Steve Cooper's Snapper Secrets.

Thirty years in the making!
Steve’s fished & kept records on snapper since he was 16. Here are the facts, opinions & myths about the most prized sport fish in southern Australian waters.

Talk and a feast of action.
Join Steve, Peter Smallwood, Mark Rushton & marine biologist Ross Winstanley as the fish the crimson tide from early spring till late march. This detail packed DVD ranges from unique underwater sequences of squid & octopus catching, DGSP applications, hints from the snapper pros to the story of the snapper food chain & the changing nature of the waters of Port Phillip Bay.

Then throw in a gallery of live action and digitally enhanced snapper sequences and you’re seeing the snapper story in a way never presented before.

This digitaly remastered, re-release of Steve's classic video features over 50 menu pages with more than
200 GPS marks from all over Australia.
follow this link to see the menu page.

Tens of thousands of snapper migrate into Port Phillip Bay and Western Port Bay annually. This mass migration is a wondrous event, filled with mystery and speculation. No-one is sure where snapper migrate to in the winter but, from wherever these wintering grounds are, vast crimson shoals of snapper heed their primoral instincts and retrace unseen oceanic trails back to Port Phillip and Western Port.

Current speculation is that the snapper navigate by 'chemical signatures' present in minute quantities in the ocean currents and as any old snapper hunter will tell you, speculation plays a large part in hunting 'big red'.

From late August onwards the snapper, fat and richly hued from grazing in unknown parts of the ocean, begin moving into Port Phillip Bay following what was, eons ago, the bed of the Yarra River.

The movement begins with a drip, that becomes a trickle and then a flood. With glands swollen and fit to burst, feeding and being feed upon, snapper schools work their way up this inland sea. Sometime in early summer the fish converge over spawning grounds, crimson tides of piscine passion releasing milt and roe that fuses into a cocktail to begin another life cycle.

At least that was the official line of Victorian Fisheries. The same researchers who once believed that snapper spawned in Port Phillip are not so sure anymore. Egg and larvae surveys have not turned up enough evidence to support the idea of significant bay spawning and now this is another mystery of these enigmatic fish.

Snapper are opportunistic and, while historical precedents can be followed, these are at best only rough, rule-of-thumb gauges. Snapper don't have calendars or tide charts, they travel at their own pace and do what they do for instinctive reasons. Like all fish snapper are sub-reptilian, so applying logic to them is incongruous.

Now and then snapper will do what the experts predict but arguments over nature's secrets are at best subjective and in the end all the note-taking and microchip technology can lead only to the drawing of studied inferences.

And this mystery, this crimson tide that has a will that we cannot comprehend is what attracts anglers to the snapper, southern Australia's most sought after sportfish.

The elusive snapper, Big Red, the pride of saltwater sport fisherman in Southern Australian waters.

60 minutes of great info and great fishing!
Digitally recorded & mastered image. Stereo.

In between the 18 & 20lb snapper, Steve lists some of the key techniques from his
best selling book also titled Snapper Secrets.

The DVD and the book - a deadly combination.

Snapper Secrets DVD $9.95

Special Combination offer!
Snapper Secrets DVD& Book $24.95
Link to Snapper Book.

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All material on this site is the copyright of Australian Bushcraft Library. 2012.