Mr Squidy

Ha, surely that approach is going to get you more sea gulls than bream

Hey Fernando, Wanda is a pretty tough beach to fish and can be a long time between bites. Peoples preference for flatties comes solely from the fact they are a much better eating fish than the other two, Salmon and Tailor are better fighter's if it is the sport you are after. As for your rig if I understand it correctly I suspect part of the reason for your getting flatties and not salmon/tailor is that between your running sinker and the weight of the metal lure your bait is ending up anchored to the bottom. Maybe try a surf popper rather than the metal lure as these float up and will help get the bait wafting about a little more. As noted above, changing to ganged hooks with full pilies will certainly help with the Tailor and Salmon catch rates too. The other thing to think of is where are you fishing on the beach, try to find the deepest gutter or hole you can locate and target the very top of the high tides. If you are ticking all those boxes then its only a matter of time until you start catching a few Salmon and Tailor. Cheers, Rich

Keep watching that spot at Mainbar, the silting up seems to have made them change the channel course, Everyone comes flying into that area up and down the main channel and with the tight dog leg they have now put in I'll put good money down that there will be a collision there at some point over the next summer or two, Quite possibly this Thursday at a guess... Well done issue on helping those clowns out, I'm sure it was a costly mistake for them to make. Cheers Rich

Yep thats a monster. Mines not quite as impressive (but not far off). I did however have to drag this beast up from 35m down off shore one day... Rich

Ha, I saw the first pic and thought "that flattie looks a little light on" then scrolled down to the second pic and realised the bream is just a horse. Top stuff!!! R

Nothing wrong with the old mullet, fight well for their size and great fun on light gear.

I got one at night a couple of years ago that came up my bearly trail and was feeding just behind the boat around 1am. When I got him in though he was in very poor condition with an old hook in him and a piece of fishing line wrapped around him which seemed to be cutting him and preventing him from swimming properly. As such I put the night time capture down to the fact the poor thing was just starving and no option but to try and find whatever food it could. I have heard of one or two others but seems to be very rare for them to feed after dark. Cheers R

Noice!! Worth the $ the x-raps.

Thanks for sharing that, they are great photos!! The eagle rays seem to come into the Hacking every year around this time. Pretty much every year I hook one or two of them fishing for Jew and man do they have motors on them. Had them up to the boat a few times but have also had this result on the lighter gear a number times as well. You always wonder what it was but when its this time of year and they take over 200m of line without slowing I'm usually pretty sure they are the culprit. Still leaves you feeling gutted mind you. Cheers, Rich

Top write up recurve, planning to check out Bellambi myself this winter and sure this will be very helpful. More than a few of those points apply to just about every ramp in Sydney. Amazing how foreign the idea of being considerate is to some people... Rich

Yeah, definitely a Trag. I reckon the easiest way to tell Trag from Jew for those who don't know is the scales. Jew have big scales like a fingernail, Trag have quite small scales, funny all the books never seem to mention that. Other give aways are the concave tail and orange mouth as mentioned (although jew still have a yellowish mouth so that on is easily mixed up). Good day fishing there!! Rich

Nice catch Johny, good to see some surface fish finally showing up in numbers in the hacking.Also, good work helping out the other guys with some baits. I've meet some great fisho's down there over the years, can be a really great social fishing spot. Cheers, Rich

Great write up mate, sounds like a fun tussle. Highly doubt it was a PJ, they are dopey lazy fish and dont have the engine to nearly spool you and stick out a 10min fight. Probably something much toothier... R

Great fish and great write up Dan, well done!! R

+1 For the price it is a stupidly good little outfit. I have three i bought as back up/travel outfits in the 2500 size spooled with 10-15lb braid and have caught everything from finesse fishing for squid, whiting, trout, etc right through to school size jew, kings and dollies. The gears have started to go in the oldest one but after a good four or five years or so of regular use (and abuse) with zero maintenance I can hardly complain. The other two are around two years old and as smooth as the day I got them and none of the outfits have any significant corrosion. Other option is push your budget to $200 and get a Stradic, never heard of anyone regretting that decision. R

Yeah, you're right mate. I always mean to drop my Jewie frames in and never get around to it. Need to pull my finger out and get in the habit of doing it. Great to see that they have expanded the programme. Cheers, Rich

Makes the blood boil doesn't it? In its first two trips in Australia it had already managed to kill 8 dolphins and 4 seals. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/03/australia-condemns-killing-of-dolphins-and-seals-by-factory-fishing-trawler I wrote in to the minister at the time and received a response a month or two later with a press release full of wonderful information about how it's now technically classed as a factory ship, not a super trawler and also how it can't possibly wipe out the entire Small Pelagic fishery Australia wide. My email back pointing out that I don't particularly care about its classification and that recreational fishers concerns relate to its ability to totally decimate fisheries local to its area of operation potentially ruining entire seasons for game fishing on areas of the East coast surprisingly wen't unanswered. R

Top stuff, love the pic of the Bonnie.

