Smitty

What a GREAT trip that was……and sharing it with a top crew made it even better! They say “time flies when ya havin’ fun” and that week absolutely FLEW past!!! I can’t believe I’m back at work already ggrrrrrr. Glenbawn really turned it on for us again this year, with plenty of hard hitting, tough fighting Aussie Bass coming over the sides of our boats. We all got fish in the 40s and I recon the average size was a bit up on last year. I was also pretty pleased with a PB Silver of 47cm . It was fantastic to be able to help put Steve (Reggie the rabbit) onto his first Bass – that first hit comes as a bit of a shock hey mate? Steve even managed to find his first Yellowbelly, a big fat 52cm(the best of the trip)…..well done mate , was a pleasure to have you onboard. A huge thanks to all the crew…you all helped make this trip the ripper that it was. Here are a couple more pics from the trip. Cheers, Smitty…

G'day Lukeyboy83, yes mate these little buggers pull pretty hard and they never give up.....they're great fun on light tackle!! Most of the time they are targeted using weed for bait but from time to time they fall to squirt worms, nippers, bread, cunji, prawns and even soft plastics and blades. Cheers, Smitty...

Hi Raiders, I’d planned to have a fish with Rickster on Sunday morning, unfortunately he wasn’t feeling 100% and opted for a rest day. Thanks for the fantastic weed Rick, the fish loved it and hopefully we will have a fish together some time soon. I headed off bright and early Sunday morning to see if I could find some Blackfish in the upper Georges as was originally planned. First stop was Chipping Norton lake, it didn’t take long for the fish to find my bait and over the next hour or so I caught about half a dozen small fish, two of them may have just been legal (all went back).Then the rain came down!!! I moved a few kms down river to meet up with a mate and try a couple of other well known spots. At one of the spots, as the tide started to run out masses of weed drifted out of mouth of a creek……it was amazing to watch blackfish (heaps of them) slurping weed off the surface in less than a metre of water. It was a good day apart from the pretty constant rain and we both ended up with a few nice fish for the table including three fish at 38cm. I didn’t get many pics because of the rain but I took a couple of pics of a big fat blackie that had been stuffing himself on all the floating weed. Cheers, Smitty…

Well done guys, some very nice fish there . Good to see the old Cooks is firin well.....what a nice tranquil place to have a fish. Cheers, Smitty

Please add me to the attendees list for whats bound to be a top day. I wont be bringing the boat this year so I'm happy to help out at FR HQ in what ever manner I'm needed (BBQ, regos...you name it). I might just take an hour or so at some time during the day to wet a line landbased. See you all Sunday, Chris

Well done Joe, anything over 40 is a VERY good fish!!! A great start to your Blackfish addiction Did you use a little burley to get em on the chew? Cheers, Smitty...

Rick my friend............YOU DA MAAAAAN!!

Congratulations Jenno64, some very nice pigs there!!! Ya gotta love battling those black bulldozers..........and eating the rewards! I still use good old Maxima Ultragreen on my Alvey and it never gives me any trouble at all. Cheers, Smitty...

Good on ya Rick, well done fellas. Makes em all the more worthwhile when ya catch em in trying conditions! I'm kickin myself now, I was goin to fish the harbour on Saturday and decided at the last minute to try the Georges.......not a fish, a couple of downs but not a single fish! Cheers, Smitty...

Thanks for the birthday wishes everyone, I'm off to have a or two. Take it easy! Cheers, Chris...

Great stuff yakfishing and friends. Blackfishing in the Hawksbury, I dont think I've done that since I was a teenager!!

I can remember when Rhodes park in Brays bay used to have acres of weed growing in it...just used to walk along and pick it up at low tide. I haven't been there for years but it might be worth a look. If all else fails you can use freshwater weed. I've caught fish in your area using weed collected from creeks in western Sydney....you still might need to travel to get it though. Cheers, Smitty...

I'll get back down to Lambeth before too long Azooma....maybe we can tee something up.

That sounds like the spot Rick....great little spot, just a bugger to have to carry sand in with you!! Do you fish the Georges much? its much closer to home! Smitty...

Hi all, Thought it was about time to give the Georges a try for Blackfish again, so I headed down Lagarno way for a few hours on Saturday morning. It was a beautiful morning, a bit cool but very little boat traffic to disturb the serenity. Found plenty of Blackies in the river, quite a few smaller models but some nice fish amongst them also. Kept three for the table, one at 33 and two at 34cm, all fat health fish. Heres a pic of the ones I kept. Cheers, Smitty...

Well done, some nice breambos there mate. Go to see the Georges producing quality fish. Smitty...

Hi stippy, you've got yourself a Rock Cale mate. They can be a bloody pest at times!!! But I'm pretty sure the spines aren't dangerous....they'v never hurt me.

Sound like a good plan Rick......well its got my vote anyway! We've just got to come up with a suitable weekend.

