Yesterday was exceptional, as the snapper were there virtually immediately. The water was quite murky, which might have had an effect.

One downside to be aware of is the bloody gulls, which will swoop in and take every morsel you chuck. I've found that false casting keeps them at a more respectful distance. 

Another downside is that your hands get pretty gross from shredding pillies and chucking them in. I use an Alvey belt bucket to hold the pillies, and if I start the day with them frozen, I cut them into thin disks. This means you get a piece of bait that has great vis, but doesn't have a lot of bulk, so won't fill the fish up. However as the day goes on and the pillies get soft, it's easier to just shred them with your hands. This means the pillie blood, oil and guts gets everywhere. I have a rag on my belt too, but this gets pretty foul pretty quick.

So now I'm looking at other options. Am going to give this a try next time: cat food, delivered straight from the tin with a flicking stick of some kind. Maybe just an old dessert spoon. This catfood is sardines in gelatin with a bit of preservative, and is $1.09 a can at the supermarket. Will have to wait a long week till I get to try it. Any thoughts, Craig, Matto or anyone else?

If they have a chance of getting a feed they will hang around no matter what you do, so best to avoid them from getting a feed from the start.  Luckily you only need a few small bits of pilly per spot so can afford to wait them out.  If they don't see you throw in a bit they will not hang around for long.

Also another reason gulls can be a pain is that I have often seen large snapper take of in terror because of a seagull flying overhead.  Left over instinct from when it was small enough to be eaten? 

For messy hands I just wash them after each time & before picking up the rod.  Not the best since there are places where there is no small rock pool close by but ok 90% of the time.

Oh yeah forgot - frozen means it will float and the gulls will get it.  So to avoid I normally throw 3-4 pillies into a rock pool to thaw out as soon as I get to a possie and while I gear up. 

Bass-ist, great idea about using our little Luna for live bait- regrettably, she's afraid of the water! Incidentally, I have tied up some little nymphs out of her (shed) fur, and the piper like them. Unfortunately, the piper just race up, take one snap and expel. I'm not fast enough to strike them. Might try tying up some little willow-grub type flies with rubber etc so there is a bit more chew-ability.

Island Paddler, that's really useful stuff, thanks. I didn't consider the fact that the fish may be cooked. Also a good trick about the gulls. I've actually been mulling it over more, and been wondering if bits of crab floating down would have a similar effect to pillies. I'd say that 9/10 of the snapper I get from the bricks are full of either crab and/or kina.  It would be easy enough to catch a few crabs and try this out.

EditB, that sounds like a good delivery method, provided the pillie is of the right consistency for the pea shooter. This method also has appeal because it adds to the primal nature of the hunt, to go with my loincloth and face-paint. 

Simon/Noschist, sanity and flyfishing have never been easy bedfellows!

So long as the clothing isn't bright and totally outlandish and is fairly neutral then it should be OK.  Main thing is to hide any movement at all, e.g. if in the snappers sight then don't wave arms saying "look at that!" etc and instead of moving sideways - slowly move directly backwards (so the "rock" seems to shrink in size & doesn't register as movement).

Of course if you turn up in pink tights then all bets are off and I doubt it will only be the snapper taking off into the distance.

A couple of camo options:

As always some great info on stalking fish and snapper habits here that I reckon is applicable accross the landbased board, always thinking you SWFers!

Yeah I've been thinking exactly the same thing, Joel. You could follow the exact same principles, only with filthy, stinking bait! I wish I'd known about this type of fishing when I was still a baito. Sight fishing is a very different type of excitement to watching a rod-tip go tap-tap-tap and then that beautiful drawing of line as the fish moves off. Both great ways to fish, but I'm loving the sight fishing at the moment.

In fact, I think Craig got into this type of fishing because an old geezer told him about noodling up big snapper with kinas, then get them on a handline!

Another very interesting and useful point that Craig/et.al have raised here is that kings behave very differently when they know you're there. Perhaps this is one of the reasons behind those infuriating kings that come in and just stooge around ignoring everything? Maybe a stealth approach would bring in more bites?