Andy_from_the_CJ

Hello Hornet, I have exactly the same motor. 340 trouble free hours on it so far, the best outboard I've ever owned. There's been only one problem, the alternator went at 300 hours. I would strongly advise you to use Optimax oil. Buy in the big 10L container and phone around for the best price. Also, never use fuel containing ethanol. Don't worry about the cost of Opti oil because you'll be saving so much on fuel. The 135 uses 40-50% of my previous motor, a Yamaha 175HP. Good luck with it, A

Are you a council ranger or parking officer by any chance, Lee? Cheers, A

Thanks Rob. It's funny that, the harder the wind blows, the better many fish bite.

The UK <i>Sun</i> is a newspaper notorious for its absence of truth or reliability. You couldn't trust them to get the date on the front page correct, let alone the details of a story. Cheers, A

"Eel"??? Dan told me it was a "Lane Cove River Hairtail." Hey Joe, thanks for organising a great night! Cheers, Andrew

Hopefully they'll hang around for quite a bit longer Pete. Will post a couple more pics if I can get past this problem: ---------------------------------------------------- Internal Server Error The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request. Please contact the server administrator, k.alexander@optusnet.com.au and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error. ----------------------------------------------- cheers, Andrew

the school:

G'day lads a mate kindly invited me out yesterday for some Harbour fishing on his new boat. A sleep-in after Carp Night saw us getting away a bit later than usual. We cleared Rose Bay about 9:00AM and headed down the Harbour. The wind was ferocious, and just one half-cab was moored up on the Sow and Pigs. On drawing level with South Head, we could see birds working off Old Man's Hat so we headed over there. Terns, gulls, mutton birds and about half a dozen boats were working a smallish school. The wind was too strong for good casting (using tiny slugs) so we trolled across the leading edge with small skirted lures. This technique put a couple on the deck but we eventually decided to go round to our sneaky spot, which we knew would be protected from the sou' westerly by high cliffs. Arriving at the SS we found small patches of rolling greenbacks which responded well to tiny slugs fished off 4 kilo baitcasting outfits. Four were kept for mako bait. In the pic you can just see the tiny slug in front of one of the salmon, and also a couple of regurgitated fry, lying on the marine carpet. All in all a very enjoyable session. Best regards to all Raiders, Andrew

HORNSBY ADVOCATE, Thursday September 15, 2005 (front age) Dangar Island is in shock as search parties scan its surrounding waters for a man missing after a tragic boating accident at the weekend. Coastal Patrol Rescue volunteers continue to search the Hawkesbury river between Dangar island, Brooklyn and Long Island for the body of a 33-year-old man after a small boat capsized on Sunday night. Several residents were woken by screams and cries of 'man overboard!' just after midnight. the man, of no fixed address, was in a three-metre aluminium runabout with two other men, a 17-year-old and a 19-year-old, when it overturned on the way from Dangar island to Brooklyn. [snip] Brooklyn Water Taxis owner Tom Cosgrove joined the search party and said he scanned the channel for about 17 nautical miles before giving up at 3:30AM. 'The weather was windy, the tide was really racing and the wind was blowing,' Mr Mead (another searcher) said.

