bah! where'd the rest of my reply go? there was more i'm sure:
BA: have you done a bit of this sort of thing in your land-bassed past? keen to hear what you used and what worked? I remember reading that some of the 1st softbaiting for snapper in this country was done land bassed on mister twisters by Mr Kemsley in the 80's off the rocks up north, I'm interested to hear from anyone who's poineered this kinda stuff, time's ripe for land-bassed lure fishing to become a bit more mainstream i reckon!
Landman & brown dog: good stuff! keen to see how ya get on, have you had a go with softies around kk bay, going by your report the other day of them being right in close they sound like prime targets to have a go at that. I'm keen to join fenien for a crack at gurnard on little inchinkus once that damned red weed buggers off, I've found trevs quiet fond of little flat shads at times, had a sesion last winter on the gulf where every 2-3 casts brought in one of around 30cm, keen to try that around cake is. and under the light house.
Deacs: I've got 2 lures that are right little troopers: it'd be between a little sebile flat shad in blu althea or the little rapala x-rap that those snapper were caught on, i'll post a closeup pic of them later as they're getting pretty worn/bitten/gnarled looking after 10 months of active duty and look pretty cool with the teeth marks/scratches (actually i quietly fear a good fish would crunch the x-rap up and destroy it lol). Though really it's still early days, i'm still figuring out how a lure should swim/behave to get our fish to bite, pleanty more options out there in the world to try, lots more theories to test. it's a case of balancing testing new ideas and refining what's currently working, and satisfying the urge to just do what works and bend a rod lol! so much still to learn. But yeah at this stage softies are still more effective by a reasonable margin, understandable given how much more development has happened there over the years.
Fish-i: what have you played with and what's the results like, keen to hear anything from anyone giving this a go!
loodafish: fun: definately! cheap... depends really! there's a bit of an outlay to start with to have small collection, but so long as you don't lose the lures it certainly can be cheap. I've only just now started to downsize my trace/tackle to get more hits, previously i was fishing line/trace weights that meant i'd straiten trebble hooks rather than loose lures, it's only now after 12 months (not 100% these lures over that time though) i've got a good sense for the sink rates etc and can avoid hitting snags in the 1st place so am downsizing the trace etc, also i tend to cast a softie around when i 1st arrive at a new spot to sorta "feel out" the teritory and get to know where the snags are. I think if I fished them on 15lb trace 1st outing it woulda been expensive and i wouldn't have stuck with it at all haha!
Fishing addiction: Although it does work, i wouldn't go saying that this is a method equal to baits/softies/inchinkus etc at this stage, it's still more effort per hookup that's for sure, so not my 1st choice to put food on the plate, but alot of fun and a real challenge. though it's a type of fishing that's in it's infancy really, if a few people stick at it and keep thinking and refining what they're doing and explooring the world of lures that are out there it'll only get better.
Kandrew, nah not really, i'm not that big on boat fishing (nothing wrong with boats of course, they're just not my thing), but there's alot of development going on in australia at the moment with slow-trawling bibbed minows/crankbaits for snapper, particularly with downriggers, shouldn't be hard to google up a few forum posts/articals/vids, figure out what's working over there and give that a go over here i'm sure, I believe Milan from Big Angry Fish headed across and gave it a go, so that should appear on season 2 of the series. Get stuck in now and be ahead of the curve lol
actually i should say that the most valuable source of information for getting this stuff working has been from the australian bream market, bream are relatives of snapper and alot of the basic principles of getting bream to bite lures apply to our snapper. Also a golden rule from our own Craig Worthington with reference to snapper on flies "slow sinking=good, floating up=bad" that's a key for sure.