madmac

well done, im going to the harbour tommorow, hopefully i can find some surface activity

from todays daily telegraph a "monster" shark large enough to produce a wake has been spotted in botany bay. Residents around Yarra bay sounded the alarm about 8am yesterday with reports a shark up to 4.5m long was as close as 2m from swimmers.

heres a pic of my boat, its a 1980 model haines hunter 565R, with a 140 horse power johnson, ive owned it for about 7 years now, i use it for fishing and water skiing

good stuff, i hope the fish are still around at the weekend, im going down on sunday for a fish

i will try an d get her to join this site. she is not really a computer chatter, and is always on my case saying that "you prefer to talk to strangers on the computer than spend time with me" im hoping to take her along to one of the nepean bass sessions and she can maybe meet mrs watto. (i havent met her yet either) but i did meet watto this morning, and i must say i wouldnt of known his store had existed if i hadnt been on this forum. hopefully i can get the wife along to meet you folk, and maybe get her to join and post too

just an idea, but maybe fishraider could get behind it too, perhaps a clean up of Botany bay and surounding areas, ie cooks river, i always see heaps of crap floating around the ramp

im thinking about buying another home brew set up, i used to do it years ago but lost interest, i now repair washing machines and fridges for a living, and also buy and sell fridges, so im thinking about a keg type set up in a fridge. ive only ever done bottles in the past with mixed results. if anyone can offer some good tips or advice i would appreciate it. cheers Mark

ships like this have self draining decks, and provided all hatches are closed nothing gets inside and they stay afloat, water that breaks over the bow simply drains back off through the scuppers

oooh its shrunk a bit, previous reports had it at 24ft, by tommorow it should only be a 4foot speciman

yes i will involved again this year, im a member of a 4 wheel drive club and we participate as a club every year, we usually clean upm areas the in accsesible to others, we haul out general rubbish and winch out dumped cars etc. we usually get some good publicity out of it too.

I was just wondering who takes their wives and kids along with them when fishing, yes i prefer to fish alone or with a mate that knows what hes doing in the boat, but im trying to educate my wife, and my kids are starting to take a keen interst too. im planning to take them down the harbour on sunday weather permitting. I will now give share a couple of high lights ive enjoyed while out in the boat with the family. 1st one was at swansea channel last year, we were anchored at dead low tide just west of the bridge, i was berleying hard, i had an un weighted prawn and an un weighted pilly floating in the trail on gang hooks. Anyway id given my 6 year old daughter a little 5 foot ugly stick with a small spinning reel and 3kg line to use, i had baited her up with a peeled prawn. But she saw me cast out a whole pilly and said "daddy i want to use one of those for bait" i replied with something along the lines of "your hook and rod isnt big enough for a pilly" she protested, so rather than listen to her whinge i passed her a pilly, she put her small single hook through the pillies eye socket and lowered it to the bottom. about 2 minutes later i was mashin the berley pot, when i heard her scream, "dad ive got one" i turned around half expecting her to have a snag, only to see her rod bent over double and line getting ripped from the reel at a fast rate of knots, she was hanging on for all it was worth, i assisted her for 30 seconds or so, then she gave me control. the end result was a 3kg samson fish!!, stoked with her efforts she hooked ANOTHER pilly through the eye socket, and 2 minutes later she was on again, this time it was a bream of about 900 grams, the rest of us caught bugger all that day!! high light no.2 happened only about a month ago, i took my 8yo son up the Nepean to troll for Bass, he saw me casting at the bank as we were trolling and wanted to have a go, he quickly mastered casting and caught a couple of small bass on a little deception lure. when we got back to the ramp, i tied the boat up and my young fella said, can i have my rod dad, i want to have a fish while you get the boat out, he then caught 2 more bass off the wharf in the time it took me to retrieve the boat! (less than 5 minutes) high light no.3 the wife catches some keepers! myu wife has fished with me a few times and always caught plenty of small stuff. we were down at botany a couple of weeks ago, and thing were pretty slow until the tide stopped running at about 10am, we were anchored at watts reef and i was berleying hard. the fish came on and she caught a decent trevally and snapper that was just legal. she is now keen to go again, so i popped into Wattos this morning and bought her a rod and reel to call her own. hope im not boring you all with my yarns, i was just thrilled to see my mrs and kids catch a few, and im intersted in hearing similar yarns from fellow raiders. Mark

8 metres thats over 24 foot long, surely not, that would be one seriously big shark, perhaps they meant an 8 foot shark.

Bass are edible, but personally i just like to catch them for the fun of it and throw em back, besides its rare that you catch one thats big enough to eat, eels are edible if you have a smoker.

he is actually a member of this forum, have a look at this link http://www.fishraider.com.au/Invision/inde...showtopic=17842

found this series of pics on another forum

i saw quite a few good salmon landed at stockton a couple of weeks ago

ouch, sounds like he will be off to bias for a couple of cans of gel coat, i bet it came off hard and fast too, Penrith ramp is fairly steep

was it a fibreglass boat or a tinnie?. i always attach my safety chain before pulling it out.

nothin wrong with fishing for carp, yeayh fair enough they arent edible, but they are great fun to catch, ive found that bread or dough works best, use a small sinker, they are great fun to catch on light gear

most small D shackles arent load rated either, especially hardware shop cheapies, if they are rated they should be stamped, welding them will weaken them also, probobally the best option is to have 2 chains, one with a lock to stop thieves pinchin your trailer, and one with a shackle for safety when towing

forgive my ignorance, but what exactly is bow and arrow style casting?

i was towed home about 6 years ago, i launched at shoalhaven heads, and ran down the crookhaven river and headed out to sea, my plan was to head south east to the banks to fish for kingies, got about 2 mile from the heads and the motor stalled, it would turn over but wouldnt fire. i pulled the cover off and checked all of the obvious but couldnt find anything. had to call coastal patrol who promptly sent out a boat and towed me back to the ramp (i posted them a $100 donation the next week), got the boat out of the water, then went looking for the fault. there is a large multi plug where all the wires meet the motor, too of the pins had shorted out, i cut the plug off anjd joined all the wires individually and it fired back up again,. i have had it break down one other time, but i was able to locate the fault and get it going again.

OUch your lucky you didnt loose they eye

thanks for that, that pretty well answers all my questions