Congratulation rickster and crew on ANOTHER bag of nice harbour blackies. Lookin forward to the sledging.....um, bagging...um, blackfish-athon!!! Cheers, Smitty...

Fantastic stuff insomniac92!!! Now that you've got the boat and the kids are keen to go with you, there'll be no looking back. Tons of quality times ahead Isn't it funny how every cloud has a silver lining!!!! Cheers, Smitty..

No worries Roberta, WHEN I try it and IF it works everyone on FR will here all about it.

Hi all, I was doing a bit of net surfing yesterday, trying to find some info about those parasitic worms that you sometimes see in Blackies when you fillet them, when I stumbled across an artical penned by a fishing writter from across the ditch in NZ. He'd written about using frozen mixed veggies as bait for the fish they call Parore (our Blackfish). Thought some of you might be interested so here's an extract from the artical: "………..which brings me to parore fishing with Wattie's diced carrots, peas, and corn. This is a sportfishing persuasion tailor-made for old sunburnt salts like myself with developing allergies towards stinking bait. For this is bait fishing of the non-smelly variety. In fact, the bait is so clean and resoundingly odourless that you do start to wonder what the fish see in it. Yet it does work, and the spotties and sprats love it too. Standard parore fishing tackle, a small float, small hook, and cooked carrot cube puts you in with a chance. Just buy a standard packet of frozen diced vegetables from your local supermarket and use them straight from the bag. We berley with small amounts of fresh bread and drift the carrot cubes down the trail. When the float goes under, strike! Frequently the line will tear off with a spotty on the end. Now and then though you hit heavier resistance and a big paddle-tailed parore starts thumping away. You'll see a bunch of photos around here someplace of fish that have fallen to this method. These were good fish as far as parore go and surprisingly tasty (Josh insisted we eat them). Most fell for the carrot cube simply because it was the longer lasting bait. Sweetcorn attracted more bites but many were of the spotty variety and peas were too big a hit with the sprats. Berleying with mushed-up peas and corn whilst fishing with carrot cubes seemed to be a good way to go. But we had to make sure we didn't over-feed the fish. Past experience has shown that this sort of fishing requires minimal berleying, and the more mushed-up the berley is, the better. This is why fresh bread mushed-up in a bucket of water works so well as berley. It puts a milky-sweet flavour through the water without overly feeding the fish. There are strong parallels with coarse fishing with this type of activity. And it is just as pleasurable. The only difference is the effect of tides. Parore always bite best on a full tide, retreating to deeper weed edges around the rocks as the tide drops. It is possible to fish for them there on the low tide, if you can keep hooked fish out of the kelp. Like a tench burrowing in the weed at Lake Kareta or a big brownie doing an Aniwhenua netweed roll, you can rest assured parore that head for the kelp frequently gain their freedom. It keeps the less aggressive parore fishers among us on the wharves and along those sandy estuarine channels. The bit I really like about parore fishing, apart from the sweet bait, is the float watching. Any sort of float fishing is quite addictive: the heart-stopping twirl of the float as something toys with the bait, then the reflex jarring 'down' as the float disappears from sight. Both are things that keep drawing you back for more. Especially when that float goes down and stays down. It gets a fisherman's blood running whether they're drifting a nymph for big rainbows, soaking a corn kernel for a solid tench or hoping to pull a big parore out of the big, wharf-hugging spotty schools. I like to use my five-weight fly rod and a floating line when parore fishing. To this I pinch on a small amount of split shot around 100 mm above the hook and tie on a small cube of closed cell foam onto the fly line as an indicator float. The great thing about closed cell foam as a float is that it grips the fly line and consequently can be adjusted up and down the fly line if greater or shallower fishing depth is required. The aim is to have your bait hanging just above the bottom. The deeper it is the more split shot weight that may be required, otherwise sprats can hold your bait up in the water column and refuse to let it sink. The other useful thing about closed cell foam indicator floats is that when cut in an oblong shape and tied at one end the float will stand up out of the water when a fish is playing with the bait. Everybody holds their breath when that little orange piece of foam flicks into the air and threatens to dive into the depths. Many times it doesn't, but the anticipation is still there. And that's what parore fishing with non-stink diced vegetables is all about: sitting, waiting for a bite, right on the edge of your seat. Oh yes - and not smelling like dead pilchard for the rest of the week! " Dont know if this'll catch on, but its FOOD for thought, and it might just solve the Blackfisherman's problem of finding a decent supply of fresh green weed on a regular basis!!! Is anyone game to give it a try during the upcomming "Great Sydney Harbour Blackfish Challenge"?? Just have to remember the veggie masher so you can mash up the burley! Cheers, Chris...

Sledging - what sledging???? Stewy, you'd better learn to collect sand and make burley - dont think I've ever seen you do that before!!!