It didn’t take long for the bites to come, and I soon landed a fat 45cm snapper that looked in great condition. Graeme was also on a good fish but unfortunately had another bust off on his leader! While he re-tied his leader and rig using fresh line, I landed a few more snapper one after another in the 40-50cm range as they bit hard as soon as my bait hit the bottom. It was fast and furious fishing as we neared the slack tide and good cloud cover rolled in, always a better time to fish with overcast conditions. Graeme had just dropped down his fresh bait on the new rig, when I got a good run on the Daiwa Free Swimmer and as I struck to set the hook, the Lanza rod doubled over hard and the fish tore line from the reel! The fish was heavy and it didn’t really nod much to indicate it was a snapper, but the fast pace that it took line and then swam up current past the boat near the Recon suggested it was a kingfish. After a good fight of several minutes, I could just make out in the murky water the orange and white colours of a large snapper! Graeme helped net the big dog which only just fitted into the net, and we quickly measured it on the U-DEK measure which showed 76cm. It was fat and heavy, probably in the 7-8kg range and because the KLT hook had done the job by securing the fish in the corner of the mouth, it was good to release healthy. It was nice to see the big fish swim off, and we carried on catching snapper over the next hour and soon decided to pull the pin at 2pm with plenty of fish to take home. Another good factor out west is the limit is 10 snapper per angler, and we kept 14 fat 40cm-50cm fish that was more than enough for both our large families and released the 76cm fish. The KLT 7/0 hook was perfectly hooked in the corner of the mouth and meant the 76cm fish could be released unharmed. The big snapper measured 76cm on the U-DEK measure and was photographed then released. Feature 14 FISHING IN GODZONE MAGAZINE
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