Chum Line Tackle

Top Snapper Fishing Tips For This Season

My top Snapper catching tips for this snapper season are designed to help you catch a great fish this year.

Firstly, lets start with fishing tackle.

Snapper fishing is popular enough to warrant specific fishing rods and reels, as well as a particular line and hook setup. Not to mentioned the other options such as soft plastics which I will also look at.

Snapper Rods

Buying the right snapper fishing rod is important. Snapper are a fighting fish, and love to take line and run hard away from the boat. A Snapper rod should be longer than a normal boat rod and have a strong butt section for good lifting power (some snapper may be will over 10kg in weight) and a reasonably soft tip action to allow maximum pressure to be applied to the hook at all times.

My tip is to buy a fibreglass snapper rod, length of 7 foot (2.1m) and about 7-8 guides. There are variations on this, and if you can't find a 'Snapper rod, then a spinning rod designed for catching Barramundi in Northern Australia would be a close approximation.

Snapper Fishing Reels

Ahh, now we get to the important item, the best fishing reel for snapper!

There are 3 options. A regular spinning reel with anti reverse, a bait runner style spinning reel (dual drag settings) or an overhead reel.

Most of the experienced snapper fisherman I know use the bait runner style spinning reel. It has a number of advantages, those being :

• Spinning reels are easier to use for beginners than overhead reels
• They can retrieve line more quickly
• The dual drag feature allows the fish to run with your bait, before striking.

This last point is the most important. Snapper don't like to feel tension on a bait. If they take a bait, they don't want to have to 'pull' it. once a Snapper takes a fish, it will swim off, and the bait will move a little further into its mouth. Itis at this point you want to strike, by flicking the reel from its 'light drag' mode to regular drag. This process is designed to get a great hook set.

So my best tip for a snapper reel si to buy a baitrunner style reel, with the rod style mentioned above.

Line and Hooks

Snapper tackle should be reaosnably heavy. There is no real advantage either way for using braid or monofilament line. It comes down to personal preference.

Hook sizes are determined by location, bait, and fish size.

in Westernpost bay in Victoria for example, and in some South Australian waters, larger fish are possible so a hook size of 7/0 or even larger would be appropriate. For other bays, perhaps where there are more 'pinkies' or junior snapper, a hooks size of 5/0 might be best.

Line should be strong enough to withstand the fight, but enough to leave a bit of sport! My tip is to use Mono line at about 20lb strength.

Bait

There are lots of options for bait, but my top tip is to try a few. Most popular are whole Silver Whiting, whole and portion squid, whole pilchards, and soft plastics, and snapper snatchers.

In Victoria, fresh Silver Whiting are most popular, along with Pilchards.

For Soft Plastics, my tip is to try 5" shads in bright green and pink. In the Berkley range of soft plastics, this colour is know as Nuclear Chicken.

Fishing Areas and tactics

For bait fishing, cast out, leave no tension on your line, and wait on dusk/dawn for the best chance. Look for changes in bottom elevation, structure like rocks etc where fish might congregate. Snapper move throughout bays during the season, into shallower and deeper areas based on water temperature and moon phase. Find a local takle shop to get their best tips for the area!

For Soft Plastics, cast out with a medium weight plastic. Let it fall to the bottom, and twitch return back to the boat. Snapper tend to feed near the bottom, so keep your plastic low. When you get nearer the boat, twitching all the way up through the water to the boat could give good results.

Snapper snatchers are baited jigs that can be retrived, or left at the bottom. You can get great results with these!

In summary, those are some good tips to help you catch more Snapper. Buy the right Snapper fishing tackle, like rod, reel and bait and you have taken care of the basics. Then, its up to you to find the fish!

Whyalla Snapper Fishing 8-9kilo 14/4/09

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