One of the great things about fishing for snapper in Port Phillip Bay is the lack of structure on the bottom, which hooked fish can use to break you off. This combined with the slow tidal influences offers the ideal conditions for chasing reds on light gear. All you need are the right tools of the trade and a little bit more patience when playing out a fish. Targeting solid reds

on light gear isn't simply a matter of attaching a snapper rig to your whiting outfit. You do need some specific gear and also you'll need to alter your fishing technique slightly. While soft plastics have made inroads into snapper fishing in many areas, Port Phillip Bay probably isn't a place where plastics will reliably out fish traditional baits. Now there are possibly hoards of anglers who disagree with me, but since there has been a fair bit written of late on the subject of soft plastic fishing for reds, in this article I'm going to concentrate on bait fishing using light gear.

RODS & REELS

Although we are currently in an age of rapid innovation in the world of fishing tackle, the old adage still applies that 'you get what you pay for'. Fighting reds on light gear even in shallow water can be a protracted exercise, probably three times as long as on the mainstream snapper gear, so to begin with the reel you use really needs to be good quality and up to the

task. My favourite for this style of fishing is a Daiwa Advantage 2500 thread line reel. Reliable, silky smooth drag and each reel comes with a spare spool. Normally I'll load one with 3kg braid and the other with 6kg (as a back up) and the great thing is you can easily spool up a few hundred meters of line to give you that extra piece of mind (line capacity doesn't play a big role in fishing for reds, but at least you'll be prepared if a 10kg+ snapper happens to trip over one of your baits one day). Any good quality thread line reel in the 2500 to 4000 size range will do the job.Over head reels are OK, but the thread line allows unweighted or lightly weighted baits to be cast the longest distance. I suppose it's a personal thing and the best advice is to stick with what you are comfortable with.

When it comes to rods, something in the order of 6" to 7" composite graphite does the job. As always, look at quality, but if you had to spend the extra dollars on either the rod or the reel, I'd be leaning towards the later. There is a stack of reasonably cheap, good quality thread line (and over head) rods available that fit the bill. What you need to look for is a rod with plenty of flex to handle the lack of stretch afforded by braided lines and also one that still has a fair bit of low down grunt. The rods I use are the Daiwa Heartland-Z in the 4-8lbs range. Beautifully balanced, super sensitive, but best of all when a big red is charging off and the rod is loaded up to the max, it doesn't just flex over like a piece of spaghetti. These rods lock in a bent position that allows you still enough purchase on a big fish to give him a bit of stick without risking a bust off from a suddenly over stretched line.

Basically, the golden rule when it comes to fishing tackle is this; buy the best you can afford. To get fair dinkum about bait fishing for snapper you'll need four outfits. Fishing with only one or two rods is going to leave you under-done. I made the transition to light tackle for reds progressively. It started as a bit of fun when I used to use just the one light rod when snapper fishing to see what it would be like nailing a decent red on 3kg string. Progressively over a couple of seasons as the bigger reels got worn out, their seat along the stern of the boat was taken by new lighter outfits. So it's not something (unless you want to, of coarse) have to plunge financially into in one hit. Maybe start with a couple of light outfits mixed in with a couple of regular snapper outfits and take it from there. There is one thing to be mindful of though, light outfits and regular outfits are rigged up a bit differently to one another and use slightly different terminals.

LINE, TERMINALS AND LEADER MATERIAL

The first thing to consider is the type of line to use. So far I've spoken about braid exclusively - and with some reason. Mono filament when used on a conventional 6-10kg outfit is perfect for snapper fishing in just about all situations, and none more so than in Port Phillip. The big problem facing an angler using light gear for reds isn't playing out or even landing a fish;

it's setting the hooks. I'd go so far as saying that provided you don't lose your cool during a fight with a big red on light gear, the only time you're likely to blow it is in that first 5-10 seconds when a snapper smashes your bait and speeds off like an express train. One of the characteristics of mono is its ability to stretch. This is great when fighting a fish once he is solidly hooked because it acts like a bungee and gives you that extra margin of safety. The problem is though, because lighter mono, say 3kg, can't be really hammered at the time of contact by the angler for fear of breaking the line, what ends up happening is you are trying to set the hooks with very light drag and line that  is stretching by up to 30%. This all adds up to inadequate pressure at the business end of your gear and the hooks will generally fail to penetrate the mouth of a big red. If a snapper feels those hooks trying to work their way into his tissue he will spit the bait in an instant. Hook setting needs to be done at the right time in a decisive and aggressive manner. Any hesitation through line stretch or inadequate pressure at hook-up will mean 9 times out of 10 you'll have blown it before it begins. Braided line, even the light stuff, has close enough to zero stretch. One of the reasons braid is so popular is that it's much easier to set hooks on a fish than mono. A fish takes a bait, you crank the rod back and that torque is immediately transmitted down the line to the hooks and BAM! Hooks are in.