Nice work, a very underrated fish considering they really do give a good sport on light gear, they make great livies and are quite alright on the plate to boot. R

Just got another email saying this FAD has now been replaced. R

Thought i'd put up a bit of a report on my first trip to NZ a couple of weeks ago. The main purpose of the trip was a family holiday for my Girlfriends birthday and her parents and brother had flown over from Hong Kong to meet us there with the plan then being a 9 day road trip around the South Island. Although fishing wasn't the main purpose there was no way I wasn't going to wet a line so I booked myself a tourist license and packed a small spin rod to take along and managed to fit in three sessions during the trip. The first session was a 5hr charter from Queenstown on lake Wakatipu that I booked for all five of us. With the GF's parents not really up for the more extreme events Queenstown has to offer I had thought this would be a good day out for all. Still, I was a bit nervous before the trip that if everyone else hated it there may be gripes that we only went because it was something I enjoyed. I needn't have worried as Simon our charter guide proved to be excellent and very accommodating especially given four beginners and three with only moderate english. I'd be very happy to PM his details and more info to anyone looking for a good charter from Queenstown. I had originally expected that most of fishing would be trawling but in the end the vast majority of the time was spent casting soft plastics on reasonably light gear drifting the shoreline drop offs. At first I was concerned as to whether the others would be able to get the hang of this type of fishing but between the guide and I we fairly quickly had everyone getting the basics working. We fished a spot called halfway bay which had a small river emptying into the lake and in one corner of the bay we hit on a school of salmon and once we found where they were holding, it was on Between the five of us we managed 27 salmon, three short of the bag limit with all fish in the 35 to 40cm range. Best of all everyone got at least one fish on the plastics. With beautiful scenery, top fishing and a good guide this became one of the real highlights of the whole holiday. Suffice to say that for the next few days we absolutely feasted on Salmon. We had sashimi salmon, we had fried salmon, we had grilled salmon and we had baked salmon. This photo is just under half of the fillets. My second fishing session was out from Te Anau. We were planing to leave at 8am that morning for the drive out to Milford Sound so I decided to get up before sunrise to sneak in a quick two hours on my own fishing a small river called the Upukerora which apparently holds good numbers of trout and salmon at times and is only around 5min drive outside of town. I arrived at the river just as the first light was hitting the clouds and after a short drive along a dirt road off the highway I found a nice accessible run which looked to me a likely spot to start fishing. Having only chased trout a couple of times over the years I was a little uncertain as to what to try but from my reading had settled on a basic plan to spin gulps, casting up stream and hopping them back with the current and if this didn't yield results in the first hour or so I would change to Tassie Devils and head down for a quick spin at the river mouth. My research had indicated that there are yabbies living in that part of NZ so I decided to go with a 3" crabby which is one of my preferred all round gulps shapes these days for bread and butter fish. With a beautiful sunrise and the back drop of snow capped mountains I was somewhat distracted when on about my sixth cast the line came tight and I struck into a nice fish. This section of river was quite shallow and reasonably fast flowing and knowing trout to be more than a little fussy I was only using 4lb leader so I had to be quite patient with this fish. After a minute or two though she tired and came to the bank, my first ever Rainbow at 52cm, I was stoked There is no doubt that charters are a far more reliable way to ensure you catch fish on your travels but there is something so much more rewarding about catching your target fish purely from your own planning and skills. The fish was hooked quite deep so I took it for a taste and with five of us decided that a Sashimi entree would be the best option. I have to say that I now rate Rainbow trout right up there as one of the best sashimi I have tried. The final fishing session of the trip came when our helicopter flight at Franz Joseph got cancelled due to heavy rain and storms so with the others happy to stay dry I decide to take the car for a couple of hours and try casting some Tassie Devils and 3" minnows at a few locations along the shore of Lake Mapourika. I had a follow from a large brown trout on a gulp at my first location but couldn't entice a strike. At my second stop however I hooked a small Salmon of around 20cm on a pink Tassie Devil. This was the smallest fish of the trip but once again very satisfying coming solely from my own efforts. One small salmon wasn't going to go far between five so this fish was let swim. So, three trips saw fish caught on each one, we had numerous great meals of fresh fish and all the while was surrounded by stunning scenery. If only they would shut up about the Rugby I could almost say I liked the place

I think the whole site is waiting for you to pick him up on that yaka line you seem so productive with Yowie. Rich

Bull's dont usually get much over 3m or so. 4-5 is almost certainly a white or tiger. Definitely always there, i've lost my share of jew baits to them and been fully spooled twice, Thing is most of the time they are bronzie's, bulls etc and very, very rarely anywhere near that size inside the river itself due to the relatively shallow entrance and lack of bigger prey. . Also worth noting that peoples estimates of shark sizes can be comically off the mark... R

Where did you hear the reports from? 4-5m is quite some fish R

Just got an email today from the DPI confirming that this FAD is missing and will be replaced in the near future. R