Marky mark

No, just like you I ditched them and just have a snap swivel off the bomb and use a rubber band wrapped around the main line and connected to the snap. Went to try again today but the good old weather man got the forecast backwards, instead of a quiet morning and windy afternoon we had 20 knots from the south at 10.30am so we gave up and grovelled around Middle Harbour for a few blurters and salmon instead. Very murky water and bait hard to find.

Yep that looks very similar, I've just bought a fish shaped 8lb weight to replace the 4lb ball I had and its very heavy! When I was towing big horsy yakkas around at 2 knots the 4lb ball was hanging back a lot but the 8lb is overkill for sure, either I'll stump up for a 6lb fishy thing or hack some bits of the 8lb one I have now. I crimped my weight line to the swivel not the clip so I can put the clip in the rubber band wrapped around the main line but otherwise same same. I also use 4-5m of lay back behind the weight to let the bait swim a bit and to give it a bit of slack to let the fish get the bait down before it loads up. Heading back out tomorrow arvo for another quick session so I'll let you all know how I go.

Thanks BaitDropper, yes its from Andy at the downrigger shop, they are good but the big, long boom with 8lb weight is a bit of a pain to be honest. That's a good hint with the gars, bait gathering can be a pain (although the young fella jagged a 30cm bream on the 6lb yakka handline this trip and had a ball) and the idea of just clipping something on vs grovelling around trying to hold wriggly yakkas, needles and rubber bands is tempting! I use the rubber band wrapped around my braid to a big swivel/coastlock snap attached to 50cm or so of heavy mono leading to the bomb. I also tried the release clips but found they were very inconsistent whereas the rubber band busts the same every time. I run about 5m of my line out then attach the bomb to give a bit of setback then fish a pretty hard strike drag and hookup rate seems to be good so far on smallish yakkas especially. Being in 15-20m of water and often being solo or with my kids I find there isn't much margin for error and when they find the bottom is inevitably curtains so fishing no or light drag would scare me a bit but I stress I'm really just starting to get my head around this stuff. Its weirdly hypnotic though and I suspect this outside fishery may last a lot longer than the big kings that bomb into the harbour for summer/autumn then head back outside again so hopefully plenty of fine tuning to come!

Been meaning to try out more down-rigging for kings and finally got around to having a dedicated morning with no kids on board a week ago so loaded up on really big yakkas at Centurion wreck and headed out to try down-rigging along the cliffs. Put down a yakka to 10m deep just past North Head and about half way to Blue Fish Point the rod loaded up then immediately went slack, I wound in and found I had a yakka head and not much else left, reckon probably a big bonnie because it was a very clean cut. Reloaded and turned back towards North Head and made it most of the way back until another missed strike, this time three big slashes across the bait and nothing much else. Decided to head south instead and travelled about 4km south of South Head in about 15-20m where there were some good bait schools and interesting marks. So began the most frustrating bit of fishing I've done in quite some time. Load up bait, get massive strike and run, get dusted in the bottom and get a shredded leader back. Load up bait, get massive strike, 60lb leader breaks at knot. Rerig everything with 80lb, load up bait, massive strike, palm spool and knot lets go (got to love those little pig tail curly bits on the end of your leader), etc., etc. Six good hook ups, zero fish, much swearing, go home with tail between legs. I decided to have a long hard chat with myself about this and remembered the old bream on lure fishing days when I would try different leaders and different knots and intentionally test them to failure with a spring balance to see what's working and most importantly to calibrate yourself on just how hard you can pull when a big bream is heading for over and you've only got 6lb leader to stop him. A session in the back yard with a very large batten screw attached to the garden bed, live bait hooks, 50lb braid, 60lb leader and 80lb leader was very interesting. I would tie up a leader, swivel and one or two hook rigs, attach them to the fixed point and heave away setting drags and holding spools until something let go. Learnings in no particular order: the trusty blood knot that I have used for years for tying on hooks and swivels really doesn't work well on heavy leaders, gone to a palomar which is easier to tie in a rocking small boat, doesn't slip easily and has much better break strength the bimmini twist and double uni's I was using for braid to leader connection are good knots and almost never failed Heavy flurocarbon leader isn't much fun, getting far more reliable knots in good old monofilament when you do get your knots worked out man its hard to break 50lb braid/80lb line, I'm not a gym junkie and was genuinely amazed at how hard I had to pull to get it to fail, even the 60lb leader with good knots was much, much stronger than I had expected my trusty 8kg ugly stick rod was way under-gunned in this territory whilst I have two big threadline outfits (shimano thunnus 12000 bait runner with the ugly stick and daiwa 4500 catalina with a 5'6" jigging rod) I really prefer lever drag overheads when going for it with heavy tackle, easier to control, thumb the spool and set/adjust drag when under pressure the shimano reel had been my go to for downrigging as the baitrunner feature is handy for lowering baits on the downrigger without overruns etc but even though its quite large physically it was really not handling heavy loads and the stem was bending quite alarmingly when trying to bust off the heavy lines I can highly recommend this sort of back yard session to anyone trying out new gear or techniques, your neighbours may think you are a bit nuts but is totally worth it. Don't forget to attach your trusty vice grips to the hooks so they don't fly off into the grass when the knot fails (I found the first 8/0 live bait hook in the grass before I worked this one out, phew!). Armed with these learnings I bought a relatively cheap lever drag overhead (penn fathom II) and another 5'6" rod, loaded it up with 50lb braid, 60lb leader, chucked the catalina in with 80lb leader just in case and set off yesterday with 11 yo son on board and a very limited time window. Caught some yakkas at obelisk beach this time and they were way smaller, only about 6" or so and looked tasty. Then off to south of South Head, loaded up the downrigger and started idling along looking for bait schools and marking anything that looked interesting. Fairly soon had a hit and miss and once again the dreaded head of bait only, another big bonnie I guess. I resisted the temptation to put on a 2 hook rig as these little yakkas looked really good with just the rubber band through the eye socket. We went back and forth for 45 mins or so and I was starting to stress for time when there was a good strike and line started peeling off at strike drag. I grabbed it, cranked the drag up to about 50% of what had broken the gear off and the run stopped and I got some line back. When straight up and down the fish went for it again and I thumbed the spool just a bit to slow them up then won a little line, eased the drag back a touch and handed it off to the young fella to finish the job. Happily after a few more runs and a good fight for him we grabbed a 73cm king and promptly called stumps given the time pressure. Armed with all of this I can only utter the classic big Arnie line, "I'll be back"...

