aussiebasser

I'll be visiting Lake Wivenhoe with an old mate, and a young nephew. I owe the young fella a decent Bass.

Wouldn't that make them bait, and not lures???

Couldn't recommend Mono highly enuff. Great bloke, great spots. Here's the results of a day out on Good Friday. I lost 5 Wahoo and an Amberjack on top of these fish.

If you're lifting the motors off, pull the timber off the transom and check for corrosion under it. We did one recently that had a few holes behind the timber.

Take Long Sleeve shirts and long pants. Your Chronarch drag could do with upgrading, they are not as smooth as you think at high settings. Jack Eskine could fit a set of Carbontex washers for you, which are awesome. Fireline is a bit stiff in the sizes you need, I'd suggest 30lb Bionic Braid and learn to tie a good 40 turn Bimini. I use Barra Class Knotted Dog leaders, and they haven't failed me yet. Read the pack to learn how to tie them on so you don't have a tag end rattling through guides. Go out and buy some new Halco 120DD's in Gold. Also some 130 and 150 Lively Lures Arafura Barra's in Bleeding Mullet, Gold and "Shirt Lifter" Pink. Have Fun

I've found that the thumb on bum works well, but then again I reckon if someone flipped me on my back with their thumb jammed you know where I'd settle down too. Sorta the Hopoate effect!!!!

I've had a fairly hectic Easter, as I finished work a couple of days early to get some fishing in before spending some family time. Wednesday morning I went north to Lake Monduran, about 20km north of Gin Gin, or 380km north of Brisneyland. I arrived there at 12.30pm, and started fishing almost immediately. I found a great little school of about a dozen 45-55cm Barra sitting on the surface in an old Lantana bush. First cast with an Arafura spooked them, so I waited a while and used my Bass rod and chucked a Blitzie at them. One nosed it, but took off when I gave it a twitch. I found my smallest Barra fly, which was a pretty big Gold Bomber fly and threw that on my 8 wt. Second cast it got smacked but only held on for one jump. The school took off, so I went for a walk up the bank to see if they'd reform. After ten minutes they were back, so I grabed my bass rod and threw out a Skitter Pop. First cast, another hook-up but it jumped off too. I'd wasted over an hour on these babies, so I went looking for more bays with bigger fish. At about 2.45 I got salmmed by a Barra in the 85 to 95cm range which took a huge jump and ran hard for the trees. I straightened the hooks trying to stop him. Just on dark I had another good strike, but no hook up. I fished through to about 12.30am for nothing, so rolled out the swag and had a few hours sleep. Back up at 4.30am, and and into it again. There was a bit of action at about 9.30 which coincided with the lunar projections. I put a cast into some trees and had a big boof on splashdown, I didn't feel any weight, so changed colours and threw the lure back to the same spot. Second cast, I got hit again, and this time had a hook-up for about 3 metres on line and half a second. This made 5 dropped barra, and none boated. I pulled the boat out of the water at 12.30pm on Thursday, and drove home in time for a feed and some sleep. Next morning I was up at 1.30am and after picking up a mate, drove the 150km down to Brunswick Heads in NSW. We met up with Mark (Mono) Stewart for a days fishing on his Charter Boat. 24 hours after being blown away by Barra, I was being blown away by Wahoo. I dropped four from four hook ups, with other hoo biting me off at the swivel. We did a bit of bottom bashing with Livies, and my first drop saw me substantially blown away by was was suspected to be a big Amberjack. Next two drops saw two Kingies of 87 and 96cm's take my Yakkas 300' down. We then trolled some lures around for a few little Yellowfin Tuna and Mac Tuna. Then the drive bakc home for a good nights sleep. My arms still hurt, but I'm already planing my next trip to Monduran before the weather cools off. A few friends fished there after I'd left and all up boated 9 Barra the following day. I hope I'm over the dropsies, 'cause I've got my heart set on breaking the Bass record at Wivenhoe tomorrow. HOws this for trees at Monduran!!!! There's bloody acres of them!

If you wanna store them neatly, check out the "No Limits" Spinnerbait Wraps in Big W. $10.00 each, and you can store most pack sizes of plastics.

