Ojay Samson

Hi all, I have been in the market for a new (used)boat to upgrade my 3.7m tinny for a few months now. I have found a boat and would like peoples opinions on the boat. Its a Formosa 4.5m centre console with a mercury 60hp bigfoot motor on the back and on a dunbier trailer with new brakes and axles. There is barely anything online about this boat in general in terms of reviews and such so I have no clue if its good, just what i am told about formosa's being nice from a couple of people. this particular hull is not the usual hull that is produced now with full transom pod, this seems to be the early model with just an engine well and i can only find 1 other boat online which fits this description and it is from 2004 and cost $15,990 from a dealer with a 4 stroke 60 hp yamaha with 482 hours. How much do you guys/gals think this boat im looking at is worth in general factoring everything in the package (it is a private sale)? things to note about boat: - 4.5m formosa CC 2003 - 60hp mercury bigfoot 2003 (60ELPTO) - 280 hours - Dunbier braked trailer 2003(brakes just been replaced & new axle/ new u bolts and winch and led trailer lights etc) - hydraulic steering - live bait tank - lowrance fish finder - under floor fuel tanks - all safety gear included - never had any repairs in hull or anything - bilge pump - new vhf radio - lowrance elite 5x/ compass etc - dual battery - wash down pump - speed/rmp/trim/hour gauge - the boat is located 5 hours away from me in dubbo, and im from sydney so im planning to head up soon to check it out and do the deal if it all checks out as the seller and I have agreed on a price. i would appreciate if people could give me some first hand opinions and such on the BMT package. i know in general there is a lot of hate about mercury motors but from what ive seen there must be a market for mercurys because theres a few of them being used. (i do not subscribe to the usual bandwagon brand bashing but i do not have any 1st hand experience either with mercury so anyone qualified to participate please do). these are the photos of the boat: with the last 2 to show what I am coming from. My current tinny (for sale if anyones interested, just pm me as I have an add)

Great report as always, love your work, Jim. That's an absolute sronker! Got any video of this fight?... Your vids usually gee me up to go for a fish lol On a side note, don't be shy if you ever need a deckie on one of your outings, I'm more than happy to lend my services haha Sent from my SM-G900I using Tapatalk

Low tide sucks when launching due to all the people who selfishly power load onto their trailers which has destroyed the foundation and cement blocks that make the ramping on the lower parts. You have to pay for parking there to with very active parking rangers. It's not a busy ramp so parking wasn't an issue the times I've launched from there. Just be sure to launch or retrieve when it's not at its lowest. I haven't launched there in a year so I could be completely wrong with my advice. Good luck. Sent from my SM-G900I using Tapatalk

Hey all, reporting back. Thanks for the tips all So the session was a bit of a fail. we threw an array of different soft plastics, hard bodys & metal vibes to no success. we started on the right hand side of the oil pipeline and rock hopped to the end of the solitary groyne, we then worked our way down the beach to the left stopping just short of the 2nd groyne from the left of the oil pipeline, not hopping to the end as there was already someone there working it. there was a lot of baitfish around swimming around and 1 large looking fish that brook the surface chasing said baitfish just under the oil pipes pylons... I threw everything i had at that area to no avail. Oh well, thats fishing. maybe next time i will try the groyne at the post office lol. on a side note, i hooked up to a loose rock of a cunjivore colony. i opened one up hoping to use it as bait as the lures were clearly not working, but when I did, it released an incredibly foul odour, is cunji in that area supposed to smell so horrible? (ive opened up cunji before at watsons bay wharf growing on the pylons for burley for blackfish, and from what i remember none of them emitted such a horrid stench).

Hey all, so im posting here in the hopes that some people out there might be able to point me in the right direction. im going for a fish with a mate this afternoon in the kurnell area around the groynes. can anyone shed some info as to which are the best places for success in that area as ive never fished there before and will be going there for a flick with lures and sp's. I have read a few reports already of that area but they are predominantly in regards to rock fishing further east of where we intend to fish. is it better to fish on the boat ramp end or the oil terminal end of the area? is it better to be mobile and work the beaches going up and down or would it be better walking on the groynes to the end and flick from there? also, are there recommended groynes to try, as there are a few of them and would only have a limited time to check out a select few. any advice would be greatly appreciated, feel free to post here or pm, Cheers, OJ

Nope nope nope

Good report as usual Jim, just out of curiosity what weight jig head do you use for your stick bait? I can never seen to get to the bottom with my jig had selections... They always seem to light and never reach bottom Sent from my SM-G900I using Tapatalk

