It is common knowledge that winter months is big snapper time and that has certainly been the case in recent times for Whangarei's Tony Wheeler.

A regular at the Hen and Chicks, Tony's preferred modus operandi is straylining either unweighted or lightly weighted baits back down a berkley trail. He looks for somewhere where the wind and tide are in the right direction and there is light foul on the bottom – gutters between two structures in particular.

His berley is his own concoction where chook pellets are mixed with tuna oil – dispensed in a lidded 10 litre bucket with a multitude of small holes drilled in the top half. Given a regular shake and aided by the motion of the boat, a thick cloud of oil-charged particles is spread behind the boat, wafting down to the territory below.

Tony's rig features a 4/0 or smaller keeper hook tied with a 6/0 main hook on around 50lb trace.

It was this scenario that produced this month's NZ Fishing News cover shot of Hamilton's Good George Brewery's Darrel Hadley with his personal best 11.34kg effort while fishing with Tony recently.

Not to be outdone by his guests, Tony (pictured) earlier this week made the most of some great weather and with his first bait of the day produced his own significant snapper, bang on 10.5kgs. 

The tarakihi pins east of Sail Rock are holding good numbers of these popular species, along with snapper. The lumps of foul off Bream head have also fished well for tarakihi, especially over the slack tides. You can't go past shellfish for bait.

Elsewhere in Bream Bay the fishing has been steady rather than spectacular.

Good catches have been reported from the snapper fishers trying their luck on the Three Mile Reef. Bait has been the preferred option.

Fishing the sand from 16-20 metres out from the Waipu River mouth right down past Mangawhai has been producing some good mixed bags of snapper, gurnard, trevally and john dory, right out to 40-50 metres.

The Whangarei harbour is still producing good snapper catches. The fish are not big, but they are fat. There are some good trevally being caught around the main channel edges. With good moon and tide phases coming up, the fishing should also improve providing the weather plays ball.