August 18, 2005 - 5:04PM (redacted, for research and discussion only) Operators in a major Australian fishery have had their incomes wiped out in recent years and are now making a loss, according to a new report. The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE) examined the financial performance of the longline fleet over the 2001-02 and 2002-03 financial years in the eastern tuna and billfish fishery. The fishery stretches from the tip of Cape York south to the Victoria-South Australia border. ABARE found that in 2001-02, each of the 135-boat fleet was bringing in an average $62,000 in income, but the situation had since changed drastically. By the following year, operators were making an average $22,000 loss. The gross value of production in the fishery in real terms hit a record $85 million in 2001-02, ABARE found, before falling to $71 million in 2002-03 and below $48 million in 2003-04. ABARE said the dramatic change in fortunes of the operators was due to the appreciating Australian dollar, as much of the yellowfin and bigeye tuna is exported to Japan and most of the billfish catch is sent to the United States. (snip) ABARE said there was no evidence to suggest stocks of yellowfin and bigeye tuna were under threat, but there were strong indications of depletions of broadbill swordfish off southern Queensland. http://www.smh.com.au/news/Business/Tuna-f...3958172548.html ------------------------------------------------------ <i>ABARE said there was no evidence to suggest stocks of yellowfin and bigeye tuna were under threat</i> Well, no evidence except for the fact that: **50 years ago, you could walk on the backs of schooling yellowfin in season, from Narooma to Montague Island **40 years ago, a school of yellowfin appeared on the Sir Joseph Young Banks, off Greenwell Point, that stretched from the coast to the horizon **30 years ago, yellowfin could be caught from the platform at the southern end of Whale Beach **20 years ago, there would be 90+ trailer boats fishing The Peak for yellowfin on Easter Sunday with most of them getting hookups, and plenty getting fish **10 years ago, pros like Dave Payne at South West Rocks could still make a living fishing for yellowfin with rod and reel And now, any yellowfin of size is a rare capture, with 30 kilo fish (only two and a half years old) considered a 'big' yellowfin off Sydney. Almost all fish are caught off the continental shelf and are inaccessible to most anglers. ABARE, you are a complete joke. You have overseen the collapse of the once great east coast yellowfin fishery and you are guilty of negligence and incompetence. Your director should be dismissed and the whole bureau needs a shake up, from top to bottom.

The National Parks Association is defending Marine Parks by untruths; they are the ones giving the public misleading information not the “Extreme anti-environmentalists” as their spin declares. To say that “The proposed Marine Park will not exclude people by creating ‘no-go’ zones or ‘lock-out ‘areas is blatant lies and deliberately misleading. NPA do not have any factual scientific information to back any of their statements but rather encourage and confuse their emotional propaganda as the whole basis of their anti-fishing agenda. One just needs to glance at their website to see through their charade. Communities should be worried by their lies, businesses should be worried, and anglers certainly need to rise up and protect their amenity and their right to fish for food. What right does the anti-fishing lobby have to deny this to anyone when no bio-diversity or specie in NSW is under threat? Combining Marine Parks with National Parks should also cause alarm for non access to all recreational users, not just anglers and the fishing community Even oyster farmers should be wary of what the end circumstances could bring in years to come from the NPA campaigns Extracts of NPA policy statements from their website prove they are misleading the public with media untruths. 2.2 “Sanctuaries should be "No Take" marine areas”. 2.4 “Sanctuaries should protect at least 20% of the total area of each marine habitat in both Commonwealth and State territorial seas, as a first step towards establishing a fully comprehensive, adequate and representative system of marine sanctuaries. It follows that the total area covered by the sanctuaries should be at least 20% of each territorial sea as a first step. 2.5 “Sanctuaries may be zones within marine parks and should occupy a major part of a marine park.” 3.2.1 “Waters adjacent to terrestrial national parks, nature reserves, and state recreation areas (or their equivalents), including the intertidal zone (ITZ), managed by relevant authorities including the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, should be considered as prime areas for declaration as sanctuaries. 5.2.4 “Oyster leases existing within a sanctuary or aquatic reserve at the date of declaration can be allowed to remain temporarily, but should be phased out” Expert opinion such as the CSIRO and even the strongest proponent WJ Ballantine now question the use of Marine Parks as a fisheries enhancement tool. The anti-fishing lobbyists cite the NZ Leigh Marine reserve as a basis for their statements. The Leigh Marine Laboratory confirmed, “Without empirical substantiation predictions of fishery enhancement are deductions based on circumstantial evidence and ancillary information”. The natural forces of our world destroy and destruct more bio-diversity in one wild cyclonic battering than all the anglers and users put together would ever do, Think about it and expose these NPA extremists for what they are. The Byron Bay Marine Park is well known as a “Political Park” by the way with bio-diversity coming second. Robert Smith, Chairman, The Fishing Party, Above Address ENDS

