Rubbery reds by John Grant

It seems every fisho has a mate intent on taking you on hellish 45-minute boat trips, face full of salt spray, nose running and a white-knuckled, full-deathhold grip on the boat in a bid to catch mythical giant snapper from 'the' spot.

On those Winter trips the wind-chill factor is usually around 4° and my nose and earlobes are as numb as a bag of frozen peas.

And then most of those mythical snapper are mere 'pannies' of squire mixed in with red spiky horrors and large mouthed ooglies. Or at least the few times I've been wide they have. Half of the time you can spin up bigger bream in the local creek than out where land is just a faint sliver on the distant horizon.

Luckily you don't have to fish such ludicrous depths with heavy leads and smelly baits to catch a stud red. Quality snapper love shallow water and are taken frequently in depths between 10m and 20m on user-friendly threadline tackle and correctly weighted plastics...