Can you pm me which store you went to for these, I just came from the one in Auburn and asked the staff about them and they were all still normal price and in fact they are on back order as they are waiting for more to come in... Edit: were the 12oz snapper sinkers the only ones on sale or were all enviroweights on sale at your store? Sent from my SM-G900I using Tapatalk

I use both. I am right handed and when I am fishing with lures I hold the rod with right hand and reel in with left. Just much more control when fighting fish as previously mentioned, and eliminates an unesessry step when casting. With my bait outfits I have the handle on the right, just because I don't need to constantly be casting and retrieving so that extra step of swapping rod from my one hand to the other is no big deal. I have taught my gf this same way even though she to is right handed and if for nothing else, it makes you proficient in retrieving with either hand in case life throws you one of its little curve balls (using someone else's rod who is opposite to what you primarily know). That being said I play ice hockey as a left handed person and when using firearms I am left eye dominant... Go figure lol. Sent from my SM-G900I using Tapatalk

hey mate, i just tested my stradic 5000fj if thats the reel you're asking me about and no, the main part that screws into the body has no play at all from side to side but in and out it has the most miniscule minimal amount, i can actually feel the movement throughout the whole reel when i do that so its connected solidly and when i move it with an in and out motion the entire guts of the reel seem to be moving with it. i have not had a problem at all with it and is still buttery smooth so im guessing thats a normal tolerance for it?

