Fishing School
Last issue we covered nippers and their habitat. This month we’ll finish off with where to find nippers and how to use them as a super effective bait.
LIKE all things in fishing you won’t find nippers everywhere or all the time. You’ll need to spend some time looking for them. I believe they live in small colonies so once you start to find a few, concentrate in that area. I also find that in some estuaries or certain areas, you will pump black sand out in small patches; I have not found black sand to hold many nippers so I move on until I find areas of nice golden sand.
Nippers are usually associated with warmer weather, but you can collect them all year round and they are great for some of the larger winter runs of fish like big sand whiting or blackfish.
When you are successfully pumping nippers out, you need to store them somewhere while you are collecting. A small bucket is perfect. When picking them up, be careful! They are not called nippers for nothing. The best way to pick them up is behind the large nipper (if they have one) or just scoop them up into a flat palm. Don’t hold them for long. Kids love collecting nippers too so explain this to them or there will be some serious squealing!
No matter where you pump them you will find nippers that are too small for use as bait. These small ones represent the future of the colony and must be looked after. If you leave them in the water or sand, seagulls or fish will make a quick and easy meal of them. Collect them and place them into the hole you have pumped. They will quickly dig themselves back under the sand. Some of the larger ones will be female and this will be evident by a large cluster of bright orange eggs under their tail flap. Many anglers also choose to release these females too.
Regardless of any self imposed rules you place on yourself, you also need to be aware of any legal size or bags limits that apply to many marine creatures. To ensure that this bait source remains sustainable, only take what you need rather than what you can.
Once you have a bucket containing your legal limit of nippers (or less), you need to take care of them. I like to strain them out and get a bucket of clean saltwater to store them in. Like all underwater animals, nippers require oxygen. In a finite source, like a bucket, oxygen will run out quickly. If you intend on keeping your nippers for an extended period, say overnight to use the next day, you will need an aerator to pump bubbles (oxygen) into the water. There are also many bait containers that you can hang in the water to keep a fresh supply of water going through all the time. Either way works fine.
Now we come to using nippers as bait. Again, many people use them in different ways and this can certainly be the case when targeting specific species. However, I have had great results using this very versatile bait for a wide variety of species by using a basic running ball sinker rig, with a fairly long, fine trace (say 80cms of two to four kilo – depending on target species) and a long shank hook. The hook size will be dependent on the size of the average nippers you are using, but I find size 4 to 8 to cover most baits.
I rig the nipper by inserting the point of the hook into the underside of the top of the tail and sliding the hook the entire length of the tail, bringing the hook point out again through the middle of the breast plate. This is because this breast plate is one of the strongest parts of the nipper and more likely to keep it on the hook. I then use a single or double half hitch around the tail to stop it from sliding down the hook.
Another great way to rig a nipper, especially when fishing to fish that you can see, is to rig them unweighted. That means just the hook and nothing else. A gently drifting nipper is very hard for any fish to resist.
A great tip when pumping nipper flats covered in water is when you’ve finished collecting your bait, fish in your wake with some of the nippers you have collected. This works because your pumping action attracts a lot of attention and fish will be actively seeking out morsels where you have been working.
So why are nippers so popular? Well, here’s a list of species that you will commonly encounter when using nippers for bait: bream, flathead, whiting, blackfish, leatherjackets, trevally and flounder. On top of that you can also catch jewfish, tailor, squire, salmon or virtually any other fish that frequents an estuary. They really are worth the trouble so get out and give nippering a try.
