wrasseman

Hi all, long time no posts. I came out of hibernation last weekend and headed up to the coast to check out a spot (bellbuoy beach) I had previously heard good things about... Not real exciting i'm afraid, there was a nice looking headland but with the tide below half and dropping (we have a 3.5m tidal range, I can't imagine what the 8m Kimberley tides would be like???) there wasn't much water depth over the shallow reef or in the "deep" sandy hole. Nevertheless i had a bit of a flick and turned up a little 35 to fork salmon. After this I went for a bit of an explore. Since I had stupidly only brought my light trout rod with me, csting distance off the beach was a bit limitted so I went for a fair walk to another reefy spot. Once there I found a reasonable vertical rockwall that sugguested wrasse ao i gave it a bit of a working over to turn up a nice little 37cm blue. But unfortunately I could only manage the one. By this time the tide was bottoming out so I headed back to the original headland hoping I'd get a bit more deepwater access from the exposed rocks, this wasn't to be however so I called it a day. 10days left til the trout season starts- can't wait. Cheers col.

I've been up the Wonbeyan caves area in summer and saw no signs of trout despite a few good searches however I'm sure that in winter there is potential as the same can be said of the lower cox and kowmung rivers and they fish very well in winter (if its still legal). cheers Col.

The stuff I'm talking about is light grease in a tube, not the spray. definitely not a degreaser.

Thanx, thats what i was after... I'm sure Inox will do the job splendidly though I'll leave it a bit longer first. Cheers Col.

Good to see the tailor still hanging around under the bridge. Good fun on the light gear and great on the plate. I spent many a night as a young teenager drifting about under the bridge in our little tinny powered by plank paddles and spinning up the tailor that sat under the lights. Cheers Col.

Ah thanks... I think???

Nice one, love it when the short little spur of the moment trips pay off. Good stuff. cheers Col.

Hi all, I have recently bought a shimano reel with the external oil port. What's the go, how often should I put oil in this? what oil? and how full? can anyone help me out? I've never had one of these ports on my reel before and all the papers with my reel are in Japanese and my japanese isn't real good (read nonexistent). Cheers Col.

There are quite a few sea-runners in Tas., especially in the derwent and huon river estuaries and in many of the west coast estuaries and around "the channel" though they occur to some degree in most estuaries. Some go out to sea while others are resident in the estuaries. True sea-runners tend to be very silvery with smaller scales than freshwater trout (hard to distinguish from atlantic salmon that have escaped from farms), whilst the residents (freshwater fish that have recently moved downstream or upper estuary fish) tend to look more like freshwater brownies (there aren't any sea-running rainbows). Regardless, in saltwater trout grow faster that in fresh (diet and hormonal effects). Although sea-run trout do move out to the deep sea, they are rarely if ever caught there in Tas. and are mainly caught in estuaries either when they come in at the start of their spawn run or when they chase the migrating whitebait as they have their spawn run. At other times they are a more incidental catch though in certain places they are common year round especially estuary resident fish. Locally to me (Launceston) the north and south esk rivers (Launceston is on the junction of these two rivers where they combine to form the (salt) Tamar river) have some sea-runners and the "tail-race" outlet of the trevallyn power station also produces quite alot with others turning up further downstream in the Tamar. Cheers Col. This pretty little fish (one of my fav. photos) is a more typical freshwater fish (very small stream), I' am yet to see a saltwater trout with bright red spots on it. And a lake fish no red spots in this case but a fairly red adipose fin. "True" sea-runner: In contrast this is a typical "resident" estuary fish from the saltwater tidal section of the little forrester river where it was feedind amongst a school of australian salmon. You can see it appears quite different to the silvery fish above that is more likely a "true" sea-runner and has less spots than the salwater fish.

I've used these spoons a fair bit over the last two years so am bound to pick up a few diff species over time. All sorts of retrieves work, steady, stop/start, skip on surface, lift and drop, vertical jigging, hi speed or dead slow depending on species and environment. As far as colours go I'm a big fan of plain gold in fresh or plain silver in salt but am not a big believer in lure colours generally. I figure placement, size and then action are the most important attributes of any lure (though some are better than others). Cheers col.

Quite a few species actually. salt: Bluefin trevally big eye trevally giant trevally silver trevally bream (yellowfin only so far) tailor flathead (sand and dusky) leatherjackets 2 species of wrasse sweetlip moses perch spanish flag aust salmon coral trout estuary cod toadfish whiting sweep barracouta snook jack pike squid sea-run brown trout mados. fresh: brown trout rainbow trout atlantic salmon redfin brook trout. I may have left a few out though. Cheers Col.

These are tango spoons, 45mm long. One for scale:

Very silvery fish, obvious sea-runner. It took a little green tango spoon. Had to go back though, closed season. cheers Col.

Hi all, I headed out this evening for a very quick spur-of-the-moment sesh near home as the sun went down. This spot is actually closed for the taking of salmonids atm but you may still fish (for indigenous species (not that there are any???)) if all salmonids are released. Its normally a pretty hot or cold spot but today not really either. I managed one fat little sea-run brown who followed to my feet before hooking up (after missing the hooks on the first hit). Apologies for the pic, phone job. Cheers col.

