About 30 years ago Sam Mossman wrote a seminal book on angling in New Zealand called Saltwater Sportfishing (ISBN #0 7900 0095 4). It was a ground breaking book that was years ahead of its time. Many of the things Sam discussed, and the techniques he suggested, are now common place whereas back in the day they were considered radical and innovative. He was a saltwater lure fishing pioneer.

 Sam Mossman has kindly allowed us to reproduce  chapter 9  of this book on AANZ . We will be serializing this chapter on our website. Here’s part two, enjoy!…

Lure fishing is generally an active rather than a passive form of fishing. You are casting and retrieving or working the lure most of the time, in contrast to sitting back and waiting for a fish to take your bait. Whether this is an advantage or disadvantage depends on if you go fishing for the fun of it or just to get away from your spouse
and kids and have a bit of a snooze! Action is probably the most important aspect of a lure. By action, I mean the way in which it moves through the water. A good lure generally moves erratically or enticingly through the water, to give the impression of easy prey or a creature in difficulty. This excites the predatory instict: which we discussed in Chapter 7. For example, the shad models of Mr Twister
lures look incredibly lifelike with their wagging tails, but they swim straight and look normal and healthy if not worked extensively with the rod. I have caught a few kahawai, barracouta, etc, on them, but not many. Lures like the Rapala CD 13, the Stingsilda, and the jensen pirk, flash around like crippled baitfish and are much more successful.
Colour is another aspect to consider. As a general impression, the extremely brightly coloured lures (fluorescent pinks and greens, etc.) do not seem to have proved very successful on New Zealand fish. That is not to say that you won t catch the occasional fish on them, but the more conservative colours, such as blue, black, green, or red, in combination with white or silver, have produced better results. Perhaps this is because we lack the extremely colourful fish life of the more tropical areas. In dirty water, darker colours are easier for the fish to see than light ones.