BillH

I've seen some nice size schools running of the south coast for a couple of weeks now, and have taken some very nice fish. Bill

Cam, if you are looking at a new reel and intend to hit the beach more often, may I suggest you look at an Alvey around the 650 class. They are ideal reels to work the beaches and near on indestructable, of course this may mean looking at a new beach rod as well, but you should be able to pick up a wilson 12' surf rod for about 70 bucks. But IMHO the Alvey is the way to go off the beach, far easier to keep clean . BTW I concur with Dave paternoster rig off the beach, although I use a snapper lead '6 of 1, 1/2 dozen of the other' Bill

I fish off the beach at Culburra/Warrain which is just round the corner and it is clear. Haven't had the chance to check out Callala for a couple of months, but lastime I did the weed was still on the beach and pretty smelly. If I get the chance, I shall keep you posted, unless someone else has been out there recently. Bill

with some selective editing no doubt, just to reinforce your method, hehehe good luck. Bill

I thought I could spin a yarn, but mine are fiction, nothing compared to the real thing. Great stuff. Bill (ps us Bills must stick together)

Hey Tricks, I just finished rebuilding my old beach rod. It was my 1st attempt at rod building, there is a lot of information out there so take the time to read up as much as you can. One thing I can pass on, is it dosen't have to be expensive if you have access to basic tools. For my rod wrapper I just made a simple V notch affair (sorry I couldn't attach the file too big)Do a search on rod wrappers. For the rod dryer I used the rottisery off my BBQ or you can pick one up at Bunnings for about $20 2x 'D' size batteries as well as the other hardware needed. Experienced rod builders like Kingpig will offer you more advice. However I had fun with it and was pleased with the result although I feel I could have done a better job, anyway good luck with your project. Bill ps try this web site http://www.rodbuildingtutorials.com

Good report Pete, as usual. I see Syd is still wearing his obligitory blue and white striped shirt, hmmmm has he got a birthday coming up soon.....? Bill

says a lot about bamboo poles Bill

Well another weekend is upon us (pity about the days in between, work yuk). So I'm off to get me some beach worms this arvo for a bit of a session later this evening, all going well. Had a bit of a bash last Monday at Culburra, with 4 nice salmon in the morning and one in the evening. I took my camera just in case, and wouldn't you know it, the batteries were flat (bugger). As I was only catching and releasing I had nothing to show for my efforts (a pity). There were however, quite a few people walking the beach at about 8 am so it was good to put a bit of a show on for them, for those that were near me at least, as Ifought the fish through the shore break with it putting on the usual display leaving the water and head shaking gills flared, very impressive. By the time I had him on the beach there must have been about 5 or so people standing around (No I didn't get any applauses). For the un-initiated there I explained to them that it was not an Atlantic Salmon but an Australian Salmon. I guess to them a salmon is a salmon, they were pretty impressed when they saw me put it back in the water. Some people just don't get it. Bill

Hmmmmm, what's the cost of fuel these days? or charter boat.. what charter boat?

I find the best way is to take a small wad (no crust)of bread and pop it your mouth, get it nice and moist but not too wet, and just mold it onto your hook, Ive been doing it for years and it seems to work ok for me. Bill

Thanks John, just a bit of light fun. I hope a few other people enjoyed it, especially if you read trouthunter's encounter in the reports forum Bill

nice fish Al, and let me guess...none of your mates were an engineer or from transport. Man it must have been cold how were your hands? Just as well there was a medic close by huh. Bill

'Over The Wall' I was swimming around with the lads the other morning, there must have been about ten us, school was out so we broke away from the rest of the class to do some investigating, as young curious bream do, so we headed off to our favourite spot. This place is really cool, especially early in the morning, you know just before ‘the great light in the sky’ gets to bright. This one place where we always like to hide is near a place we call ‘the wall’ we call it this because we can’t get past it and it’s really high and smooth and every one knows that on the other side, the water is cool and sweet with heaps of food just sitting there waiting to be eaten. It has all these big poles coming from the sky right down into our home, on top of these poles is a roof that keeps the whole area shady and protects us from ‘the great light in the sky’. Anyway this particular day we could hear movement above us and tiny morsels of food came floating down towards us, my favourite food is prawns but this stuff smelled really nice, it was like nothing I’ve seen before little white bead things with a mixture of other yummy things with it, thousands of them just kept falling from above, so me and the lads would dart out and just help our selves. There were other lesser fish there as well, gar with their long beaks and dumb mullet, but because we are faster and smarter we got to eat most of it. Then a weird thing happened, once the beads stopped falling these other strange things started plopping down to us, it was a bit scary and they didn’t smell very nice, this lasted for a few minutes, but no one was really interested in them, we wanted those white things again. Then this other stuff, bigger, kind of white and brown this time, started floating down to us. Fins, who is one of the bigger kids told us to leave it, so we just watched as the dumb mullet fought each other over the funny floating stuff. Fins said he has tried it before and said that it was ok but a bit tasteless, we were happy just to watch the show, some fish are so stupid. Mullet even look dumb, they don’t even know that if you swim so high up in the water ‘the great light in the sky’ can cause skin damage, that’s what our teacher says anyway. Our school teacher told us that the food dropped down is from the ‘Anglers’ and that we should avoid these offerings at all costs, but all us kids know they are just saying that to scare us (ha what do they know). We have heard, that some really lucky fish can actually get to the other side of ‘the wall’ by these ‘Anglers’. When I asked my teacher (who we all believe is pretty smart) she said it was all just make believe and told us again not to go there. The next day a few of us went back to the same spot. Fins was with us, he is such a show off because he is so much bigger. We were sitting there wandering if we were going to get that white stuff again, because we could hear something on the roof. There were a few other species there as well, one was a squire (I hate them they think they are so much better than us) suddenly, plop……. a small piece of what smelled like mullet, I know some of the adults and bigger fish love it, but I still prefer prawns, we were all kind of hanging around wandering what to do when that upstart, the squire raced out and gulped the whole lot down (what a pig). Then whoooosh gone, straight up, whoa what happened there? We all kind of looked at each other for a while, Fins was the first to express our thoughts “The wall, he has gone over the wall” this got us all a little excited. Then we heard a “splaaa…sh” the squire suddenly fell back in and just took off. He obviously didn’t make it over ‘the wall’. We were discussing what we thought happened when again……plop.. another piece of mullet drops down, Fins pushes one of the smaller guys back and dives on the mullet tid bit, whoooosh gone, straight up. The rest of us hung around for a few minutes expecting Fins to come flying back down, but nothing. By this stage the excitement was too much, Fins must have made it over ‘the wall’ then …plop…one of the smaller guys had a turn, he too went straight up, followed by a two more, before anyone else had a turn we went over to the ‘wall’ to see if we could hear them on the other side. We all hung around really close to the wall straining to hear something from the other side. Maybe they’re just having too much fun or the wall is too thick and we just can’t hear them some thought. I, on the other hand suspect my teacher could be right and we shouldn’t hang around there anymore. Because we were smaller than the other guys we decided to head back to the safety of the school, but still ………… I’m still undecided if it is a good thing or a bad thing to be carried over ‘the wall’ if that in fact is the case. I might just give that place a miss for a while, wait until I’m a bit older. There are still a few more places I want to visit. I have heard tell of places near the beach where worms just litter the sea bed and are there just for the picking or where oysters just grow in rows and rows and rows and all you have to do is swim up to them and help yourself, that sounds like fun. At least you don’t have to worry about ‘Anglers’ in those places. Bill

Must have got the same magazine, hard to catch squid from the surf though Bill