Depending on the braid I use the same knot for tying the backing to the braid as I do for tying the braid to the mono leader, unless I'm using a knotted dog leader. For Fireline in 4, 6, 8 and 14lb I tie a 20 turn Bimini Twist and join the mono with an albright. For the backing I do exactly the same thing in reverse, but with the bimini still in the fireline. I keep my doubles short, about 6". For true braid, like Bionic in 12 and 20 I tie a 30 or 40 turn bimini, and attach a BAss Class Knotted Dog Leader. For heavier stuff, like 50lb Bionic for Barra and Cod I try to do a 60 turn bimini and attach a Mag Barra or Barra Cast Knotted Dog. The KD's do away with a tag end at the braid/mono, which you don't want when you're using a 60 to 80lb mono leader.

From the BREAM site. Day 1 results 1 Mark MANGOLD NSW 5 3.66 5 3.66 2 Darren BORG NSW 5 2.71 5 2.71 3 Drew GRIFFITH Qld 5 2.22 5 2.22 4 Wade EATON NSW 5 1.93 5 1.93 5 Nigel WEBSTER NSW 5 1.89 5 1.89 6 Scott TOWNER NSW 3 1.75 3 1.75 7 Ben ROBERTS NSW 3 1.67 3 1.67 8 Lance SULKOWSKI NSW 3 1.38 3 1.38 9 Jay MORGAN QLD 2 1.35 2 1.35 10 Darryl BAIRD Vic 3 1.32 3 1.32 11 Dean DAWSON NSW 3 1.28 3 1.28 11 Richard POTTER NSW 3 1.28 3 1.28 13 Martin RICHARDSON NSW 2 1.12 2 1.12 13 Richard ROBSON NSW 3 1.12 3 1.12 15 Scott LEAR NSW 2 1 2 1 16 Tom WEIERS NSW 2 0.96 2 0.96 17 Mark MCWHINNEY Qld 2 0.93 2 0.93 18 Kristoffer HICKSON NSW 2 0.92 2 0.92 19 John BALCOMB NSW 2 0.84 2 0.84 20 David WELFARE NSW 2 0.77 2 0.77 20 Daniel BRAY NSW 2 0.77 2 0.77 22 Chris WRIGHT NSW 2 0.73 2 0.73 23 Terry PARMENTER NSW 2 0.67 2 0.67 24 Joe CRUST NSW 2 0.66 2 0.66 25 Andrew HOWARD NSW 1 0.63 1 0.63 26 Alain DAURIAN NSW 1 0.55 1 0.55 26 David BLACKMAN NSW 1 0.55 1 0.55 28 Ross LAMOTTE NSW 1 0.52 1 0.52 29 Kaj BUSCH NSW 1 0.5 1 0.5 29 Steve REILLY NSW 1 0.5 1 0.5 29 Yilmaz NEZIZ NSW 1 0.5 1 0.5 32 Mark OSBORNE NSW 1 0.48 1 0.48 33 Jamie MAGUIRE NSW 1 0.45 1 0.45 34 Mick PRESSNELL VIC 1 0.43 1 0.43 35 Shane DYASON Vic 1 0.41 1 0.41 36 Jack OLMOS NSW 1 0.39 1 0.39 37 Sam REID NSW 1 0.38 1 0.38 38 Luke BARANOWSKI NSW 1 0.36 1 0.36 39 Jorg VAN HUSEN NSW 1 0.34 1 0.34 40 Michael COLLINS NSW 40 Peter KELLEHER NSW 40 Ian MILLER NSW 40 Bill MAGUIRE NSW 40 Michael METCALFE QLD 40 Stephen DUFF Vic 40 Matthew CLARKE-BRUCE NSW 40 Andrew CORNFORD NSW 40 John PUSELL NSW 40 Murray COOPER NSW 40 Mark PIGRAM NSW 40 Dean HAMMOND NSW 40 Craig SEIGNOIR Vic 40 Ross LAVIS NSW 40 David TOSLAND NSW 40 David STEWART NSW 40 Steven PIETRASZKIEWICZ NSW 40 David DE LUCA NSW 40 Neil GREEN NSW 40 Michael PASSAU NSW 40 Jamieson COOTE 40 Jason DUNNE NSW 40 Matt WHEATLEY NSW 40 Dean HAMILTON NSW 40 Andrew WALKER NSW

Again, it depends on the price. I use a couple of Cortland lines. A 444SL Crystal tip sink tip 4wt and a QD175 fast sink. Both of these perform very well. The el-cheapo Cortlands at K Mart etc are not much chop though

A real bargain set up is the Gillies rod. I think they still retail for less than a hundred bucks, and they cast very well. Some very good fly anglers I know have bought them as back-up rods for their trips. The 5 weight casts a treat, and is all you'll need for a trout starter, match it to a nice cheap clicker drag reel, and spend as much as you can afford on a good line. Cheap rods and reels can be OK, but most cheap lines really hinder the learning curve.

