Hi, I'm Paul from Paul's Fishing Kites. Today we're off the mouth of the Waipu River, and
we're going to run a boat longline single-handed. So I'll run through the whole thing step-by-step
for you, and at the end of this you'll be an expert. The traces on a Paul's Fishing
Kites longline are stored on these neat and compact trace racks, and you'll see that there
are traces on both sides. We top and tail them so that that makes it easier to bait them and to run
the baited hooks directly from the trace rack. Another option if you choose to run the traces
directly from the trace rack, is one of our trace rack holders, and they'll fit in any rod holder,
and they make life a breeze. They also give you more storage room in the boat, because you can
store the trace rack on the gunnel. You'll notice that the hooks have an appendage,
and this prevents small fish from swallowing the hook and becoming gut-hooked, and gut hooking of
small fish is a major source of wastage in our fishery. You have to throw them back, and when
you throw them back after being gut hooked, they die. We also have floating beads on these traces,
these floating beads keep the line up off the bottom, and many of our customers swear
by them. Almost inevitably the biggest fish of the day is taken on a double float trace.
The Paul's Fishing Kites In-line clip is the most tangle-free longline clip in the market.
All of the line that you need for running a long line from a boat is stored on our
three to one ratio reel. One turn of the handle gives you three turns on the spool
drum. They're fitted with a ratchet so that if you decide that you want to lock the reel off,
just plop the ratchet in place. The first line that's on the reel is the float line,
so as you'll see later we just run the float directly from the reel. There's a shock cord
further down inside here, that's where we clip the grapples on. This really makes life easy, and it
just drops straight into any rod holder. Ideally have a vertically mounted rod holder, because that
makes retrieval and setting far easier. All of our long lines also come with grapnels, so you put
a grapnel on each end between the hook section, and they just keep some tension on the main line,
and prevents the fish from tangling the main line up. And the only other thing that you'll need,
will be a float. You can either make up your own float out of a big 20 litre container,
or by these cray floats which are highly visible, but if you're really got to be setting your line a
long way offshore. you can't go past one of these flags. You can see them from miles away. The first
thing that we have to do is bait the traces. So I've got this large chilly bin, so what I'm going
to do is just lay the traces out on the chilly bin lid, and run them directly from there. Today,
we've got these beautiful squid. They're quite large, if the fish are big, you could use squid
this size whole. But I think we'll cut them in half on the first set, and see how we get on. If
there's plenty of big fish around we might put a few whole ones on the next set. The maximum number
of hooks that you're allowed on a long line in New Zealand is 25. So we'll just take a few of these,
cut them up, one, two, that's a big one we'll cut three out of it... and 25. Always look after your
bait, so we'll put the rest of this bait back on ice for later. So that's it, now we're ready to
put the baits on. You'll notice on our traces that we use recurve hooks. We use these hooks because
we've done an extensive research project, and far and away this particular hook pattern came out way
above all the rest, and the number of fish that it catches. And we've put a wire appendage on the
back of the hook, and that's to prevent undersized fish from becoming gut-hooked. If you're using the
old kind of Jap hooks, just be aware that you're wasting a huge amount of undersized fish that get
gut hooked, you have to throw them back, and you're throwing them back dead, unnecessarily.
To bait any circle type hook, work out which way you want the bait to hang,
and put the hook through that way first at the top end then turn it and bring it back
through again. If it's a really soft bait or a very small bait, you can actually twist it
and put it through a third time, but I find that's ample. The bait hangs beautifully,
irresistible to any snapper. So you just carry on, we'll keep baiting the rest of the traces. Okay,
well that's it. That's the 25 hooks baited, so all we need to do now is just turn around,
and I think we'll just run it straight out the back here, back towards the Whangarei heads,
and see what we catch. And if you're single handed it's pretty important to have everything close
on hand. I've got a float here for one end, I'm going to put the flag on the other end,
I've got my two grapnels here ready to clip on when required, and I've got all my baited traces
just laid out neatly in front of me. So I'll just kick the motor over, start idling along.
