Advanced trolling for snapper by Mark Bargenquast

The idea for trolling for snapper all started about 10 years ago after a surprise capture made me think outside the box!

We were fishing off the top of Fraser Island, we had been catching some big 7-10kg golden trevally on an offshore rubble patch, depth was 22m (70ft) with yakka schools rising up 10m off the bottom, big arches over the top were obviously goldens, or so I thought...

We had been drifting plastics in the bait school, averaging a nice capture every 5 minute drift. I still had a rod rigged with a deep diver from a barra charter the day before, so I thought 'why not?' and had a client drop the lure out back as I idled back over the bait school. I was not that surprised when he yelled he had a fish on, another goldy I thought. However, I was totally surprised when a 7kg snapper was brought boat-side, the gold 20+ Killalure River rat firmly in its jaws!

This got me thinking, why would a snapper take a lure running at 20ft while trolling in 70ft of water? The answer was simple, the fish were above the bait school hunting down stray yakkas just like a trevally or mackerel.

After this episode I really started to think outside the square and applying basic deep barra trolling techniques. We then started to consistently catch good numbers of snapper on the troll, and it was certainly no fluke.

During the next few years lure development surged ahead: Halco released the Crazy Deep 125 and 150 Scorpion, a lure that could reach 10m (30ft) on correct tackle; the Poltergeist also made the same depth; Sebile came onto the market with some extra deep divers, the Koolie Minnow in 135 and 190mm; and Classic Barra released the Dr Evil, based on a freshwater cod style lure with a 6m depth label (we hit bottom in 42ft with the correct troll). Our catches went through the roof, often out-fishing the plastic and bait guys. I knew was onto something here!

I invited a good mate John Haenke who makes Fishing Downunder and we filmed a segment for The Fishing DVD. The tides were not perfect but we managed 5-6 fish to 7kg during the middle of the day, this started to get people interested!