Hi GM, A tip for you. The elbow in the first shot is straight out of the box. If you take it off and cut the end at 45 degrees it will pick up water much better when you are travelling.

On Spin reels I use Fireline, up to 14lb is OK, and breaks at about 28lb. The Fins is a bit too soft to use on a Spin Reel. On Baitcasters, I mainly use Bionic Braid now. The new 8lb for light work, 20lb for heavier Spinnerbaits and 30 and 50lb for Barra stuff. If you've got a spare couple of reels, with no line on them, wind you braid straight onto the spool of the chronarch and then add mono till the spool is full. Wind the mono off onto one reel then the braid onto another. Wind the mono back onto the Chronarch and join to the braid with a bimini twist and albright. Don't try to tie the braid directly to the Chronarch spool as it will slip.

To save stress on fish lifting them in and out of the well to upgrade, I've always used a float system, with numbers on them. Cheap as chips to make. 5 Red/White plastic floats. Five Large brass snap swivels with the wire bit sharpened. 5 bits of string about a foot long. hood the sap throught the fish's lip. Just use a Nikko pen to mark the floats 1 to 5 and have a note book to record the weights of each fish with the float number. You get a bigger fish than what's in the note book, grab that numbered float out of the well, and the Bream comes out with it. Let him go and hook the float to the new fish and write down the new weight.

Hi Snag, I've had a couple. I first got the Berkley digitals, worth about $30.00. They only go to one decimal place. I got rid of them, and now have a set of Shimano Digitals. These have ten memories so you can record each of the fish in you bag and identify quickly which is the lightest. The Shimano are a 14kg rating I think, and retail at around $100.00. Should be available from any Shimano dealer.

Put it this way, last year I spent half my income on Fishing gear, cheap booze and loose women. The rest I just wasted!!!

or download from www.irfanview.com it also allows resizing. I normally go to 700 pixels wide.

Maybe layout isn't as important as horsepower. At least with this one you could stand on the cowls if you needed more room.

hmmmmmmmm this'll do!!

I think you'd find that if outboard manufacturers made the cav plate bigger on motors, they'd break fairly easily. The legs are cast alloy. I have heard of a cav plate cracking because of a foil, but I'm not sure the driver of the boat knew how to use the trim button. As far as foils correcting porpoising problems, I don't subscribe to that theory. My hornet has a permatrim on it, and at full noise and full trim the permatrim is over an inch out of the water, so it does nothing. They are an excellent device for three main reasons. The boat will plane at a lower speed, and not bury the bum on take off. The boat will hold plane at a lower speed, and not bury the bum when slowing up. The foil assists in making the boat more stable at rest lengthwise. (Cut a piece of ply wood the same size as a foil and try to move it up and down under water, and you'll see why they help)

Hi Pedro, we didn't stop stocking as such. We decided to not put any Bass in Somerset this year. DPI&F are supposedly holding some meetings with interested parties to look at the commercial competition permit system. With the SIP system in Qld., we must spend the money on fingerlings. What wasn't spent on Bass will be put to good use on Saratoga and Mary River Cod, which will develop breeding populations in Somerset. 20,000 Golden Perch went into Somerset last week, and there are Silvers on their way.

When we (Somerset & WivenhoeFish Stocking Ass.) release Bass fingerlings, we have to spread them around a bit and we have permission from the Water Board to use our petrol engines for releases. The photo was taken as we were releasing 23,000 baby bass. Steve Morgan from the ABT kindly donated his services to assist on the day. This photo shows Steve with the net, and Gary Fitzgerald (President of SWFSA) releasing some of the fingerlings

Yep, it's Mulwala on the Murray. I grew up down that way, and went down there for a family Christmas. Had to do a spot of fishin' with my big bro while I was there

That's Steve Morgan's boat. Yep pretty exciting!!!