here's a pic of the boat

PB salmon

Pete, it was a real eye opener. The skipper's parents live in Sarasota in Florida. He started out fishing there as a kid, and still has a 19 foot centre console kept at their place which he uses, when visiting. He told me he fishes for king mackerel (which is our narrow-barred Spanish Mackerel) there. Knowing the incredible number of fishermen they have in Florida, and thinking of how our east coast (and especially NSW) mackerel population has collapsed in the last 20 years, I said something like, 'it must be hard to catch a decent one these days.' He replied 'there's more than ever, since they banned pro fishing for them.' He caught a couple of forty pounders the last time he went out! It really blew me away, as to how good they have it over there in terms of number and size of fish, great boat ramps, and the price of tackle and boats. We Aussie anglers put up with so much crap from government bodies, it just boggles the mind! The only downside I saw from my quite short fishing experience there is the license fees. Two days fishing cost me a $14 US license, but I think that was higher being a non-Illinois resident. For locals, it's cheaper. Cheers, A

hello Martin, I've tried a few times to post further pics, but get an 'internal server error' message when 'add this attachment' is clicked. Will keep trying, cheers, Andrew

hello Martin, in that pic, the two rods on the right are running off two independent downriggers. The rod on the left uses wire line out to a planer, what they call a 'Walleye Board', which pulls the line out to the side of the wake. I'll post a pic of it.

Here's a pic of the boat ramp. When I think back to the time my trailer got stuck in the hole off the end of Tunks Park ramp at low tide, and I had to bash the crap out of it to get it out.....

Thanks, mate! Yep, it really was quite an experience. I said to the skipper, 'I can't believe the fishing's so good, when there's twenty million people living around the lake.' He said to me, 'that's what happens when you ban commercial fishing.'

more pics

G'day lads I was in the US on a company-paid trip last week and met up with an old Sydney mate, John. He and his wife's family are all mad keen fishos, and they kindly invited me out for a couple of days salmon fishing, on Lake Michigan. The lake is 300 miles long by 100 miles wide, all freshwater. It was quite an experience to walk along the marina arms at Winthrop Harbour and watch brown trout, perch and gold carp dart away. It was also pretty amazing to see the kind of boat ramps they have in the US- six separate lanes, with a wharf at the end of each, so you can be assured of a place to tie up while you go park the car and trailer. I took a pic of that setup and will post it here. Because where we were fishing was pretty close to Chicago I wasn't expecting much, figuring that fishing pressure would make the fish few and far between. Couldn't have been more wrong! The skipper was a champion angler who's won a heap of tournaments. He uses downriggers, paravanes, planer boards, wire and lead line, to get the lures down to 80 feet, where the salmon were operating. Strikes came thick and fast and we had up to four on, at one time. Most of the fish were around the ten pound mark but we scored a few over 20 pounds. The first afternoon 33 came aboard, and the next morning we caught another 24. We were only three miles off the marina and stayed in the same area both days, so there must be countless millions of big salmon in the lake. There's a big wreck offshore, a car carrier which went down in a storm fifty years ago. Because it's in fresh water it hasn't rusted away and some big trout (10 to 15 pounds, or more) have made their home there. There's a charter dive boat in the marina, and its skipper gives our guy a call on the mobile when he's taking a party of divers to the wreck. The activity moves trout of the wreck and our skipper trolls around the perimeter. He picks up some huge trout in that way. Salmon fight hard and taste great. The bag limit is 5 per person per day. Nothing was wasted. We had some big fish fries and the rest was frozen for winter. There was no surface action whatsoever and it was a real eye opener to see just how effective downriggers can be. Hopefully we can put what was learned into practice on next summer's Pittwater kingies. Cheers to all, Andrew

No, mate. We've only ever bagged one, in about five years. But there is something special about the place, hardly anyone around, the top fishing, the dingoes howling around the camp at night....you feel like you're in the first five minutes of 'Last Of The Mohicans.' I reckon the Jiggin Joe machine would be ideal, on Dart. It's a long drive but not hard, they've improved the Hume a lot. Great to hear from you, Andrew

I reckon you'd enjoy Dartmouth, Matt. It's like a Fishraider Hairtail Night, but with less drinking, and some fish involved.

the crew, after a cold morning's run up the lake:

a rainbow, for breakfast:

swamp trout: