Micro jigging for big snapper

I couldn’t say no when the opportunity came to chase big Far North snapper with Steve Angus from Swordfish Marine (Reel Repair Guy) late last year.

I had recently purchased some light Abu jig rods and Braid micro jigs, and had always wanted to give micro-jigging a go – this looked like the perfect opportunity!

After reaching the Far North on Thursday afternoon, Steve got the boat ready while I assembled the rods and reels. Then Steve caught a glimpse of them out of the corner of his eye.

“Great, you brought some outfits to catch our livies; we get heaps just outside the entrance on sabikis, so they will be perfect!”

When I told Steve I intended chasing big snaps with them, he came over to inspect them more closely, and after loading them up and pulling a bit of string, his thoughts changed from, “Yeah, whatever…” to “Holy crap! What are these machines?”

We were up at 5.00am for our first day on the water in beautiful Doubtless Bay. As Steve normally catches big snaps to 11-12kg in a short window before the sun gets too high, our plan was to start with his Spot X first.

This possie called for our heavier stray-line sets, as we were deploying big whole pilchard, squid and butterflied jack mackerel baits, along with a decent berley trail.

Sure enough, Steve’s first big bait on his trusty Ugly Stik combo produced the first nice red of around 5-6 kilos. And then he was in again and again, with more nice reds coming aboard.

Finally my 6-12kg rod slowly loaded up, and my little 5000 reel took up the strain as I struck. I love it when you strike a fish, the rod buckles over, and then stays buckled!

I played the fish for a while, letting it run when necessary and applying pressure to stop it going to ground. After a few minutes of give and take, up popped a nice big fat red in top condition, estimated around 10kg. After a few quick pics were taken, she was carefully slipped back over the side to fight another day. Then, with big smiles on our dials and a handshake from Steve, it was time to move on and try somewhere a little deeper.

Steve fired up the Honda and, following a quick 10-15 minute run, we were out on a reef in around 90m of water. Steve has caught some nice kings here and advised, “If you hold your tongue right, you may even pull up a little ’puka.”

Having stopped on our way out for a few livies, a lively jack mack was Steve’s first-choice offering, while I decided to do a bit of mechanical jigging.

I started picking up a few rats, but Steve hooked into something a lot bigger, only to drop it mid-fight. That encouraged me to drop a livie down on my new 250g jigging rod, too. At two metres in length, it makes a great light live-bait rod, especially when matched with a 6000-sized reel.

This saw the two of us hooked into smallish kings for the next two hours, but just before calling it quits I hooked into something a little better. To my surprise it turned out to be a nice 6-7kg snapper, which was netted and then quietly slipped back over the side.

With one more hour left, Steve headed us back in to anchor up on another big reef where we’d done well in the past. Here, my first couple of baits only got rattled, so I dropped my bait size to see what they were. Up came a nice big blue cod. With my mouth watering, I couldn’t let that sucker go, and quickly dropped down another bait. I was soon in again – and up popped another cod – and another!

I decided to drop a 25g micro-jig down – and, oh yeah, the blueys loved it as much as the bait, again coming up one after the other.

With six or seven big blues in the bin, along with two snaps we weren’t able to release, it was time to call it quits.

Day two was a humdinger, being sunny and calm enough to go wide. After an hour of snapper fishing that produced a couple of goodies, it was off after some bluenose and ‘puka. But after trying for a few hours in 400m of water for little success, we gave up and headed in to a spot called ‘The 209’, where we caught a few gemfish. Even so, with our tails somewhat between our legs, we decided to leave the heavy gear at home on Day Three and concentrate on the light jig outfits instead.

Steve had a few spots for us to try, having picked up some nice fish to 11 kilos over the last two weeks in them, with another guy he knew nailing a couple of 13kg-plus models! So the chances we’d be getting big bends in the new rods were pretty high.

After a bit of a sleep-in, we hit the water around 6.30am, and upon rounding the corner, I looked down the coast. Although I’d never fished this side, it looked full of potential, with rocky outcrops, guts and islands just offshore, reefs breaking the surface, and a couple of little work-ups.

I suggested doing a little stray-lining first. (Being new to micro-jigging, I thought we had to be in work-ups for the jigs to really work – that shows you how little experience I’ve had with this gear!) Our first reefy spot came up from 20m and had a nice bit of wash around it. After anchoring 30-odd metres away, we deployed the berley, hoping to entice the fish into biting.

The first few baits turned up only small snaps, but as the morning went on we started getting smashed on the drop. However, after letting go a string of good fish to 5-kilos plus, it was time to put the stray-line sets away and get the noodle-like micro-jig rods out.

Lucky we did, as the next five or six hours saw them bending over like horseshoes!

I picked up a real nice snapper on the new 120g rod armed with a silver-pink jig, one of my favourites. Estimated around 10kg, it was in great condition, so after a few quick clicks with the camera it was back over the side. Seeing such a magnificent beast swimming away was my trip’s highlight.

Steve was also putting the light gear to the test, and I could tell he was loving it – a partial payback for providing such a great trip for me up in the beautiful Far North.