Joining the 20lb Snapper Club

One more highway bend through the windswept landscape and I finally glimpsed the expansive clear waters of Rangaunu Harbour after a long drive to the Far North.
My quest to catch a fabled ‘20 pounder’ had brought me back to the Karikari Peninsula for a trip that I had been planning and preparing for months.

As arbitrary as the old imperial 20-pound (9.07kg) benchmark is as a measure of snapper-catching accomplishment, it’s a club most tamure-focused fishos seek to join. Some people catch numerous giant snapper every year, but the fact I had never managed to secure membership despite fishing for snapper since I was a child was starting to become a large hairy primate on my back – especially when I’d occasionally hear a story like some kid fishing off an Auckland wharf had caught a suicidal giant snapper using a sprat rod and a bit of old squid. 

My local fishing store The Big Fish Bait and Tackle certainly lived up to its name a few years ago when I was shown a behemoth Great Barrier snapper in their walk-in freezer awaiting a trip to the taxidermist. At well over 15kg, that whopper made my typical catch look like goldfish.

But as I mostly fished Auckland’s Waitemata Harbour and Tamaki Strait, where big snapper are rarely caught in modern times, it’s not surprising a 9kg red had eluded me in my home waters.
I tried charters to the outer Hauraki Gulf, and one to Little Barrier, without landing anything bigger than my average. So, a few years ago, I decided to take charge of my own fishing destiny: I bought a very seaworthy, but modest FC 465 runabout and made the effort to get to renowned big fish areas accessible to small boats. 

I pored over articles by soft-baiting experts Mark Kitteridge and John Eichelsheim and put their tips into practise. I consequently got addicted to the adrenaline injection from catching line-peeling fish on light but strong gear, and my personal best snapper improved in small increments to just over 7.5kg (about 17lb). 
So, as I towed Te Korora down a steep hill to the beach at Rangiputa on a blustery autumn morning and shoved the Hilux into low ratio, I was brimming with anticipation. Game time.

Somewhere, over the rainbow

As I got everything ready for a solo launch, an unexpected rainbow appeared across the pale northern sky and blazed its colourful trail into the sea off Houhora. Was this beautiful phenomenon an omen pointing the way to big red treasure? 
Unfortunately, any possibility of an immediate answer was thwarted by rising 20 knot nor’easters which confined my day one efforts to the harbour. A steady stream of chunky snapper snaffled my soft-baits in the shallows – their blue fins flashing like neon signs as they came to the boat for release.

Day two and three were frustratingly stymied by a cold front sweeping up the country and so were spent in the comfort of my farm stay tying fresh FG knots, watching a vintage Matt Watson soft-baiting DVD (go the Squidgies!) from the owner’s collection, and nervously cross-referencing three marine forecasting sites. A mint day was predicted later in the week, and I clung to hope that the weather modellers were on the money.

I blew the cobwebs off on day four with another choppy harbour fish. The highlight was a 60cm trevally which went like a scolded cat in eight metres of water and glinted gold and silver on the deck before going in the chilly bin to become delicious sashimi and kokoda.
My mate Chris arrived as planned that night, just in time for the first calm day of the trip. With more strong winds looming at the weekend, it felt like now or never. 

Go north,  young men

At dawn, we put two spare fuel cans in the boat, filed our planned all-day trip to the remote Great Exhibition Bay with Coastguard, and headed out of the glassy harbour and beyond the Houhora entrance to belatedly seek that rainbow’s potential treasure.
We had no intel about secret spots up the long arc of coastline, so cruised along looking for uneven ground or good sign on the Garmin and drifted back over anything promising. But adding a large pig fish and a startlingly red granddaddy hapuku to my list of species captured on soft-bait wasn’t exactly the outcome we’d been hoping for. 

I had started off fishing an Atomic Sunrise Doormatadorz 6” grub, hoping the soft-bait’s fat profile, colour and tantalising movement would appeal to an XL-sized snapper. I was second guessing my choice when it suddenly got nailed by something big just as it began to drag behind the boat. 
My Penn Slammer III haemorrhaged line at an alarming rate before I got the fish’s head turned, and after a thrilling fight we landed and released a 70cm snapper – but not before it painfully crunched my middle fingertip when I was trying to free the well-hooked jighead. 
As I tried to staunch the bleeding and swelling, Chris gleefully hooked up to a solid 67cm fish that engulfed a Nuked Pilchard 7” Jerkshad at the end of the drift and swam away strongly after a quick photo. He was delighted with a new personal best.
Allowing our soft-baits to drag after the swing was proving deadly, and it was about to pay off again. 

The holy grail

Another powerful fish – our third in 10 minutes – annihilated my big orange grub and took off on a screaming run against plenty of drag pressure. 
This one was in a different league in weight and brute strength. It tried some scarily vicious head shakes which my Daiwa Slugger rod soaked up, and eventually a huge red and white shape wobbled into view behind the boat and rolled on the surface. When it was safely in the net, we each let out a whoop. 
We both knew it was bigger than anything we’d caught before, and once I got my shaking hands in control enough to measure it, our official mat confirmed this donkey was 81cm, and the weight a hefty 21lb. 

Cue utter exhilaration and satisfaction. My ‘20 pounder’ at long last! I was so grateful to have a great mate with me to share a moment I’ll never forget.
When we tried to release it, the fish unfortunately flopped weakly on the surface. We suspected it was affected by barotrauma, despite the modest depth. So, I dispatched and chilled the giant down for it to be expertly slow smoked overnight by the owner of Rangiputa Retreat in return for a six pack. The head was gifted to his wife’s colleague at Kaitaia Hospital.

I sat back and took a few minutes to reflect on achieving something I’d dreamed of for so long and made sure to appreciate our surroundings. 
The sea was like a millpond all the way to North Cape, and we were in shorts and t-shirts on the cusp of winter. A huge albatross glided past, soaring and diving across the oceanic swells; pairs of korora (the little blue penguins my boat is named after) honked their calls as waves broke against the remote shore. 
Later, when I was getting ready to net a big fish Chris had been playing, my rod in the corner holder bent over severely with the Slammer screaming again. It was every man for himself, so Chris netted what turned out to be a superbly conditioned 73cm fish – and his second ‘PB’ upgrade of the day. 

Mine turned out to be a prime 73cm snapper with a striking hump head. The classic red and green Nuked Chicken Glow version of the Doormatadorz was jammed in its jaw hinge. Both big fish powered away on release in 18 metres.
It was a very content boat ride during the long, smooth cruise home. Neither of us could quite believe the day we’d had, and it wasn’t quite over. 

We saw some surface commotion about 100m to our port side before an albacore tuna leapt clean out of the water; then a pod of dolphins surfed our bow wave for several minutes – the perfect escort towards the finish line of our epic Far North adventure. 
It was time to pack up and follow Chris home in convoy through bush-clad Northland hill country with Springsteen on my stereo. I sat more comfortably without a monkey squeezed behind me.