How I chase snapper

I grew up in Melbourne believing that there was no better fish than snapper for a bread and butter fisho to catch. My father used to go on charters with the company fishing club using a broomstick Jarvis Walker rod and an Alvey snapper reel (not castable), big snapper leads and heavy mono line - pure bottom bashing bait fishing. He brought home a couple of 8lbers over the years.

BTW, I can't the affected spelling of schnapper.

Imagine my surprise and joy when on an early inshore paddle with my old double I trolled up a small legal snapper on a whole downrigged squid. Some time passed before I went to chase kingfish off Wedding Cake Is of Sydney's Eastern Suburbs on Australia Day last year. That day my FF/GPS wouldn't power up (saltwater and wiring don't mix) so I switched to drifting near the island and casting and drifting soft plastics. Started with 1/4oz jigs and the lastest fad at the time - 5" nuke chook gulp jerkshads. Lost a lot to the reef, especially the drifted ones but caught a 50cm TL snapper. I was hooked.

Decided to try this technique at Long Reef and to develop it to reduce the snagups. Advice was to go lighter and change to bullet-head jigs. Started catching small snapper and the odd trevally, with the drifted sp catching more than cast sps but still snagging up more. Eventually discovered the TT HW jigs, which have 1/8oz heads in 3/0, 5/0 and 7/0 hooks. Following reports from fishers in QLD and VIC, I decided to try 4" Berkley Power Minnows in pumpkinseed. This was immediately successful with both small snapper and good sized trevally. Even more successful casting rather than drifting and snagups became much less frequent.

The secret was to cast ahead of the drift, give the lightly weighted sp time to sink, then jig it back with a very relaxed lift and wind. Eventually I settled on 5/0 as the ideal hook size for the 4" sp and was catching a mix of small snapper and very good trevally (best 3kg) with the occasional rat king thrown in. A couple of nice snapper (around 50cm TL).

This was done on a cheapo 4-5kg composite travel rod, with a 4000 Symetre reel, 10lb fireline and 20lb fluoro leader. I'd upped the leader from 10lb because of a number of bust offs. Last summer I decided to upsize and rearrange my outfits. Now I use a 2500 Daiwa Theory on the composite rod with 10lb line and have respooled the Symetre with 20lb line and put it on a Nitro Viper (I love this rod), which I bought specifically beause it has the grunt to handle bigger fish but the finesse to cast the 4" power minnow on a 1/8oz jig. This outfit has become my number one snapper/king/trevally weapon. This year it has rewarded me with my two best snapper to date (best 52cm FL, about 2.8kg) and last summer it accounted for numerous undersized kings and saw me reefed by a few others.

I fish in reefy waters ranging from 10-25m deep. Most fishers will use heavier jigs for these depths but I'm quite pleased with my results so far. Of course, still hoping for a big knobby. I still experiment with other sps and other lures (chatterbaits, deep divers and madai jigs) but feel most confident with the power minnow on the TT jig