Tickle me pink!

Cockburn might be a protected water, but stay safe, wear a life jacket and dress for the conditions and you can safely catch quality fish like this.

by Andrew Matthews •

The sun was kissing the pink horizon and the temperature was slowly dropping as the first cast was made into the darkening sea. Our berley was creating an enticing fishy soup directly below the boat, and it wasn’t long before our offering attracted some interest. The unweighted mulie was viciously smashed, causing the resting rod to bend over.

There is nothing quiet about the sound of a screaming drag as string surges off the spool under extreme pressure. The well hooked fish ran hard, taking the bait in the direction of the nearby ledge, determined to keep its tasty snack. Resistance was futile, for after only a few moments of uncontrolled excitement its head was turned as pressure was applied with the rod, causing the fish to change direction. A few metres of line were quickly retrieved before the fish gave the tell-tale headshake of a good size snapper.

More line slowly came back, the tussle of headshakes and determined rushes back to the bottom subsided, and the rosy silver hues of a nice fish shone before us in the remaining light on the water’s surface. Finally netted and placed on the deck, the first beautiful pink snapper for the evening set the scene for what we hoped was going to be a productive session fishing Cockburn Sound.

Cockburn’s Snapper

With the Cockburn and Warnbro Sound Pink Snapper Closed Season kicking off on 1 October and ending on 31 January (inclusive), a lot of keen anglers will be planning a morning or evening session out on Cockburn Sound hoping to catch a pre-spawning pink snapper. The snapper fishing ban came about around ten years ago after concerned recreational angler’s lobbied government and fisheries managers. These thoughtful fishers, knowing the importance of these spawning aggregations, requested that the area be closed so the fish could go about their business in peace. Today, the benefits of this conservation-based management change, as well as community funded stock enhancement through Recfishwest’s ‘Snapper Guardians’ program, has helped safeguarded this important fishery for generations to come. Today, anglers can continue to help protect these important breeders by exercising some restraint by only taking one fish per person and moving on once you have one on ice. Catch and release isn’t really appropriate during breeding season, as it puts unnecessary stress on the fish who are trying to breed.

With that said, I though that readers would like to learn a few tips on how to land themselves a big Cockburn pink, with only a few weeks left of the season. There is an endless range of techniques for targeting pink snapper on bait or lures, only limited by your own personal choice and imagination. Let’s look at a few of these, with the hope of improving your success rate of taking home a fish for the table.

The Recfishwest Snapper Guardians project stocks tank reared juevenile snapper hatched from wild caught eggs, in the hope that we can sustain our Cockburn snapper fishery, if not make it bigger and better!
It is amazing that heavy industry and pink snapper have survived all of these years sharing the same piece of water.
It is amazing that heavy industry and pink snapper have survived all of these years sharing the same piece of water.
Recreational anglers and Recfishwest fought hard to get these spawning fish protected through a Cockburn snapper closed season. Remember it is our job to protect them, so limit your catch of pre-spawn fish and don’t strive to catch your limit. Let them breed!
When a snapper wants a soft plastic they will take it with gusto. That’s a 6” soft plastic down there!
To have such quality fishing right on the doorstep of a major city and a heavy industrial port is nothing short of amazing.
Be prepared. Rig rods and reels before getting out on the water so that they are ready to go.
Bay Rubber style jigs are very easy to fish and give great results.

Tips

To start with, I think berley would be one of the most important factors for success and no doubt everyone has their favourite concoction. For me, a block of chopped up mulies mixed with some chook pellets and any old cray heads, crabs, prawns or shellfish waste that you may have works extremely well. I tend to make up my berley in a bucket the night before so we don’t make too much mess and noise out on the boat. The importance of stealth is often lost during the excitement of catching fish, but my advice is while anchored up on your spot, keep the noise to a minimum, as I reckon this makes a lot of difference to success rates.

Rods and Reels

A good quality high modulus rod that is between 6-7ft long rated at around 4-8kg with a fast crisp action can be used successfully for both bait and lure fishing. Something light to handle with a softish tip will help enable you to work soft plastics better, but you should select something with a strong powerful butt section so you can apply enough pressure on a big pink when they push the turbo power button. A matching reel in the 2500-4000 size range that can hold at least 200m of PE 1-3 (8-15kg) with a silky smooth drag capable of applying 5-8kg of pressure will allow you to put the brakes on when needed.

Lines and Leaders

There are a lot of choices out there when it comes to braided lines. Over the years I have tried many, but have recently gone back to the Australian-made Platypus, as it is smooth and casts and knots well, but whatever you choose will be fine. Most brands of PE 1-3 braid comes on a 300m spools, so a bit of backing may be required on some reels to ensure that the spool is filled to the top.

I typically use fluorocarbon leader material tied with an Albright knot to my mainline, but there are various other monofilament leader materials out there that will do the job. Obviously, fluorocarbon has the added benefit of being harder for the fish to see, but admittedly that’s just my own personal choice and any good quality leader material will work. Length and strength varies depending on how and where I’m fishing, but leaders around 2-3m long, ranging from 10-20kg (20-40lb) is often the most appropriate. Modern fishing lines are extremely reliable, so don’t think you need to be fishing heavy gear to land a big pink.

Techniques

Fishing baits

One of the most reliable methods of catching snapper is with a semi floating whole mulie, presented on a set of three snelled 4/0-6/0 suicide hooks. This is rigged either with no weight, or a tiny no. 0 or no. 1 sliding ball sinker above the hooks to help the bait slowly work its way down to the depths. Cockburn Sound is only around 20m at its deepest, so you don’t necessarily need your bait right on the bottom, as this can just attract undesirable pickers like wrasse and gurnards. Pinkies will swim up a surprising distance to scoff a floater, so don’t think you always need to get that mulie right on the bottom to find fish.

