snapper so easy

winter brings schools of snapper into cockburn and warnbro sound to feed and breed. with these large schools inshore, alot of boaties get out and get a feed until the closure is set in place to help protect these wonderful fish. i personally do not like targeting spawning fish i believe they should be left alone to do their business and produce millions more for the future. when i target pink snapper i do so outside of the spawning areas and do so very successfully.

snapper can be caught from 2m-200m of water and finding them can be easier then you think, sometimes the best way is to anchor in a known snapper area and burley, this is my preferred way to target pink snapper this allows me to fish light lines and have alot of fun catching these hard fighting beautiful fish.
a spot that has been regularly producing for me is on the edge of a reef system in 13m of water, the key to success is burley and lots of it! sometimes it may take an hour or so until the first pink snapper shows up but if in a good area and enough burley is used, normally you can have a good session.

Reece and i decided to head out on Sunday the 18/8/13 as the weather man was promising glass like conditions and he delivered, the water was magical we sounded around the edge of the reef and seen some fish on the sounder and knew pink snapper were here! the reef anchor was deployed and with no wind the boat just sat right on the spot, Reece had a small yellow tail down first and within seconds missed a solid bite, i dropped a large yellow tail down on two snelled 8/0 hooks and a small running ball sinker, Reece was fishing with snelled 5/0 hooks and a running bean sinker.
the second bait Reece dropped down was smashed again and he hooked and landed a nice 56cm pink snapper, all within 5 minutes of dropping the anchor.
we were in for a great morning session with the high tide at 730am,
i hadn't had a bite for about 10 minutes and thought  the yellow tail may have been to large a bait at about 15cm long so i wound up and cut it in half, i used the head of the yellow tail as pink snapper love eating the heads of fish. when the head of the yellow tail hit the bottom the little stradic screamed as a solid fish took off like a freight train under the boat and was heading north.
while fishing 20lb braid is great fun catching snapper and Reece and i have successfully landed fish to 91cm sometimes something a bit bigger comes along and we just cant stop them. this fish was no exception and was on a mission to get me to the edge of the reef to bust me off and he was successful, after re rigging and sending a whiting down i hooked up almost immediately again and landed a 75cm pink snapper, the next two baits were smashed and i got an 86cm pink snapper all the fish had been successfully released and the big fella needed some assistance from the release weight, remember it is a legal requirement to carry a release weight on board any vessel targeting demersal species to help ensure survival of any under size or unwanted fish.
with me now landing 3 nice pink snapper in a row Reece was starting to feel left out so he started to cube some mulies up and really get our burley trail flowing when his little sustain 5000 started screaming he hooked  a solid fish and just had to stand there as the fish was peeling line and had no intentions of stopping he was busted off on the reef as well and had us scratching our heads as to what was down there that seemed unstoppable.


we spent the next 4 hours catching and releasing over 13 big snapper between 55-86cm and several under size pinky's, it was defiantly one of the best shallow water snapper sessions i have ever had.

the wrecks in cockburn sound produce fish when they are spawning and you constantly get groups of boats, sometimes up to 100 boats fishing a large school of snapper for hours keeping their bag limits, this puts alot of stress on fish stocks and interrupts their breeding so next time you decide to head out chasing pink snapper maybe drive out through cockburn or warnbro sound find a nice lump on some shallow reef by yourself and start burleying you may be surprised with just how well you do.

catch ya next time
Corey