Sometimes the difference between a quiet day and a steady one comes down to grams of jig weight and how quietly you move. On the Fishing NZ YouTube channel, a host walked through a shallow North Island harbour session spent sight-casting soft baits to snapper feeding right on the surface — a masterclass in scaling everything down.
"Today, we're soft baiting," he said. "What I'm going to do is share some of my little tips and tricks for finessing soft baits." A water temperature of 15 degrees had the fish switched on. "It's 15 degrees and they're pretty active," he said, with snapper visibly boiling behind the boat.
It all hinges on light gear. "I'm only using six-pound J braid here. It's a chartreuse, so highly visible," he said, running a four-inch paddle-tail on a featherweight, hollowed jig head. "It slides along the sand, and this paddle tail hardly has to get any action for it to move in the water." Above everything, he preached balance. "The real trick to finesseful soft bait fishing is to have your rigs balanced. Make sure your rod and reel, line, leader, lures and jig heads are all balanced. Too light or too heavy can make the difference between catching and not catching fish."
Placement matters as much as presentation. "When I'm casting to working fish, I try and cast past the school and slightly ahead of them, so when I retrieve my lure it comes right through their path," he said. "This also avoids spooking them when the lure hits the water."
A quiet hull made the close-range game possible. "The use of electric motors on boats is becoming commonplace, and they're a real asset when you're chasing fish in shallow water, because they're very quiet and you can really sneak up on the fish," he said, using the motor's anchor-lock to hold over fish while casting freely.
His mate Eden ran a snag-resistant rig for the grassy ground. "It's a five-inch jerk shad — a Bait Junkie jerk shad — and we've put two little barrel sinkers on it," the host said, "and a worm hook. A worm hook is good for weedless fishing." Across a harbour carpeted in seagrass, that setup eased through the weed while hovering just beneath the surface.
The anglers let the water tell them where to throw. Gulls and terns helped, but the surest tell was bigger. "Those big bell waves, they're unmistakable," the host said, adding that dull skies worked in their favour. "These conditions are absolutely perfect for this sort of fishing, because we've got a low flat cloud cover. It gives you good cover when you're moving around."
Snapper and trevally came through the session, including a fish the host called before it bit. "This is my trevally spot," he said. "I love it when you say to someone, 'I catch trevally here.' First thing we catch is a trevally." Eden boated the best snapper of the day off the shallows, and with the harbour glassy and deserted, the pair kept a couple for dinner — trevally headed for the sashimi board.