Just a quick one one the lure clip thingy, I'm not much of a fan. Search and practice tying a "Lefty's Loop" and use that instead, its a super quick, easy knot that gives you a nice loop to enhance the lure's movement without adding weight or another point of failure, I use it for all light tackle lure fishing. Flatties are wriggly, spiky buggers and I either forget a rag and end up thumb gripping them and getting my thumb worn off or use a rag and be happy.

Nice one, I use bread a fair bit too. I remove the crust, get a quarter of a slice, mould it firmly into dough around the eye of the hook but leave the bottom section soft, dunk it in the water quickly, squeeze the whole thing once then cast away, the softer section wafts around a bit and the "collar" holds it on the hook well. When burleying mush it up in a bucket with water to get it to completely break up then add some bread crumbs to firm it up a bit, make golf ball sized lumps then chuck them far and wide, you need to spend a long time working it in the bucket first to get it completely mushed up, that way it just fills the water with the scent but no chunks to distract from your bait!

No worries mate, straight through reduces the failure of the main line to leader knot which helps a bit on silly string especially. I think it really helped for grazing fish out on sand flats/weed beds with SP grubs, worms and stuff where your trying to keep lure movement as natural and free as possible. Vibes and hardbodies in and around structure don't seem to benefit as much as their action is so much more aggressive (and it gets very expensive very quickly...).

I think the nuttiest I ever got was one outfit with a very soft 7 ft rod running 3lb flurocarbon straight thru, no leader when chasing bream. I only ever put SP's on it though and just accepted there would be a few jigheads lost that day! I don't think a bit heavier (4lb braid, 6lb fluro leader makes much difference getting a reaction bite around structure and I wouldn't be shy of going to 8lb if its nice and soft. From memory the 4lb braid I was using actually broke around 10lb so worked well with 8lb leaders.

Arrrrrggggghhhhh, looks terrible!

Yammie CV 30, love them! Had one on a 14 foot savage Gannet and did exactly what your proposing, worked a treat. I bought a cheap generic Single Lever Power Engine Control and cables from one of the boating suppliers (Bias or Whitworth I think?) and made up a few bits from flat pieces of stainless steel to attach to the throttle and gear shift on the side of the motor, worked a treat. Steering I used a cheap generic steering box with cable kit which came with a mount to the steering tube. Nowadays a quick look at the sites and you'd just have some change from $1k but you have to be willing to finangle around a bit to get the control cables to work. You can also tap into the charge system and run a cable up to your battery (maybe don't use good old twin and earth 240v wire like I did!). Below are a couple of shots including a bad photo of the side of the motor with steering cable and control cables although there is an annoyingly large snapper in the way!! Those motors will be still be running when the sun crashes into the earth so its probably worth the investment. I stuck with manual tilt and pull start though, add ons for that are heavy and pricy. That little tinny got me out over the bar and onto some great fish at Port Macquarie for three years till I finally came to my senses and got something a bit bigger.

Thanks Pickles (I think 😉), Grotto was always a go to squid spot for me on a rising tide, now I'd better steer clear to avoid the conflict. Appreciate the update!

I'm always fond of the Lowrance stuff from a durability point of view, their cheapest 7 inch is the Lowrance Hook Reveal 7x Splitshot which you can get for around $580 if you shop around. They pretty much all have GPS built in as well these days, hard to split screen even on a 7 inch, certainly not a 5 but if your running a separate GPS the 7 will be good. I've got a 7 inch combo and am seriously considering another GPS only unit as the split screen thing is a bit of a pain.

It won't harm the converted surface and will prime and protect the surrounding steel that has had the galvanizing removed due to grinding, welding etc. You can use a oil based paint instead but it won't like sticking to any bare metal around the edges of the job and doesn't help as much with rust protection whereas the cold gal will stick to anything and protects the bare metal better. With old gal trailers I'd be looking at trying to get fish oil over the top of everything and into hollow beams etc as much as possible as well. I used porr 15 once on an old gal trailer and it seemed to work ok but was a bit messy. Lanolin is good to use but doesn't last nearly as long as good old fish oil. Just don't park the boat near the bedroom window for a few weeks after applying, the missus was not impressed when she left the windows open on a warm summer night!!

Sure looks like electrical interference, try and see if there's something big electronically near or wrapped up with the transponder cable, charge cable from the motor to battery or trolling motor supply?

Looking at the photo again I reckon you'd save the cross member ok, just cut off the bracket, clean up, convert and reweld a new bracket then cold gal like crazy on everything.