as they are often a dead giveaway to the mackerel’s presence. But if I can’t see any birds, I’ll search along contour lines on the GPS chart-plotter – especially around any squiggles along the contour line, which indicate the bottom is irregular, as baitfish will usually congregate around here. So make sure you have the sounder tuned correctly, as they can be harder to detect than larger fish, especially if loosely grouped.

Motor along slowly, looking for any type of marks – usually the mid-water marks are baitfish. Have your anglers ready to drop their sabikis the moment after you see the sign and pull up the boat with a bit of reverse. They do not need to wait for the boat to completely stop – you want to bomb the marks, which means being quick.

Try dropping the rig straight to the bottom, winding up a turn or two, then jiggling and swooping it around while slowly winding up at the same time. This strategy can tell you the depth the mackerel are holding in, so you can target that depth again next drop. Even so, experiment with different depths and your jiggle technique; you’re trying to imitate a school of tiny fish panicking.

If the mackerel are proving difficult to catch, try putting small slivers of bait on the hooks (more recently we’ve been putting small blobs of scent onto the flies, which also works well). But don’t move the rigs around afterwards when you do this; baited flies work better when held stationary.

When you hook a mackerel, try to keep the rig in the bite zone for another 10-30 seconds in an effort to try and load up all the hooks with more, but keep slowly winding as you do so to avoid excessive tangling. Remember, you’re trying to get this task completed quickly, so you can get on with the real fishing.

The angler winds the fish slowly in, avoiding excessive pressure or the mackerel will rip free, and are then lifted on board. The next part can be a bit tricky, so having a dedicated live-bait dehooking person who does not fish can really help when several anglers are bringing baits on board. Whatever your setup though, do not put them on the deck. Instead, grab the rig’s sinker with your free hand to control the bait string, then position the baits over the live-bait tank. Hopefully the de-hooker person can then take the fish off the hooks for you. Be aware that if you do not touch the fish at all, they will last longer. Consequently, the de-hooker should use a butter knife to slide along the fly’s trace and hook’s shank, until it reaches the hook bend. Then invert the hook so the bait’s own weight causes it to fall off into the bait tank. Job done – catch another one.

Try and figure out how many baits you’ll need for the day; if you’re catching heaps, by all means load up the tank, but be aware there is only so much oxygen available, so don’t overload it or the baits will die. Also, a live-bait tank with a pump that sucks in new water and discharges the old overboard works much better than the aerated types.

If this method of bait-fishing does not work, try anchoring in a bit of current next to some structure, berleying, and using the same rig with less weight. Otherwise, a single hook, very lightly weighted and baited with a sliver of squid or skipjack belly, can be even better. However, this method still tends to be more time consuming than the first.

Kahawai

Kahawai are another robust type of baitfish that’s easy to catch, but getting the smaller ones can be hard, so I don’t really target them when chasing snapper.

However, if targeting kingfish, bridle-rigging and slow trolling them can be very effective. A good way to catch the smaller kahawai is with a planer board armed with a small silver spoon or saltwater fly. If you can find feeding sea birds, start trolling around them. Otherwise, troll around weedy, rocky coastlines and points in water around 8-12 metres.

Or try hanging back from surface-feeding fish and casting a very small spinner (7-20g) on your soft-bait outfit with a 6kg fluoro trace attached. Keep the rod tip down and reel in smartly to attract the bites; a single hook makes unhooking easier.

Slimy mackerel

These fish make awesome live baits, but don’t survive as well as yellowtail or kahawai. These fish often entice shy fish into biting, especially snapper.

However, slimies tend to be harder to locate; I find them mostly in waters around 20-40 metres deep. You can often encounter them in wide-open areas over sand in large schools.

The best methods include: drifting with sabikis (they are especially susceptible to flies already being whizzed around by other hooked fish); trolling tiny silver spoons behind planer boards; and using lightly weighted single hooks with strip bait, fished in a berley trail.

In all cases these fish need to handled with care, but they also make great dead baits, so don’t throw them away if they die.

Koheru

This bait is my favourite, being durable and very active on the hook. Both snapper and kingfish love them.

I have caught many big snapper on koheru. Our favourite trick is to place a single hook through the nose, clip the tail, and cast them into a berley trail. It’s always exciting stuff doing this, as they very rarely last very long before getting eaten. However, they would be the hardest fish to catch. You usually need to be around remote or offshore reefs and islands, as they like to hang around foul ground with good current and clean water. I like to anchor up near the island or reef, berley back towards it, and then use tiny single-hooked jigs to catch them once they come around. Once hooked, they will really motor off, so the trace needs to be strong enough to handle that, but not so thick it turns them off biting. Six-kilo fluoro is a good compromise.

They wriggle strongly when you’re trying to put a hook through them, so use a wet towel or rag to help hold them. Koheru also make excellent dead baits, either whole or as cut bait.

Piper

These tasty fish also make spectacular kingfish baits and very good snapper baits.

Again though, they’re quite difficult to catch, and die quite easily on a hook. So look after these fish by: ensuring there’s a good flow of water into the live-bait tank; not touching them; and use small hooks when rigging them up.

The best areas to find them seem to be sheltered bays out of the wind next to headlands and points without much current flow. Next, anchor up and get a good berley trail going – a fine berley without many chunks in it works well, so bread well mixed with lots of water can be used too. It can take a while to draw piper to the back of the boat, as they are very shy.

I get a set of sabikis and cut the string in half, leaving me with two lots of three hooks. The swivel that comes with the sabikis works well as the weight at the bottom of the rig. Next, place fine slivers of pilchard belly just once onto the sabikis hooks. Now cast the rig out, let it sink for a few seconds, then very slowly wind in before letting it fall once more. Piper like the bait to be moving, so keep repeating this throughout the retrieve. When you see a piper chasing the moving flies, stop winding and let it eat the bait. This is the moment where the skill comes in, as you need to lift the rod at the right time. If you strike too early, you’ll miss hooking up, if you wait too long, the piper will swallow the hook right down, which usually results in the fish bleeding and dying. Having hooked the piper, very gently wind it in, then use the butter-knife trick to release it into the live-bait tank.

When rigging these fish as baits, I place a small 2/0 live-bait hook just forward of the anal vent. Once they get tired, I then switch the hook to the front jaw until it is eaten or dies.

As you can see, catching live baits can range from being very easy to very hard, but there are not many days when you cannot catch at least a few live baits – and you only need one to catch a really big fish!