Using Large Saltwater Flies to Catch Big Snapper

The fact that snapper will eat big lures – sometimes even very big lures – is widely understood by a lot of people. This wasn’t always the case. Indeed, throwing seven inch or even ten inch artificials around in the hope of catching twelve- to twenty-inch fish would have been considered slightly bonkers once upon a time. Craig Worthington considers whether bigger really is better…

I was one of those who took a long time to acknowledge this fact. As a habitual fly fisher my basic instincts were dominated by thoughts of small flies and ‘matching the hatch’. As a result, I favoured small flies in my formative years as a saltwater fly fisher.

The only trouble was, in those early days I never caught big snapper. I could catch any number of small snapper up to thirty centimetres in length, but bigger fish continually eluded me. It was not until I progressively started using bigger and bigger flies that I started catching bigger and bigger snapper. Now my biggest snapper flies are getting up to a size where they can be difficult to cast.

The soft-plastics boom of recent years has only served to reinforce this “bigger is better” idea. Some of the soft-plastics used successfully on snapper these days are in fact so large that I have to now question whether my largest flies are indeed large enough. Placing my largest flies beside some of these monster soft-plastics makes them seem very small indeed. I am starting to think I should be using flies so big that they go beyond the “too big to cast” boundary.

Some of Craig's snapper flies are truly large, but the success of big soft-baits on snapper suggests that they could be even larger.

Certainly, there is no question that any snapper over 30cm could eat a massively big fly if they wanted to. The dentistry that snapper carry in their mouths is fully capable of crunching down on just about anything. They are a biting and chewing species that are unlikely to ever choke on their food. They are not a ‘swallower’ and are not put off by large food items. If they want to they can have an exploratory chew on just about anything.

A friend of mine who was diving at the Poor Knights told me about accidentally disturbing a large pink maomao that had been asleep in a crack on a ledge. The fish awoke in a startled state and was immediately pounced upon by a horde of snapper. The unfortunate pink maomao disappeared in a cloud of pink scales and maomao blood. Snapper of all sizes that had been quietly cruising around mere moments before were now ferocious killers ripping and tearing that hapless pink maomao to pieces right in front of my diver friend’s face. Needless to say he quietly left the area before the local bronzies got in on the act.

It was a good example of how snapper can become absolute monstrous killers at a moment’s notice and that any fish in distress is fair game. Snapper effectively are the piranhas of the New Zealand seas. The size of the prey does not matter to snapper and, to this end, it would seem that the size of your lure or fly does not matter either.

What I am struggling to answer is whether the benefits of increasing my snapper fly sizes even more will out-weigh the negative aspects of trying to move such a large fly through the air? Do larger lures truly catch more fish than smaller lures? Is lure/fly size a significant strike producing factor in itself?

The ongoing success of big soft-baits on snapper of all sizes would suggest that this is the case. Bigger does indeed seem to be better.

Lessons from overseas

The same sort of thought processes and questions have been going on with fly fishers overseas who fish for species that show preferences for large bodied lures. These fly fishers have started making large flies that combine bulk with a strong and lightweight construction. They are flies that emulate the action seen in large hard-body and soft-bait lures while still being light enough to cast with a fly rod.

One fly of this type has been named the “Game-Changer”. It is a long, fish-shaped fly with a bulky body that has a tail wiggle probably better than any soft-bait you’ll ever see. Across the Tasman it has been scoring significant catches on species like murray cod, mulloway and barramundi – all large mouthed fish that have a preference for eating large prey. The in-roads this fly has been making into traditional lure fisheries has been quite revolutionary.

It has really rammed home the fact that, for some species, size really does matter.