The rod is a 4'9" diawa heartland "trout" (HL T492ULFS) rated for 1-6lb line and up to 1/16-1/4oz weights. The spoon I was using was a wondercast tango like these, they are nominally 7g though in reality more like 6g. These are great little spinning/jigging lures for a wide range of species but the 3 inch gulp grub in pumpkinseed on a 1/16 or 1/8oz jig head is the best wrasse lure I've found. Cheers col.

Since the trout season finished down here I've been having a shocker. Having to travel at least 80km round trips sucks when I can trout fish in season within 10min of home. Since I haven't had the time for a propper trip to the east or south coasts I've just been going as close to home as I can and have had little success, just small salmon and wrasse. This morning I headed up to the Tamar mouth hoping for a pre-work salmon sesh. No salmon but on my second cast my little spoon was inhaled and I scored a new PB wrasse of 45.5cm which put a hell of a bend in my little trout rod and tested the drag on my new 1000 ultegra at last. Great fun. cheers Col.

Wow, that would have been incredible in the yak, even a halfway decent trout can drag me around in mine, I don't reckon that beast would even know it was dragging something. Great stuff. Cheers col.

Looks like another one to try... Thanx cheers col.

There was one caught in the tamar a few weeks ago that went 49cm to fork and wieghed 2.7kg which is about standard for a fish of that length according to NSW fisheries but there is a lot of variation. A 7lb bream also came out of musselro bay last year but I'm not sure of length. Does show some big ones are around though... PS. I went for a fish where the 6lber was caught today and didn't even get a touch. Cheers Col.

Hi all, just wondering what line people use for their leaders. I have used the following at one time or another: vanish, Rio, nitlon, diamond, black magic, climax, siglon sinking all these are fluros except the diamond that is fluro coated. I've also used platypus platinum and penn 10x nylons and a few others. Of these siglon, and nitlon are my favs though I use the diamond alot due to its extremely cheap price and thinness and it hasn't let me down. Are there any others I should try as none of these lines are truly ideal, all have strengths and weaknesses. Cheers col.

For mine, daiwa is the hands down winner for the top end stuff but shimano has it easily at the more budget end of the scale. Cheers Col.

Hi Saqa Yeah you know what they say, a bad day fishing beats a good day working. I've never caught a humphead, though I've seen a big one diving in Fiji, would be awesome to catch. I think that fish is a female blue-throat but there are a few species that look quite similar at small size, its not until they get bigger that ID becomes real easy. Blue-throats and the "purple" wrasse are the most common larger wrasse down here and both are an easy option for a bit of light luring fun though to many people they are "rubbish". I like them, they take lures, pull hard and in the right cond. can be sight cast to and they grow to at least 49cm and 4kg. They are also apparently good to eat if cooked right (i don't eat fish so release mine), at least they must be alright as there is a commercial fishery for them and they sell upwards of $20/kg but I think the secret is in the cooking. PS. 10kg humphead would have gone off. cheers Col.

Hi all, I've been intending for a while to get down to the local power station outlet and today was the day. Unfortunately I arrived right at low tide, not the best time for this spot and on top of that the power station isn't running so there was no warm water released from the outlet. Nevertheless I thought I'd give it a go. However after losing about 10 sp tails in the first 10min to toadfish, things weren't looking good. I had a bit of a flick with some HBs and then with a little spoon and finally got my first fish though only a little flattie of about 25cm, this was followed by a succession of very small salmon, the last of which was smaller than my finger. Time for a move. At this point I had a call from work asking me to come in early so with just an hour up my sleeve and with the gforecast gale failing to eventuate I elected to head to the ocean rocks in the hope of some big salmon or at least a few wrasse. I had a bit of a flick with a bass minnow for a while, missing a few hits from wrasse which didn't hook up before landing a mini model of about 20-25cm. I then decided to have a flick with the ultralight trout rod that I had with me rigged with a little spoon and after a couple of misses I scored a solid hit from what turned out to be a colourful little just legal wrasse of 30cm who gave a good account of himself on the light gear amongst the rocks and weed. Sadly that was it for the day as I was out of time. Not a very successful day, but the fishing bit was heaps more fun than the work that followed. Cheers Col.

Thanks for that. Have you tried luring them?

Don't waste it as bait, just eat it, yum yum. Nice squid there, quite big for sydney too, I've only caught smallies there, good bait size though. The bigguns can give a reasonable account of themselves on light gear. I hooked my biggest whilst spinning out of the yak for salmon, it was about 1m long and est. about 4kg (this is about max. size for southern calamari) and took me for a bit of a tow before I got it in, unfortunately I had to let it go as there was no way it was coming in the yak with me. Out of interest, were they male or female? and sexually mature or not (sorry I have a vested interest in squid biology)? If sexually mature females will have a mass of pale yellow/clear eggs in the top of the body and 2 large white glands in the centre of the body whilst males have a yellowish mass in the tip of the body containing little white sticks. These sticks may also be found embedded around the females head/funnel/mouth areas and even occasionally on males. Cheers Col.