When it comes to soft baiting for snapper, the upper East Coast region on the North Island of New Zealand is the perfect location. There is a vast amount of shallow coastline and rocky islands that hold plenty of snapper. What more could you want, right? These magnificent fish take up residence here towards the end of summer and stay in place through until spring when the water starts to warm. Some snapper seem to spend their whole lives hugging this shallow, rocky coastline, and these fish can require a high level of stealth to catch.

There are a few clever tricks we use when soft baiting for snapper that are sure to increase your catch rates. Let’s get straight into the tips!

We favour water below 10 metres in depth, and sometimes fish in waters that are only 1-5 metres deep. It is harder to extract big fish from this shallow, rocky terrain, but this makes for some very exciting fishing! Two important factors to pay attention to when fishing shallow water for snapper are the time of day, and water disturbance. If you are fishing during the middle of the day in water less than 6 metres deep, you need water disturbance to have regular success. Alternatively, time your session to fish early morning or late afternoon when the sun is not penetrating the water. If you can combine both low light conditions and turbulent water, hold on tight – things can get exciting! Something else to look out for is 3-5 days of onshore wind and swell battering the coast, followed by a lull. This is the dream situation, and it doesn’t get any better!

In this shallow water we exclusively fish the Berkley Gulp! and Berkley Gulp! Alive! soft baits – they can’t be beaten! Our go-to soft baits are either the 6” Berkley Gulp! Grub or 6” Berkley Gulp! Alive! Grub. Colours that we have a lot of success on include Red Belly Shrimp, Orange Belly Shrimp, Pink Shine and New Penny. Another soft bait that we always have in our tackle bag and often use is the Berkley Gulp! Jerkshad in the 7” and 9” sizes. Lime Tiger Glow, New Penny and Pink Shine have been standout colours for us in the Berkley Gulp! Jerkshad range. Don’t be too concerned about casting a big bait either, as a 40 centimetre fish will quite happily attack a 7″ soft bait.

When casting and retrieving your Berkley soft bait, it pays to have your rod tip and braid pointing straight at the lure without any curves in the line. This is so you can detect any bites instantly, and can strike at any moment. When you do get a bite and it’s time to strike, make sure you strike hard. It’s important to do this when snapper fishing so that you firmly set the hook into their strong jaws, which can be hard to penetrate at times. Whilst working the bait, I prefer an aggressive action that keeps the bait moving fast. The reason we use a quicker, erratic retrieve is because it will help to attract the attention of bigger fish, and it also prevents pesky leather jackets from destroying our soft baits.

Moving around these shallow areas as quietly as possible dramatically increases your chances of success, and allows you to get up close to the rocky terrain without spooking fish. We don’t stay in the same spot for long, and if we don’t hook up after firing a few casts into the likely looking sections of water, we keep moving down the coast. When using Berkley Gulp! or Berkley Gulp! Alive! soft baits, you can be confident that if there are snapper in the area they will likely attack straight away. This is also the reason we like big, bright soft baits like the 6″ Berkley Gulp! Grub and the 6” Berkley Gulp! Alive! Grub in Orange Belly Shrimp and Red Belly Shrimp. Big fish spot them from a distance, and if they aren’t already moving in for the kill then the infamous Berkley Gulp! scent formula that’s infused into these soft baits will trigger them to bite.