Hey raiders, Its been a while since my last report so here goes: Dont have a tow car available so organised a day out with cuz on his day off due to him having one and because fishing, this would be the first time i'd take him out on my boat so he was pretty keen. He rocked up at mine at 430AM, and after trying to find a workaround for his missing tow ball safety pin by using wipper snipper cord as a substitute we headed off from Rhodes to Rose Bay ramp. was on the water just before 6AM. 5 minutes into the trip we see activity on the sounder and a few birds on the surface... started chasing them and turned out to be tailor working whitebait bait balls. We both throw out 5g metals and proceeded to have fun catching them, lost more than were able to be boated, keeping a few legals. The action died down so we started making our way to the sticks and made a few passes to see what was down there on the sounder. there were a few arches so swapped our lures for soft plastics. Whatever was down there was not itnerested in what we had to offer with only 1 good hit and 1/2 a SP at the end of the line, my predictions were more of the same tailors from previous so we moved on chasing birds working the surface closer to the clifton gardens side of the harbour. As we got on scene we could see the surface activity and they were bigger fish working bait, did the usual manuver of driving upstream of where we thought they would be and kill the engine to drift through the packs all the while throwing lures. we got a double hookup and line started peeling off both our rods. As we were fighting the 2 unidentified fish the Waterways patrol boat came up next to us as we were still fighting said fish, this went on for a couple more minutes till we were able to land them in the boat. they were 2 healthy Australian Salmon with my cousins fish edging out the win in terms of size (his first aussie salmon & first real fight with a fish, and was loving life). I wasn't sure why Waterways came as he remained silent and sat back to watch the show until we were done, then politely informed us that we had drifted into the main channel and if we could please move to the other side of the channel markers for our safety, so all that time he was next to us he was keeping us from being run over by ferries lol (thanks mate ). After that off he went about with his business. We repositioned again driving around the suspected baitball and birds floating on the surface and did another drift, same result happend, only this time only i got a hookup. boated another salmon and tried some more... the action died down as the fish seemed to go deep and litreally right in the middle of the channel so we moved on going further up the harbour, before we moved i decided to give trolling a go (i say trolling but really it was just throwing out a x-rap while we were going to prospect a new place). So i tied on a hard body bibbed lure onto my stradic 5000FJ with 20lb mainline and 30lb leader.... full speed ahead in my 6hp beast of an outboard turns out to be the optimal trolling speed for said lure of 4-6 knots. putting along and my cousin who was holding the rod says hes got something... never having caught anything using trolling and such a big lure (in my eyes) I was kind of doubtful he had a fish and possibly jsut ran over seaweed or a plastic bag... until i saw the fish jump out of the water my mind took a few seconds to comprehend what was happening as i was still in disbelief that trolling actually worked especially in such a short amount of time. i got the net and he landed his 2nd ever salmon. I was over the moon that my $20 xrap finally caught something after being tacklebox jewelry for so long. Once that was done, repeated the process as we still were not at the prospecting destination, it didn't take long for my cousin to shout there was another fish on... he reeled it in with no trouble at all ( i was staring at the tip of the rod most of the time to see if it was a fish or palstic bag, looking for some kicks or something..there was nothing, so this time i thought to myself ok hes got seaweed or a bag this time for sure)... low and behold it was a rat king @ 52cm itdid more fighting in the boat then it did outside of it mind you. There was absolutely no effort in getting that fish in and it was merely a skulldragging operation. congratulations all around as i was ecstatic my lure wasn't a once off and absolutely chuffed about it, and my cousin was happy he caught his first kingy. I threw my line out on my rod with a 3inch berkley powerbait while I was researching what the minimum legal length of a king was in NSW and getting the trebles out of the little fella when all of a sudden my rod with which i threw the 3inch minnow buckled and started screaming... i tended to the rod while throwing my cuz my phone with which i was just holding to look up sizes in an attempt to try film something. it was an absolute nightmare as my cousin couldn't get into my phone because it was covered in water and the screen didn't recognise the individual button presses to unlock the phone ... fart@rsed around with it some more trying to dry it in vain attemtps and incorrect typings of password and then finally the phone was usable... he started filming and got some footage (until he accidentally pressed the lock button on the phone 2 separate times killing the video twice, so more fluffing about trying to reopen the phone ensued). He managed to get some footage. Ended up landing a 60cm model on the new rod and was a happy chappy, the fish literally fell off the hook as soon as i had him in the net, inspected the hook and he managed to straighten it. In hindsight of the hook, I was very close to never see this fish. Took a measure of the fish and then learned the minimum length of 65cm, not going to take any kings home it seems but still very happy for the fight. the first king my cousin caught was still on the deck and had to swim him for a minute or so to revive him. he eventually went off without a hitch, and repeated the process with the 60cm model i just caught (in my haste I never managed to take an actual photo photo with it as i didn't want them to die (oh well theres video anyways). released both and threw out my line again ... only this time my reel was not feeling right. the Kingy managed to mangle my reel in the process as my crank handle when trying to initiate a turn would be the hardest thing ever and once moving it would make intermittent scrapping noises. i inspected it and saw that the crank handle that goes through the body to make it left or right handed reeling could now move about a little bit causing shaft play in the handle . Was not happy anymore after that, and upon inspection of my 2500FL it was doing the same to (it did it after a fight with a soapie jewie at the beginning of the year but it sort of went away or was tolerable enough to ignore.... the 3000 on the other hand was rightfully broken now and both are currently being sent back to shimano for warranty. The weather changed dramatically for the worse and i could see we were getting surrounded by storm clouds on either side of us, this is when I started getting worried as the temperature dropped dramatically and winds started picking up, when i told my cousin to take the rods down from their vertical positions and to lay then flat on the boat i think this is when he started getting really worried lol (open body of water with nothing around except us and graphite rods pointed upwards as perfect conductors of electricity haha, better lay them on the boat). anyway, i made a beeline for a random beach as it was the only safe place i could see us riding this storm out in. we beached the boat, which was a first for me as id never done a beaching before, we both jumped out of the boat and he tried to find a place to secure the boat while i jumped out and went to the back to fix the transducer in an upward position to not get crushed by the sand, ended up dragging the boat onto the sand and dug the anchor into the sand as there was nowhere to tie it and we hid on the side of the mountain for about 30 minutes. The rain got really bad, so much so i went to check on the boat and it had filled up like a bucket with tackle boxes floating inside the boat, flicked the switch for the bilge pump and ran back to cover. The rain subsided but the damage was done it seemed as my cuz's iphone 6 which was in his non waterproof bag started playing up and eventually did the red screen of death when we got back to rose bay in the car, terminal water damage... gutted. (downpour was no joke, never seen it rain so heavy before till then) my galaxy s5 on the other hand was a trooper (his old phone actually- he tried to go with something other than apple for once, but only lasted 2 months and sold it to me , i digress). Anyway, the rain dies down and then disappears, we decide to call it a day and punch it back to lyne park but not before we throw out our lures 1 more time as we were driving through a large amount of surface action and birds, i hook up and catch another salmon and then for real call it quits, just in time to as we were approaching the ramp the weather turned very bad very quickly. we tie off and i run for the car to get the boat out Asap, the rain and wind is really bad now and we had just enough time to winch the boat out and i took cover behind another 4wd that was hiding behind the only cover there was, a big ass tree, this tree wasn't big enough for both of us and the fact the wind was making everything go through it sideways it was really a futile attempt at hiding, the hail started coming in and on a few occasions it would hit the drivers side window so hard i thought the window was going to crack. My one regret is not filming what was happening outside, it was something you would see in news reports from other countries where tropical cyclones would bending trees like sticks and rain would be pouring so hard you couldn't see more than 10 meters in front of you type deal. We hid for a few minutes until the hail died down a little bit and i went outside to tie the boat down to get ready to travel while my cuz fixed all the gear to go in the car, hail was still happening so managed to get hit by it a few times which was interesting haha, got everything sorted and made our way home. probably one of the most adventurous fishing expeditions i have ever had and one of the most fun, my cousin and I had a great day as it was so 'adrenaline packed', in retrospect, this trip would definitely have not gone down so well if i had the girlfriend with me instead of my cuz. If you managed to read all that, thanks for reading and sorry for such a long post. tl;dr: caught fish, beached, 'tornado season', broken reels cliffnotes: watch video link here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWrEkbC7-G8

