lostproperty

Hey mate love reading your reports, just wondering what distance you saw the water colour change from green to blue ? We've been out to the MHL buoy a few times and it's been pretty green out there and current moving pretty fast but if it's not too far then we might venture a bit further, cheere

Is that operating alone? How about under instruction of a fully licensed driver for the purpose of completing a log book?

Save the money your planning on using to paint it and just put it towards other upgrades, white boat silver boat still the same just looks prettier but no major advantage really. And unless you spend a motza on the prep work it's not worth it the paint will come off

I cut the gills both sides and bottom on the throat clean through the put the fish in a bucket head first and let I bleed, generally I won't spike them because as they flap around the usually get more blood out

Mate I bought a cheap rod online and with a $40 JW reel with cheap braid and could cast a mile, the reel eventually started to get loose after 6 months of trolling and casting but held up fine, now running the sienna 2500 with fins 6lb braid and a 7 ft carbon fibre rod, I think the rod and smooth casting braid are the 2 most important parts but thy whole setup cost me $130 all up and I've caught Bonnie's tailor salmon and a few legal kings on it too and its been great

Bonnie's go harder that a frigate in my opinion, by still a nice fish he's pretty fat, make good snapper bait wasn't too flash on the table though unfortunately. Well done all the same though mate and good quick thinking with getting the lure on and having a cast at them

Saw some last weekend out at longreef being chased by a school of big bonnies

I find halcos the best fr sambos and tailor in silver, as above crank nice as fast but if you car get a hit from the surface give it some sinking time after casting so the lure comes up from a but deeper, generally works for me

Yeah mate love the way a king fights, agree with the hole to china sometimes when we're in 20m of water I wonder where the hell the fish has gone to with all the line they take. They are pretty strong flavored I found they're best marinated as it reduces the flavour a little. Kikoman soy ginger and sweet chilli is nice with it, I assume you cooked it without the bloodline in? I think skinned helps too

Really you didn't like it? Did you bleed the fish when you caught it? I have it sashimi, pan fried, baked. You have to make sure you don't over cook it otherwise it goes chewy and not very nice.

Weather forecast was for showers but that wasn't going to bother us too much. Heading out from Little Manly @ 5am with myself & Beaver (Adam) on his boat. Sydangler (Ollie) decided to join us fresh from a Friday night session at the Boat Shed so I gave him my ant-seasick combo of Kwells & NoDoze tablets to ensure the day was not interrupted by uncontrollable burley from Ollie haha (worked a treat!). The plan was to head out to the FAD's nice an early with some livies and see if we can bag some legal sized dollies. We hit up inside the harbour for some livies but they took a little while to wake up and start hitting the bait jigs (was still dark when we started). We got a nice big tank full of yakkas and even managed half a dozen slimies as well which was good. On the way out passed North Head we threw out a few slimies to see if we could entice any kings. My slimie hit the water and swam straight around the pipe for the bait tank about 4 times and then got himself stuck on the inlet for the bait pump, leaning over the back of the boat trying to sort out the mess was a nightmare considering I couldn't see my leader in the water and the livie wouldn't stop going crazy. Eventually managed to get the hook out of him and put him back in the tank, he was a bit worse for wear already with a big ring bruised into him from the pump but he held up in the end! Got everything untangled and gave up on sending him out again. Ollie wasn't paying attention but all of a sudden he had interest on his line, what ever it was had him pretty well reefed, his leader snapped and came up looking pretty destroyed. We packed up after 5 mins and headed out to the Sydney Fad, about 5kms out we chucked out a spread of skirt lures to see if we could land any stripies on the way. We had Adam with a purple skirt on the right corner, Ollie with a pink skirt in the middle and close, and I was running a Ricter's Lures Dorodo on the left corner and 2 barrel sinkers to have it running deeper than the other 2. Unfortunately no luck but I was glad I managed to get my lure working properly after last year I rigged it up crudely at home and didnt have any success with its presentation in the water (kept spinning) I ended up buying a pre made skirt rig for $10.95 made by Fish Eagle and it had 2x 6/0 hooks on it. Only problem was the mono was really hard to tie, even a 2 loop uni, so it needs to be crimped I think. We got to the Sydney FAD and water temp was 22.6 deg, nothing happening there and we headed further out to the MHL Buoy and the water temp picked up over 23 which was a good sign. Decided to try a few different things on this trip, using one of my light spin rods I put on a live bait hook and sent out a slimie unweighted and free spooled it down the current, almost straight away I felt line peeling off the spool, didnt throw the bail arm over straight away so we could sort the lines out on the boat, but eventually brought in a nice 55cm dollie, great fun on the light gear and sent him back to grow bigger enough for the table. We tried a few drifts passed the buoy and there was a great action packed hour of catching fish, undersized dollies & rat kings. I have left over bonnie strips from the weekend before that I had salted and frozen, just cast them at the buoy and free spool and instant hookups every cast. Ollie caught his first dollie as well and took some nice underwater snaps of them while he was bringing them in, such great looking fish but still yet to break the 60cm mark on them yet for myself. We decided to make our way back but stopping off a longreef to see if there were any big kings around. We sent out yakkas and by this stage our last 2 slimies had died so we stripped them up and sent them out unweighted. Adam's light spin rod got smashed almost instantly and it was a struggle to get it out of the holder, we were only in 17m of water so it was a good hard fight but we managed to boat it, and spewing it was only a 63cm king, definately put up a solid fight. There was a bit of activity on the sounder but livies, plastics and metals didnt seem to entice any more action. I saw a school bust up about 50m in front of the boat so I put on a new hard body lure I think theyre called FLASH or something, its white in colour about 15cm long, plastic with a weight in the middle so its kind of like a sinking stickbait, cast it out in the area, first cast wasn't quite accurate second cast gave it a good 20secs to sink and started cranking, hooked up straight away and brought in a nice fat bonnie, finally a legal fish (at this stage we hadn't caught anything to take home) but no action after that. The paint was coming off the lure every cast and we called it a day when the bail arm flicked over and my lure kept going (hate loosing new lures!). Decided to have a quick troll of south head as we'd had some luck with the bonnies the weekend before and even trolled up a king on one of Adams Rapala lures. Last weekend his lure smashed my Lively Lure 4" Mack Bait 7 fish to 1 on mine, today was a completely different story, first pass around the heads my rod goes off but the fish swam at the boat and spat the hooks, we kept trolling and I hooked up again to something solid, gave a hard run so I thought it might be a king as it had some weight to it. I was using my new Okuma combo with a heavier duty rod than Ive used before so the feel was a bit different. Once I got colour I knew it wasn't a king but it was a decent sized frigate mackerel, sent him back in the drink after a quick snap. Kept on trolling and hooked up again, as we stopped the boat Ollie cranked in his christmas tree lure and hooked up as well. It was this pattern over and over again and eventually we had about 10 bonnies in the boat and blood everywhere haha. Unfortunately for Adam his lure hadn't been touched! So weird that there was such a change from the week before. Over all a pretty good day on the water and was pretty stoked on trying a few new things that paid off even if we didnt get the fish we were after!

