Hi, A beautiful Day yesterday so thinking it was a smart move last night, I took the tinny out for a spin / fished for a few hours. (5-8pm). Anchored up on the North side of the Whangaparoa Peninsula... berleyed up... threw out a few good baits straylining (squid and Pilly) and waited.... and waited... and waited.... then moved.... berleyed up again and waited.... one nibble on my bait rod and that was it. The worst evenings fishing I have ever experienced. It was low tide at about 4.30pm, I was fishing between 7-12 meters of water and the wind was blowing against the tide. (fished over the front of the boat aswell) My question.... what was I doing wrong, normally you would get at least baitfish around the berley trail.... Do the fish stop feeding when the wind starts blowing? Low tide a bad time to fish? Any comments for this confused novice fisho would be great... Thanks.

Tomsta, I think the conditions you mentioned was very similar to the conditions I experienced the previous night at the Browns Bay reef where the wind was blowing against the tide making conditions very lumpy and we were also fishing out the front of the boat. I found that the nibbles were very soft and tentative and it was difficult to detect the nibbles due to the lumpy conditions. My mate was complaining that I was not giving him a hand in fishing as I was busy trying for some squid. I put down the squid rod and tried snapper fishing for a short while. I discovered that if I strike early after the first couple of soft nibbles, I could get a hook up half the time. Also helps if smaller hooks are used together with smaller baits. After I showed the mate this technique, he managed to have 9 hookups of legal snaps but he kept 5.  Important to clear all rods and only hold one rod in hand, preferably a very light 4 kg jig rod where you can strike with only one hand.