fatfisherman

Alvey and midmount rod works but not ideal. I tend to use it on my smaller Alveys (500C5) as the loops are smaller and the distance to the stripper is not that much of a problem. With the larger Alveys you do get a lot of line slap and lose distance so I don't use it in this configuration. Cheers Jim

Mate and I went for a blackfishing session in Botany Bay on Saturday. Fished the run up tide in the morning with five day old greenweed. 1st spot we fished was at Captain Cook bridge. Started slow with a few very timid downs until we got amongst them. Pulled three in total with my mate getting a 40cm specimen. Then got a report from another fisho that they were biting hard at Tom Uglies so we went over for a look. When we got there there were already about a dozen blokes fishing for blackfish. We could not squeeze in any more for fear of offending anyone so fished a bit further away along the breakwall. After half and hour I managed to get just one, no one else had caught anything. Total for day is two blackfish each.A great morning away from the kids ad wives plus we brought back some lunch.

Fantastic effort. They are monsters!! Was that on the southern side of Garrie? Pillies for bait?

Hi everyone, I am still quite new to the dark art even though I am a bit on the older side! Any way I just thought it would be interesting to find out what all the other blackfishers are using in the hook department. The two styles of hook I use are 1. Hayabusa MRS173 2. Mustad needle sneck 3331NPG (green hook) in sizes 6 to 10 depending on conditions. Cheers Jim

Gday Matt, I have two rods which I use for blackfishing. My estuary rod of choice is an old Black Queen. It is solid glass and quite sloppy but great for taming the dark river blackies. Its a bit heavy after a while though. My second rod is custom rod made on a Wilson Live Fibre blank 10'6" 1-3Kg one piece I purchased when shop for non experts hahahaclosed down. Love this rod. This one has more grunt and I use mostly from the rocks just in case I tangle with the occasional drummer. Alvey centrepins on both. Enjoy your blackfishing - its sparking right up here in Botany Bay at the moment. Cheers Jim

This is a newer style Alvey with a graphite back and metal side cast. My mate has one and I have used it a few times. It does not have a star drag as such but a lever just behind the handle on the inside of the reel. My Alvey catalogue describes it as:- "650BC has anti-reverse with an on/off switch and a lever control clutch which will control line taken by large fish. Fish alert is also on the back." Cheers Jim

I am with you scrubby. I think I know the creek you are talking about as I too collect weed from here. I only take as much as I need for a few sessions of blackfishing. Any more is inconsiderate to both the weed and other blackfishermen/blackfisherwomen. If I determine that there is not much weed around I will only take enough to fish with and none for burley. Surprisingly I have actually had a fair bit of success lately with not burleying at all. Cheers Jim

I had some spare time recently and decided to take the wife out to dinner. After an enjoyable dinner at Concord I was surprised that I had my newly built bream flick stick in my car . So I persuaded the missus to join me just on sunset at this new wharf - which you can access by taking the first street left after you cross Ryde bridge heading north. I have my doubts as to the chemical integrity of the fish here but I was only catching and releasing. Anyway there were 5 other fishos already there baitfishing so I started to to flick lures around. Nothing until I changed to a small 1 inch curl tail lure from USA. Immediate smash as I cast to the mangroves and I pulled in a beauty bream of just under 30cm. Nearly lost him as he went straight for the mangrove roots. New rod pulled up fantastic. Cheers Jim