Did you have any livies ? Shoulda sent one out mate

Well done on such light gear mate, we had a kingy smash one of the lightest rods on board yesterday and my mate could hardly get the rod out of the holder, landed it after a pretty tough fight and the bugger was only 63cms ! We were in 15m of water but 30m is only about another 5 second of line screaming off the reel anyway when your on a king haha

Heaps of same sized dollies at the mhl bouy as well, and small kings. Great fun on light gear, was just throwing out chuncks of salted bonito from the week before and free spooling to get hookups, either a rat kingy or a Dollie each cast, kept me entertained haha, didn't come across any bigger ones though

Ollie is that your short one you have with the Stella?

Ollie is that your short one you have with the Stella?

Hey mate what was the temp out at the MHL buoy ? Was the water blue out there or still green and a bit colder?

Fair enough but I will say the only kings I've ever seen have been on the end of my rod Tail just looks a bit larger than normal, probably grew up being chased by a big shark or something hahaha Great catch though we're abouts at curl curl were you?

Is it me or does that kingy have a massive tail?

Just curious, is there a particular reason you want to use an overhead instead of a spin reel? There are plenty of spin reels more than capable of stopping Jews and kings, are you fishing from a boat or landbased?

What's the water temp when you get out there? Maybe as you approach try shutting off the engine and drift past the fad flickin lures to see of there's anything around for dollies? They do like a floating object and tend to hang around one but not necessarily directly under it. I've had success with the squidgy pro 140mm flickbait in yakka colour with sfactor give that a go, but if the water is too cold they won't be there at all

From what I've ready from mcgills write ups about kings they tend to shy away from noisy lures and are pretty good at spotting them as fakes, if it works for you though no worries, how long does it take to recrimp and snap swivel a new jig on after it's been chopped off? I can tie a uni in about 15 seconds so pretty efficient, never used a crimper before though

That's it mate uni knot on the solid ring, far less chance of failure, I know split rings are pretty strong but you still have a higher chance of failure if u tie to the split rIng plus as above the leader can wear from the split ring.

Damn ! That is alot of jigs, I've got half that amount but most d mine are cheap eebay ones, first outing I lost 4 jigs on 5 drops haha so pretty glad they only cost me 4 bucks each! How much were they and where'd u get em? Yours have the solid ring so definately tie to that less chance of failure if you avoid the split ring altogether