Horizontal Jigging for Kingfish

When Ethan Neville heard that tackle inventor Wes Braddock had been targeting kingfish using a new method this summer, he didn’t turn down the opportunity to try it out for himself. Ethan explains…

Kingfish don’t always play by the rules. Depending on the tide, current, time of day, food source and probably more, their feeding behaviour and location can change. One day you find them over a reef, but the next they’re 100m away over sand chasing bait; one day the kingfish sign is thick on the sounder over a pin, the next day you stare at an empty screen. At least in this latter situation, you can simply move on to the next pin. Surveying large areas of reef and foul ground looking for signs of bait and kingfish, in contrast, can take time.

I know there are some kingfish aficionados among those reading who have every location they fish down to a fine art, knowing exactly where the fish hold at certain times of the day. Well done. For the rest of us, a bit of territory needs to be covered before we find the fish.

This is why I got pretty excited when I heard about horizontal jigging.

It’s exactly as it sounds.

Instead of retrieving a knife jig vertically – the standard jigging method – you retrieve it horizontally. This involves attaching the jig to your topwater set and casting it as far as you can, just as you would a stickbait. You may get a couple of strange looks from the boats next to you at this point – as we did on our recent trip – but when you hook up – as we did – those looks quickly change.

After the jig hits the water, you let it sink until it gets close to the bottom, which takes a little bit of guess work (the more you practice, the less guess work is involved). It’s then as simple as retrieving the jig in the same way you’d retrieve a knife jig vertically (lifting and dropping the rod as you wind). This will be awkward with the longer rod, but after a few casts you’ll find your rhythm. Ideally, the jig will zig and zag its way back to you through a range of depths. After about ten winds, or whenever the jig is approaching the surface, simply open the bail arm, wait for the jig to drop again and then repeat. By the time the jig arrives at the boat, a lot of territory has been covered with one cast.

And that’s about it. Pretty straightforward, and, in fact, nothing new. While it is being heralded on YouTube as the next big thing, NZ Fishing News’ Associate Editor Sam Mossman says this is something he and others have done in the past quite a bit, and with great success. Rather than be disheartened about being late to the party, I took this as a good sign that the method works and isn’t just a passing fad.

Wes Braddock, the inventor and owner of Glowbite (the lure company that embed LED lights into their lures to improve strike rates), who also happens to be my old neighbour and former teacher, was the first to tell me about this technique. He did a lot of horizontal jigging over summer and had caught a lot of fish. When he mentioned he was keen to show me how this method works out on the water, there was not much thinking to be done.

Wes Braddock, the inventor of Glowbite lures, hooked up to a solid pannie.

On a Saturday morning in late March, in the midst of one of the craziest times we may ever face in our lifetimes – something we agreed to stop talking about as soon as we left the ramp – we launched the boat at Omaha, North Auckland. The plan: head to Horn Rock in the Hauraki Gulf at sunrise and cast some knife jigs about.

This half of the plan was successful. We got to Horn Rock at sunrise and started surveying the area with jigs. It took me a few casts to get my head around mechanical jigging on a 45-degree angle with a topwater set, but I eventually got into a bit of a rhythm (though Wes and Matt – the photographer on board – could probably tell you the truth about how awkward I actually looked).

The second half of the plan – catching fish – wasn’t so successful. We found a bit of bait on the front of one of the rocks, but it wasn’t balled up tight and the tell-tale kingfish eyebrows, which can usually be seen hovering below bait balls on the sounder, were conspicuously absent. After an hour of casting and prospecting the wider area without even a follow, we decided a change of tide might bring them on the bite, so took off to some snapper grounds. Dinner was sorted in thirty minutes with several snapper up around the 4kg mark landed on Glowbite K-Sliders.

We reluctantly left the sand to check out Horn Rock again but had the exact same results as earlier: scattered sign and no follows. So it was off to Leigh Reef, located only five minutes from the ramp, to see if there was a bit more going on there.

We arrived to bait on the surface, but there were also plenty of boats anchored around the reef, as well a number of bored-looking anglers. In the middle of the day at a less than ideal tide for this spot, I cast my jig without much hope. The first three casts were left alone, but the fourth got hit about halfway through the retrieve – which meant the jig was also halfway up the water column and still 15-odd metres away from the boat. The weight came on instantly, and after a short sharp fight, a great eating-sized kingie was boat-side. While I bled the fish, Matt took his chance to ditch the camera and cast my jig back out. Before I had finished cleaning up, his jig got smashed and he made short work of the just-undersized king. It was Matt’s first kingfish and the second fish ever caught horizontal jigging on our boat. Unfortunately, we had to leave at this point due to prior on-land commitments (which are the worst kind of commitments), but I’m sure the success would have continued if we’d stayed, particularly as the sun started to drop.

Long topwater rods are not often used to cast knife jigs, but on this occasion, it worked a treat.

While it was not the most successful kingfish hunting session, horizontal jigging had proved itself as a viable technique. As Wes pointed out, I probably joined a small club of anglers who had caught a legal king at Leigh Reef under the midday sun on the “wrong” tide.

What’s the advantage of horizontal jigging?

Unlike vertical jigging, which is straight up and down, horizontal jigging allows you to survey a decent stretch of water every cast. Unlike topwater fishing, where the lure is on the surface or just under, you get to prospect right through the water column. When you need to survey reefs and large areas of foul ground – which is extremely common in the Hauraki Gulf – this makes horizontal jigging invaluable. It was 25-30m deep where we cast at Leigh Reef and the sign was scattered. This is one of those awkward situations where neither vertical jigging or stick-baiting are ideal – trolling livebaits is typically the best bet in this scenario, but this requires catching livies and getting them to swim at the desired depth. Horizontal jigging gives you the best of both worlds (depth and distance), and on this occasion I was hooked up in three casts.

The other advantage of this method is the action. Bait fish don’t often swim vertically, if at all, instead darting from side to side when predators approach. The horizontal action that this type of jigging encourages better replicates a scared baitfish.

I’m not quite an evangelist, but this is definitely a technique worth giving a go on your next kingfish mission. At the very least, it’s a useful addition to your arsenal, ready to be drawn on when your livebaits, stickbaits and vertical jigs aren’t getting touched.