b'shallows of the Kaipara before so was eager to try something new. Graeme was enjoying the red-hot snapper action Launching on the concrete rampin the morning.at 7am and it was very still, with no wind and calm water, we headed down past the Tinopai settlement and could see terns working and kahawai busting up on the surface near a marker by a reef.We approached carefully to cast softbaits at the action to score a couple of kahawai for fresh baits, snapper on the Kaipara love these baits and it often proves a winner when fishing in the harbour off the boat or surfcasting.After putting a couple fish in the bin, we shot around the corner and went north to find a deeper hole and use the Minn Kota to hold our position.Deploying berley and fresh cut kahawai baits, it took about 15 minutes to get some interest and the smaller fish arrived first.I explained to Adrian that it usually took about 20 minutes for the better fish to arrive in numbers when suddenly he hooked a good fish that tore line from his reel.It gave him a good fight and soon had a nice 50cm+ fish at the boat.I was confident that it was the start of the run around the outgoing tide, but it proved a bit quiet over the next 2 hours as we only caught a few fat 35-40cm fish that we kept.It was after 10am and the tide was about to turn to come in, so we made the call to move south and found another deeper hole to investigate using the Lowrance 12 sounder.As soon as we came over the hole, there was a massive school of bait fish, so I"Softbaiting in the KaiparaKaipara, the snapper really put on top quickly deployed the Minn Kota againcondition over autumn into winter while we dropped baits and softbaitsmeans you need heavierthat I believe are the best time to into the sign. jig heads with the 5-knoteat them.The action was much better as weAt midday we made the call to stop soon caught snapper in the 40-50cmcurrent and I would tendfishing to have lunch in the inner range and several large 2kg+ kahawai.to favour 3/4oz or 1oz jigharbour to test out the Lowrances Adrian was commenting how wellother features and with a healthy conditioned the snapper wereheads when at anchor withbin of a dozen fat snapper, we had compared to fish on the east coastthe Minn Kota on spot lock. enough fish to take home for our after a recent trip he experienced. families (even though we could take With the abundance of food in the20 snapper in total). /FISHINGINGODZONE15'