livebaiting big snaps in the Bay of Islands part 1 - A hunt with me special episode

Live baiting for snaps can be a lot of fun but livebaiting for big snaps in the Bay of Islands is something that I love to do, even more so it gives me a chance to catchup with my mate Darren. With a great weather window in the BOI's and the guys from hunt with me asking for some great fishing footage there was only one thing to do - get hold of Darren and organise a catchup fish chasing big BOI reds on live bait.
Darren was keen so I headed north for the weekend, I have done this a couple of times with Darren so we had a good chance of getting some good footage for the show - this time around I haven't had a chance to catch up with the crew so it was going to be a normal RKF adventure with a few more angles thrown in for them to use. we headed off Sat morning at first light, it's a good time to get on the water to get the livies as they school in the entrances of the Harbour. We were on the water quick smart with the ramp only a couple of mins away and soon we were dropping our little sabiki rigs and pulling a few mac's for the LB tank.
The sounder was chocker but lots of little ones but they were better than nothing, I had a little jig on the end of my sabik rig - you just never know when a snapper will turn up. Dropping again mid water my line began to peel and flicking the bail wire the rod loaded up and I was hooked up to a pretty solid kingfish. Sometimes you can have a bit of luck but most times being light-ish trace it never ends well just like this time, it was a bit of fun though for a couple of mins. We shifted a couple of times to try for some bigger livies but with a good tank full of small-ish livies and just a couple better ones we headed of to one of Darren's spot x's he likes to live bait on.
Sitting in roughly 30mtrs of water I dropped the pic while Darren sorted the berley, we had caught some monster snaps previously from here to 25lb.
Grabbing our first livebaits we dropped away, it's such an awesome feeling dropping a livey in 30mtrs of water. Our first livies got rattled and being of small size the smaller snaps were having ago at them. I managed to hook up on my second livebait which was just a nice little pan size around 45cm but at least we were on the board. Darren hooked up next and saying he was happy at last hooking up to get that monkey off his back he dropped it (never say you've got that first fish until it's boated) 😅 it didn't look half bad either with a couple nice little nods.
It was a hard morning with us losing a few fish but also what felt like a lot of smaller fish going our baits - about 400mtrs away we had Gannets working in towards one of the islands and although very tempted we sat it out. My next hookup felt a lot better at first i thought it was going to be a solid snap but a few more seconds in the fight it had that telltale kingfish sign - the bummer thing it was just a little rat.
The morning turned out quite hard and with the birds still working after an hour of sitting there we had to give up on the anchor livebaiting.....
PART 2 - we pull anchor but keeping with the livebaiting we headed over to the workups to drift our lives through them - the afternoon was off the hook....

[@nzfishinglife]

What a awesome vid and great fish!

[@tangtungakkazo5992]

wow 😲 amazing 👍

[@enlightenment6278]

I like this show!

[@Reel-Kiwi-Fishing]

Glad to hear you are enjoying 👍
Tight lines

[@coolasfishing]

Awesome style of fishing. Always wanted to try liveys but can never catch them and also struggle to find spots with big snapper lol. Watching you get some nice snaps is satisfactory though. Tight lines Jason!

[@Reel-Kiwi-Fishing]

Cheers CF
Mac's can be hard to find but best way is to get a berley down in the shallows or sometimes on shallow mud where it meets the fringe of foul. It is a fun way to catch them.
Tight lines

[@23wiski]

Awesome bro- would love a drift / live bait tutorial for big kingies.
What size out board bro, 60hp?

[@Reel-Kiwi-Fishing]

Cheers M_w
Yep it's a 60 4stroke on the back of the mates FC500 - We have done a bit of livebaiting for kings more at anchor, on the jig but also we like to troll livies for them - not sure if you have seen this one? th-cam.com/video/XoKPbdT_tHI/w-d-xo.html
Also if you have been in the chasing kings playlist? th-cam.com/play/PLugHbdD0nCdFFHA-YXe-ZE9eMLKLmcYSc.html
Tight lines