Using 20-30kg mono leader is generally heavy enough for making snelled rigs, as the sneaky pinkies definitely prefer lighter leaders. I’ll generally cast a fair way from the boat, and once I think the bait has reached the bottom, I wind in a few metres, repeating this process every now and then, before recasting and doing it all over again. This technique also limits the amount of rigs you’ll lose to the reef or other structure.

Pinkie plastics

If you want a little more of a challenge, fishing with soft plastics works fantastically when targeting pink snapper. They really aren’t hard to use and once you’ve cast your bait out, why not flick around a plastic as a more active way to fish while you wait for your bait to be found?

There are many different shapes, sizes, colours and styles of soft plastics on the market these days, which can often be confusing for those starting out. Pinkie plastics, particularly in the 5-7” size are perfect, and jerkbaits, shads, minnows and grub style patterns work extremely well. Colours vary depending on conditions and invariably what’s working on the day, so I’ll always buy a few different colours and sizes.

The most important consideration when fishing soft plastics is matching the lure to the correct hook size and weight jighead. Hook size will depend on what style and size plastic you’re using and the weight will depend on what depth of water your fishing. For most 5-6” jerkbaits, minnows and grubs, a 4/0-5/0 hook with weights varying from 1/4oz for shallow through to 1/2oz for mid to deeper water is a good stating point. For 7” jerkbaits, minnows, grubs a 5/0-7/0 hook size with weights from 3/4oz to 1.5ozmay be required, again depending on the depth and currents. It should be noted that when fishing soft plastics, a light leader of 20-30lb is preferred, as it helps give the lure more action and allows you feel the lure working on the end of your line.

There are many different retrieves that seasoned plastic using anglers use to entice a strike. Try starting with the simple lift and drop technique by casting your plastic out as far as you can, letting it sink until your line goes slack when it hits the bottom. Then, with a jerk or twitch of the rod tip, lift the plastic either once or a few times, and then let it sink again.

It’s worth mixing it up a bit at times, so try working your plastic faster and higher in the water column if the deeper retrieve isn’t working. Soft plastics have a real life-like action when twitched on the retrieve or when you give the rod tip a little flick. Dropping the plastic to the bottom, twitching it up a few meters and then dropping the plastic back down to the bottom often triggers a strike.

Another useful technique is dropping the plastic to the bottom, twitching and pausing regularly. If you have a school of fish on the bottom, work your plastic up through them with a twitching retrieve and then drop it back down through them. The plastics flutter on the drop, making them irresistible to hungry snapper.

Jigging

Jigging for snapper has been a natural progression for adventurous anglers who target other species such as samsonfish on metals. There are several different styles and designs out there, but we will focus on a couple of jig types that are easy to use and well-suited to catching pink snapper in shallow water.

For some years, Japanese tackle manufactures have been designing jigs for red sea bream, a very close cousin of our pink snapper. Commonly referred to as Bay Rubbers, these metal lures have got lot of anglers excited about a whole new way to think about luring these fish. There are heaps of different brands and types out there, with some looking like a metal head baby octopus with assist hooks buried amongst the trailing latex legs.

I must admit that the first fish I ever caught on one these types of lures was when the rod was sitting in the rod-holder.  Just the boat rolling with the wind and swell was enough to get the lure working.

Experimenting suggests that these jigs seem to work best when they are dropped and then retrieved quickly the instant they hit bottom. This is because most strikes seem to occur after the fish watches the lure falling to the bottom. If the jig doesn’t immediately start moving back upwards, the fish don’t appear to be as interested. Instead of jerking or rapidly bouncing the rod tip as you would with a knife style jig, you should keep the rod perfectly still at the top of the lift or retrieve. This is because a bay rubber entices bites with the wobbling motion of the head and the fluttering of the trailing skirt and streamer legs.

Butterfly jigs are also becoming very popular for catching snapper, but require a different sort of retrieve to the Bay Rubber. This style of jigging is referred to as ‘slow jerk’ or pitching, where you basically teabag your jig in a slow and steady manner, letting the lure flutter as it falls before lifting the rod tip again. Both the Bay Rubbers and Butterfly jigs come in a range of weights depending on the depth of water you intend to fish. I find jigs ranging from 40-80g are very useful for snapper fishing, and I keep a couple of each size in the tackle box when the fish are on the chew.

Importance of Structure

My preference when seeking good snapper ground in the sound is areas with some sort of structure such as broken ground, shallow reef ledges and drop offs. Look for sudden changes on the bottom, the changes don’t have to be much at all. Otherwise try some hard flat bottom areas with scattered bits of rubble, which also produce a large number of fish if you prospect around.

Get after ‘em!

Hopefully there is enough information here to help you catch a Cockburn Sound snapper on a lure. Sure the standard paternoster rig with a chunk of octopus dropped to the bottom will catch snapper, but the soft plastics and demersal jigging craze is a lot of fun, so why not give it a shot.             Just remember that Cockburn Sound is one of the best trophy pink snapper fisheries in Australia and an important breeding area that needs to be looked after. Environmental pressures from industry and the constant dredging of the seagrass meadows is having an indirect impact of the snapper population, but if we all treat it with respect, it will keep rewarding us with spectacular fishing for years to come.