Surfcasting Adventure

Surfcasting has always been a style of fishing I’ve enjoyed greatly, but for whatever reason I never strayed too far into the technical side of things. Maybe the simple zen of casting a line from the beach meant I subconsciously didn’t want to complicate matters. A bag of bait, a ledger rig, and a breakout sinker were about as deep as I went. Oh, I never went wading, either. 

My finest surfcasting catch was almost inconceivable. Parched of fishing action during one of the Covid lockdowns, I walked onto a beach handy to Gisborne. With the sun well up, I rigged some skippie morsels onto a tarakihi flasher rig and biffed it out on a topwater combo. Distance was far from fantastic, but I wasn’t too concerned – I was simply happy to be fishing. Sitting the rod in the spike, I sat down and soaked in the serenity of the beach. Not five minutes had passed before there were a few taps on the rod.

“Just a picker,” I figured as the line went listless again. The rod then suddenly sprang into life, bouncing around violently. The thumps and solid weight felt like a snapper planing through the water, but surely it was a shark or a string of giant kahawai. The luxury of heavy line usually employed to drag kingfish away from rocky reefs meant that whatever it was, it didn’t stand much of a chance. There was a red flash in the waves, and washing onto the beach came a 19lb snapper that had engulfed two baits, with both tiny circle hooks embedded side by side.