bump73

Agree totally with this. 5kg of blue groper is a hell of a lot harder to stop than 5kg of any other fish i've caught, including kingies etc Ben

Cheap reels are just that,cheap. The gear that broke would just be a crappy casting which is always going to a lot more brittle than a machined gear which you would find on the higher end reels, not to say that cast gears are all that bad but the cheaper reels are cheap because of the second rate parts that go into them.. Ben

Awesome report All the detail you went into it's like i was there myself Ben

That table is for east of the harbour bridge. Clarkes Park is well and truely west of the bridge so either way they don't recommend eating anything west of the bridge. As for not eating from west of the bridge i guess thats because everyone knows that fish see the bridge and know they aren't allowed to swim to the other side, I'm sure the bream and jewies in middle harbour wouldn't dream of swimming up river and the kingies i've caught at Gladesville have never been east of the harbour bridge either As for being cleaner, the water looks to have cleaned up but that doesn't get rid of all of the dioxins in the sediment in places like homebush bay which are the reason for the recommendations. Ben

Going by everything but the colour i'd say blue groper. I've just never seen one that red before, the males are usually more brownish. Ben

Compare the prices of shimano gear in Australia to overseas and then tell me whats fair. If i can get a bit back i don't really give a .... about what the boys from shimano think. Ben

Not worth trying to fix it the action will be crap. I did a similar thing to a jewel 702 and took it back to the shop i got it from. I intended to just order in a new top half, which you can do from shimano, but the guy in the shop put it through as a warranty job and gave me a new one.. Ben

I caught 2 of them around Gladesville last summer, same story thought the first one was just a clump of weed and was about to brush it off when i realized what it was.. Ben