Actual fishing technique isn’t complicated.  Work out where the fish are, and put something in front of them. 

How do we work out where the fish are?  This, again, isn’t tremendously complicated.  In all sorts of fishing, the fish we want will be where there’s the most food for the least relative effort.  Current, structure, food. 

I always drift fish with softbaits.  So a current of some sort will take me somewhere.  Eventually – or soon – it will take me to where there’s some structure, which will be aggregating food and providing cover for predatory fish such as snapper and kingfish.

Conversely, my main bait fishing method is straylining, where I position and anchor nearby structure, in current.  Then I get a major burley trail flowing.  I don’t drift to the customers, they come to me.  One of my present theories is that the fish I want to catch are not necessarily drawn to me by the burley, but they sure are drawn to the baitfish that accumulate in a heavy burley stream.

Current, I have found, means a lot in all sorts of ways.  It seems to me that predatory fish, and predator-scavengers like snapper, are most active and hungry when the tide is running the strongest.  That means that I favour the days with the most tidal variation.  It also means that half-tide is good, because that’s when the flow is strongest.  Look up and use the Rule of Twelfths for tide strength.  I have an idea that moon phase theories for fish catching may relate more to tide movement than any other factor.

Now, some things about structure:

1.     

               Waves   wrap around structure, and peak a little or a lot depending on whether the structure is deep or shallow.  I can pick reefs metres underwater from what waves are doing on the surface – often, from later checking the sounder on a bigger boat, reefs as small as ½ a metre.

2.       On NZ’s rocky coastlines, above-water structure often continues out to sea, and often for surprising distances.  Even without sonar, you can usually extrapolate shoreline features out to sea.

3.       “Fishing the wash” is not necessarily taking advantage of the white water providing predatory opportunity or bravery.  It may be more the uneven rockery below water  providing better predator stalking grounds and hence accumulating the predators we ourselves are after.

4.       Burley can accumulate, in both pieces and in scent, in structure a long way away from where it is dispensed.  I take advantage of the burley dispenser that is a fresh-laid craypot, and work out where the current may have taken its attractive smell.  The commercial cray boat can be your friend.

5.       Use different positioning with structure depending on what technique you’re using.  For drift fishing, you want to slide on by the side of structure, so as to get your bait or lure into a place where a predator will pounce out from shelter.  For straylining, you want to anchor in a place where your burley will fan out in the current from your concentrated point – your burley trail is a funnel that brings fish in to you.