stormy

Saw many over the years. Near the bommie, Shark Island, just off Jibbon Beach, Bate Bay. Seen lots of turtles in the Hacking. Had a bloke one year, tossing a stick for his two Labs, next to the baths in Gunamatta. Two dogs swam out and one disappeared in a swirl. Bull shark was the guess, but that is a spot that is packed with people in summer. Yes, sharks are definitely in the Port.

I worked the Police launch out of Port Hacking for 8 years and can affirm that there have been some huge Whites around the Port and Botany. I had one come up and 'mouth' the prop on the launch and it would have been easily 5m. She showed up every year and was named Lord Nelson, as she only had one eye and many scars on her body. Haven't seen her for a few years, but know for a fact that they are around and do come into the enclosed waterways.

Good catch boys. Did you see McGoo? He was Sth Coasting it as well. I did the Sth Coast on Monday morning, for 10 fish - 8 of them females full of roe and ready to burst.

Great session John. A nice bag of fish. I went yesterday morning for a couple of hours and bagged out, with most of the fish being females, very full of roe.

I tried a number of different tackle stores around Shinjuku/Tokyo, last year. It is very difficult with the language barrier as most do not speak or understand English. I was in high hopes of buying a couple of Shimano Stradic reels but found them to be more expensive than the identical items I could buy in Aus. Lures were slightly cheaper than here, but only slightly. We had an exchange rate of 97Y to the $, so close to parity. Now you can only buy 86Y to the dollar, so gear will be more expensive still. I found the best stores to be Joshyua and Tackleberry, but other fishing tackle stores are almost impossible to find. Nothing is that easy over there. If your friend is fluent in Japanese, then he has a head start on me.

Good work. I want to see a photo of the 47cm blackfish.

Yeah, they have entered the Port to spawn. Most of the males were spurting milt in their excitement at being hooked, played and landed.

Good work Yowie. It certainly was foggy this morning. I fished off the rocks near Darook this morning and caught 20 blackfish, keeping 8 for meals. They were all big fish.

I used to know a bloke who tied his own. Nice chap but he has gone quiet. 100 fish in a session - I know who I will be asking to fillet and carry my measly 98 fish home next time.

I saw beach netters doing the same thing at Shoal Bay and Fingal. They dragged the nets in with winches and caught many hundreds of tonnes of sea run mullet. I asked what the fish were used for and was told, pet food and fertiliser. I asked again at the Nelson Bay Co-Op where the fish were being unloaded and was told the same thing. A very efficient exercise, where the nets took pretty well the entire schools of mullet. There were dozens of huge cooler bins, about 8ftx3ftx5ft in size along the beach, which were chockers with mullet on ice. And they hammer us if there is a fish on board which may be a cm or two undersize or if we happen to cross over the invisible boundary of a marine no go area etc. I'm in favour of bag limits etc, so my comments above, on rec fishos, are merely observations.

The boys got a couple more canal trout the other day. They must enjoy the left overs from the penned salmon farms.

Matt. I have good success on the Zerek live shrimps and the squidgy pro shads and the zman shrimps in white colour. Tried a few hard bodies last time up there and got hammered by big flathead as I was trolling them behind the yak as I peddled to other locations. Lots of big blackfish around but I haven't targeted them specifically. Caught a couple on sp's, as a by-catch

Have a good trip. I was popping over for a coffee on Monday. Is the spare key still under the fake skull in the front garden?

HaHa. Definitely not a luderick in that photo.

Well, I have an opinion . I owned a Prowler 4.5m which was great, but then fished out of and bought a Hobie Outback for fishing. Wouldn't go back. It is stable, well designed, holds it's value, made for fishing. You can add $2k to the price you are looking at though, Paikea. I will try and get down to drop off some hooks to you soon......

Sure, but the top of the leases are only 30cm or so covered at high tide, so you aim to cast beside the racks, not on top of them. There are countless locations for good fish in the racks, over rubble beds, sand flats etc etc. Good luck when you go. Hope to see a report.

Well, the big girl tore through the landing net, but if you can get a hold of the fish with grips or pliers, then you can control them pretty well. When they do get loose in the bottom of the kayak, then they can fly forwards in the direction they are facing. I had a 50cm fish actually scoot up the leg of my board shorts and that wasn't fun, trying to keep it from doing headshakes. The gill spikes tore holes in my shorts, but luckily not in any other precious places. Overall though, it isn't much of a problem. I also wear MENS swimming tights to protect me from sun and spikes.

Just bought a new caravan, so decided to head off to Forster/Tuncurry for a couple of weeks with the Hobie on the roof racks and high hopes for a few fish. Well, I wasn't disappointed, catching between 3 and 10 flathead every single day. Went out at 6am each morning and was back by 10am on most days. Glorious weather although the wind did come up early most days, making for a hard peddle back to base. The Hobie is a really stable, made for fishing set up and was verymanageable amongst the oyster racks. It is a very quiet way of fishing and you can fish on shallow flats and oyster rubble, where there are a surprising numberof very big fish lurking. All the fish were caught in less than 1m of water. Gota few big flounder on soft plastics as well. One set of racks where I will concentrate on bream, next year, had huge fish crunching on oysters, but the wind made it difficult to cast accurately. Paddling through the racks, I could hear them from 30m away and then saw them laying on their sides on top of the oysters in only a couple of centimetres of water. I will be floating a bait downthere next time, as my casting skills are 8 good ones and two bad. The bad ones end up in lost lures and some of them cost upwards of $10 each. I hooked a 58cm flathead in a particularly narrow set of racks and she gave me some excitement before I managed to get it on board. Got spiked on the legs a few times but eventually managed to get her into the keeper net and then get the kayak off the top of the racks, where the wind had driven me. I mostly release bigger flathead like this, but kept her for the table this time. Anyway, we are booked in againnext year, same place same time.

Correct

No and no. There is currently no boat ramp at Bonnievale. It is only a proposal to construct one there, to my knowledge. The water is not deep.

The hub is the same as most hubs. The part you are trying to remove is essentially taking the place of a dust cap and is removed the same way. Just check around the rim where I have arrowed and see if the previous owner has put in a small self tapping screw to hold the bearing buddy onto the hub. My old trailer had one and I wondered why it wasn't coming off. Undo the screw if it is there and tap it off, otherwise just tap/pry it loose. Removing a bearing buddy or dust cap is probably the easiest part of the job and if you have no clue on how to do that, then see if someone can't help you. I was driving down the highway last month and a boat on a trailer was coming towards me when the wheel came off and bounced across my path. Very dangerous and I would hate to see that happening to you. Good luck with the job.

Shame on missing out, H. My mate went out the other day (near Christchurch) and got a couple of nice rainbows.

Where's the photo gone? The pic was for two persons catch wasn't it? Didn't think there were 20 fish in the photo. Maybe there was more?

You will be a happy camper. My mates wife just caught a nice rainbow on the week end.

Great session Geoff. I went out last Monday and had a good session, landing 7 nice blackfish and a solid pig.