Next on the list is leader material and this is pretty straight forward. Light braid means a fairly light shock leader is needed. Something of around 2-3 meters in the 8-10kg mark is ideal. Go too heavy with the shock leader and you'll struggle casting baits on the lighter outfit. A standard running sinker is positioned above a 8-10kg rolling swivel then 60cm of 20kg leader

is run down to the hooks. Now, a fair bit has been written about the virtues of fluoro-carbon leader in relation to fishing for reds. The truth (to my mind anyway) is that it's pretty unnecessary. Use a good quality mono leader material and not many reds are going to bite you off. I'm not sure whether or not a snapper can see 20 or 30kg leader attached to a bait in 15 meters of water, but it doesn't seem to matter because it certainly doesn't put them off nailing baits.

Hook selection is where you are really going to make a difference in the number of solid hook-ups you get. Normally, fishing for reds in an area like Port Phillip with the standard 4500 reels with 10kg mono would see the angler using hooks between 5/0 and 8/0. These fish have big gobs, take big baits and therefore you need big hooks when you have the hardware on the other end to get those hooks set. With lighter gear, as we've already discussed, setting hooks is the salient issue for success. Not only will you need braided line to help setting hooks, but you'll also need to go down a couple of hook sizes to make sure that reduced hook setting power is optimized. The finer the gauge of the hook, the easier it will penetrate the tissue of a fish. Normally a couple of 3/0 or 4/0 in a suicide pattern (with one hook sliding or snelled to the line 20cm above the bottom hook) are the best choice in this situation. Suicide hooks have a great 'hook-up' success

rate with fish that either chew a bait up or scoff it down whole. A wide gape hook is an alternative to the suicide pattern and is effective because it has a thin gauge when relative to its size.

BAITS AND TECHNIQUES

There's no doubt that at times snapper, particularly the XL models, get turned on by big baits, but this doesn't mean you have to always use big baits for big reds. Often, you hear anglers in the know talk about bait presentation, and over the years there has been a heap of articles written on this subject with relation to snapper. With lighter gear it becomes difficult, if down right impractical to rig up a big bait and cast it out. In bait fishing, bait size dictates hook size, and in this case you're limited in what you can use. I've found that rather than try and lure a big snapper with an over sized bait on light gear, it's much easier and just as effective to use a smaller bait more suited to the hook size I'm using and making sure it's rigged and presented properly. So rather than use big whole squid as baits, I'll go for very small ones or instead of using a whole squid head, I'll slice them in half then bind them up with 'Ghost Cocoon' or 'Bait-Mate' to hold them together. Other good options for bait using light gear include small scad, silver whiting and especially strip baits or tentacles off squid, cuttlefish and octopus. The strip baits and tentacles are easy to rig using smaller hooks and resist the ubiquitous pickers found out on the snapper grounds. As I mentioned, the area of rigging has been covered extensively in many articles already, so I won't re-hash all that stuff here. One thing to be mindful of though when rigging any bait used on light gear, is making sure firstly that as much of the hook is exposed as possible and secondly that the hooks will easily release from the bait when it's taken by a fish. If the hooks fail to release easily at that moment of impact, they will hinder an effective hook-up. Best way to get hooks to release when needed is to 'lightly' pin them to the bait. Rig them the same way as usual; just don't bury them too deep in the bait.

When it comes to technique, it's pretty much the same as for fishing on heavier gear, only now you have less drag to work with, but that's OK. Most switched-on snapper fishermen in a waterway like Port Phillip Bay use a drag setting of between 1-2kg so as not to rip the hooks out of lightly hooked fish. With light gear you're operating in the lower end of this drag pressure spectrum (normally a third of the breaking strain of the line). Rods are left in the rod-holders with the drag set, the fish takes the bait and will often have hooked himself by the time the angler lifts the rod out of the holder. In this situation using light gear, because the fighting drag is less than on conventional snapper outfits, the hooks don't always set on their own and just striking back on the rod may not be enough to get the hooks set properly. The way around this requires a bit of finessing, but basically you just feather the spool slightly with your index and middle finger just as you strike back on the rod to set the hooks. The spool on the reel will resist spinning, the rod will crank over a little extra and more pressure will transfer to the hooks for that split second and they'll rip into place inside the fish's mouth. From then on it's a matter of being patient and enjoying the fight.

If you're anything like me, after you land a few decent reds on light gear you'll start to think about downsizing those old 10kg snapper outfits to something a bit more sporting. It's a bit like driving a car. Most vehicles will get you from A to B, but doing it in a light sports model is heapsmore fun.