I'll clip my float on to the end of the float line, throw it over the side
Now I'm just waiting until I see the black cord come off this line, and that's where
I'll clip on the first grapnel, and then we're ready to start putting the traces on.
So it must be getting close now, so I'll just slow down. It looks like the black
cord is just a little way down there, and that was it. So I just pop the ratchet on,
and now we're ready to start popping the traces, and the grapnel on. We put a safety trace on our
grapnels let's say that if the grapnel happens to snag, you just lose the grapnel. You don't
actually lose your mainline or anything else important. Put the ratchet back off.
You'll notice these little white stoppers on the line, and they act stops for the in-line long line
clip. You pull the clip over the line, the clip can run up and down between the stoppers, and the
stoppers are placed at two meter intervals, so the fish can pick up the bait, run with the bait, when
the clip hits the stopper, that sets the hook into the fish. So it's an active fishing longline. We
let two stops go between clipping on the traces, and that's so that even if you get a fish on each
end heading towards each other they can't actually tangle the two traces together. It's a tangle free
system. We've got about 5 to 10 knots of wind blowing today, so the lines just drifting out
at a nice easy pace. Just clip a trace on, let two stoppers go, another trace, and before you know,
they're all out there. Here's the last shock cord, so we're ready to clip on the last grapnel.
It's important to give the line a good stretch before you let it go. We'll tension it up after
we put the buoy on, but good tension on the line gives more shock. When the line clip hits that
stopper, it sets the hook faster and deeper. So that's the last grapnel on the bottom,
we'll just run the rest of the leader out. So we're just looking for the
last white cord. Because this is the most inshore line we're setting today,
we'll just use the little buoy. Just tension the line a bit.
So that's
it, just wait for the fish. Okay well there's the orange buoy, and they're very easy to find,
and we've left the darker buoy on the inside of it. So we just need to pop forward about
another 200 metres and then we should find our inside buoy. As I come up to it I'll
just knock the boat out or gear, lean over and pick it up. There it is, motor back in gear.
Okay, so we've picked up the buoy and I've driven about a hundred or 200 meters towards the shore,
just to stretch it out, then I can turn the motor off, and that'll allow us just
to drift lazily back over the line, and by the time I get closer to it,
I should be right over the grapnel. The tension's coming on now, so I'll put the motor out of gear.
And the long line now is perfectly downwind,
laid out behind us. The tension's starting to come off this as the wind catches us
So I just clip that line back on to the end of that line.
And now I can just take my time, and wind in at the speed that we're drifting, because we've
lined up so perfectly and this is actually one of the really good things about setting with the
wind. It's really easy to keep over your line as you're hauling it back in. So here comes the first
grapnel. Not a skerrick of bait left aye. So the baits were too big for the fish, is actually what
happened there. Well that's the last of the hooks, and now it's just a matter of taking
the grapnel off, and winding in the last buoy. That's it we're in/ That one's just about legal.
Another one coming here. Not big fish, the next one might be better one. Nice fish.
On the floating beads aye.
Another one, he's legal. Legal but not quite 30, and we like them 30 (size limits have
changed since this video, limit was 27cm). We've got something big down there, might not be a
snapper though. Nah it's a snapper, i's a nice one! That's a nice fish. Again, biggest fish,
double beads. Wow, these hooks really get in there. Okay, just move the reel over the side.
These flags are great I mean you can see that for miles away. Well that wasn't too bad at all, we
spent about an hour drifting around with the rods and we caught nothing. One haul of a 25 longline,
and we've got a beautiful feed of fish. We've sold hundreds of these longlines, and it's amazing how
many of our customers have reported great catches on the longlines, even on those days when the
fish are too shy or fickle to catch on rods and reels. Many of our customers are also amazed at
the performance of our patented Target Snapper Hooks. These are fitted to all of our traces,
the reports are of fantastic catches and almost zero gut hooking of undersized fish. This means
any undersized fish, or unwanted fish, can easily be released to grow and breed. They are the most
environmentally friendly fish hooks in the world. So if you're thinking of getting into longlining,
do yourself and the fishery a favour, get a PFK longline. They are simply the best.
www.fishingtacklesale.co.nz