For those who might get stuck with this Dilemma in the future, Ended up getting the stradic fk 3000 with bonus sahara backup rod. Was convinced that way due to the guy helping me out that day having both those reels and even matched up to the same rod I was going to use and without hesitation told me to get the Fk because he just sold his ci4+ to his mate for the Fk due to bending issues particularly at the reel seat area when he had his ci4+ when big fish were on. Can't wait to use the new fk, only looked at it quickly and from what I can see it has that my fj doesn't is it even has a rubber gasket around the reel handle where it screws I to the body to minimise water intrusion through that area... Looks good so far, also jumped on some 10lb power pro for a price I couldn't say no to. Sent from my SM-G900I using Tapatalk

Hey all, so I'm not sure which way to lean to. I'm planning to get either of the 2 tomorrow and still not sure which one I want to go with. Went out on the harbour during tornado day at kurnell and landed myself a 60cm kingy (still need to write a report because that day was quite an adventure). Anyways the kingy managed to straighten my hook and mess up my reel in the process (daiwa generation black wicked weasel + shimano symetre 3000FL 10lb mainline). The reel now gets stuck when trying to start winding the handle and after further inspection there is a noticeable amount of shaft plan from side to side with the actual handle. Not happy with that really and will be dropping off the reel for warranty. I'm leaning to a stradic because I have a 5000fj and have not had a problem with it (it also caught a king that day albeit a rat at 52cm on the troll and it just skull dragged it to the boat effortlessly, fish did more fighting in the boat then in the water so very overkill) Can anyone with a stradic fk and in particular the 3000fk please feel free to put input as to how you're finding it. Also anyone else that has opinions with both the ci4+ and Fk and which one they prefer more. There is barely any reviews from real world use with the Fk and hence why I'm seeking feedback. Ps the reel will be matched with aforementioned daiwa gen black wicked weasel and most likely spooled with 10lb braid again. Something to note, the reason I want to get it tomorrow is because the big boat camp store are having a sale on the stradic fk with a sahara rod for 289, as opposed to the stradic ci4+ being in that same ballpark figures but without a rod.... Hence the dilemma Ps if anyone can get a better deal and willing to share with a fellow raider please feel free to pm me as the sale is till this Sunday

Awesome post as usual frag, Good video to. Sent from my SM-G900I using Tapatalk

That's a top effort, good job fellas.

yeah, but they have to be a minimum of 30 cm before u can legally use it for bait or a feed.

Tailor, Of the chopper variety.

I use 20lb sufix 832 advanced superline in neon lime on my stradic 5000FJ, it does the job well. the colour will fade a little bit but thats expected from most braids with colour. my smaller 3000 symetre is sporting fireline tournament exceed 10lb in flame green and my 2500 syemtre using the same but in 8lb in orange. i'd recommend the firelines as they just do the job and have been doing so for many many years. got a old sienna 2500FD that still has the original standard fireline in crystal 8lb since i got it in 2007, it caught me 2 nice bream the other night on bait being 35cm and 31cm.

Good stuff howsy, nice to see you're still getting into them

Damn, I feel ya bud. I was fishing the wharf there couple weeks back... It was a waste of time and effort that day for me to. At least I had the car to get there though. Your situation would definitely put me off fishing from there for good. Ah well, better luck next time.

I enjoyed reading this thread... Just saw it now. Shotgun next outing if either of you need a +1. I only got a tinny but am happy to alternate to if keen lol.

Bag limit is 10 fish total per person per day, doesn't matter what the species... Unless those species fall under the category of bait fish like yellow tail scad. They have a different bag limit, I think it used to be 50, now is been increased I think to a bit more.

I can vouch for the symetre 2500FL and the symetre 3000FL being good bang for buck reels. The 1000 I believe should be no different in quality and features, only size. And for the combo you are wanting, the 1000 size is the ideal size you want to pair for 1-3kg rods.

Sounds like a good day. Congrats on catching stuff, that's a nice battle hardened looking bream haha

From what I understand they both look the same except the Mac tuna has black spots/dots on the lower part of its body near the gills. The frigate mackerel has no such dots. Correct me if I'm wrong. Ojay