shane87

There are 2 types of mullet that you will catch in the nepean up at penrith. Bully mullet and freshies which have a much smaller head. I used to catch them a few years back at yarramundi and use them for shark baits when chasing tigers. If you get into a run of bigger fish around the 1-2kg mark they are great fun on light line amongst all the weed that is choking the river up that way.

The blanks that were asked about in the first post are not the butterworth range that you have reffered to. The (FSU) 4144 and 5144 are a completely different blank to the (mt) 4144-9144 that were made by butterworth and are still made by snyder and killwel. The FSU range is a lot faster and heavier than the comparable MT

If you can get your hands on one of the old american made penn 9500 spinfishers then you will be set for many years. Not sure on how the new ones stack up against the old faithfull yank ones.

Are you after a 12 ft blank or will 10ft do the trick. If you want the shorter rod with maybe a short extension in the bottom then have a look at one of the live fibre bz10lmc blanks. They were modelled on the fsu 5120 blank but are made with graphite and have a much lighter and more sensative tip with heaps of low down grunt.

Drummer fishing can be very addictive although i only fish for them during the colder months when there seems to be a few more around and not as many other fish to keep me entertained. Ab gut has been the best bait for me over the past few years but i have also caught them on peeled prawns, cunje and small bits of bread when fished with a good bread burley trail. I fish the rocks on the southern side of barrenjoey quite a bit and have found that the fish really only come on the chew on a run up tide even if we burley very heavily they seem to switch on on the run up. Another area that i fish a lot is on the central coast around bateau bay and towoon bay and have had some great days on the drummer with the odd tackle busting groper thrown in for good measure. Great fun and hard to beat on the table will have me chasing pigs for a long time to come. Cheers Shane.

Gee the water looks good in those 2 photos. No surprise to hear that there are plenty of fish up at the bay at the moment.

Spoke to a charter skipper from SWR today and things are getting a little better with a few fish on the close grounds but with 40plus boats chasing marlin there are still plenty coming home empty handed. There have been a few wahoo,rat fin and the odd mackeral around however the cobia seem to playing fair at the moment. Heading up in a few days for 3 days fishing so hopefully it keeps getting better.

I have caught a few small jew up to 4kg in joe crafts creek over in the deeper water near the rock wall. As for the sharks i have been bitten off a few times in berowra but never had a real go at catching them. Out the front near lion island at this time of year we have had some great nights chasing sharks and landed hammers up to 7ft or around 40kg whalers of similar length just a lot heavier and hooked something one night that we busted off after 2hrs on stand up 15kg when we realised he may have been a bit big for the 15ft centre console.

The entrance runs 2 hours after the tide chart and with daylight savings add another hour. The best time to prawn is between 7-3 days before the dark. Canton beach is a good option because it is a huge area and can handle more people than the entrance. Early in the season (ie) the first few runs you tend to do better further up the lake at places like elizabeth bay and canton beach and the entrance tends to get better after the feb dark.

NICE WORK MATE LOOKS LIKE YOUR STARTING TO WORK THE PLACE OUT.

Fish the crabs unweighted on a 1 or 1/0 hook and fish fairly heavy. Years ago when we started fishing the area with crabs we used our spinning gear and 6lb leaders and have since moved up to 14lb siglon and all but locked up drag. Not exactly sportsfishing but if u want some fish for a feed its the only way to do it. Largest fish we have landed went 2.16kg gilled and gutted and we have been blown away by plenty of others even on the elephant gun gear that we use. Fish the banks further away from the ramp up towards joe crafts creek and fish the run up tide on the shady side of the river.

If your chasing marlin out of sydney then get yourself good quality lures. Spend the extra money on pakula's, magoo's, topguns or hollowpoints. They will cost you a bit more but pakula's especially are very easy to work in a spread and you will catch more fish. If you are fishing 15kg then the cockroach, medium sprocket or phantom in lumo,evil,stripy,wasp or fuzz are all excellent colours. Don't spend all day and $150.00 in fuel pulling cheap nasty lures around the ocean when a few extra bucks first up will have you enjoying the great marlin fishing that sydney has to offer. Cheers Shane.

I have a good set of salter scales that i use for setting drags but they only go up to 10kg. I guess i am bound to lose a few more of these fish before i really get the hang of it. Cheers again for the tips kelvin i hope to be out again soon putting them into practise.

I was only using 50lb fluorocarbon leader so maybe i should up that to 80-100 and see how that goes. I had the drag on my reel done up as tight as i could and the fish were still melting line of it so when i got home i checked what it was set at and it was 9kg. i'm not exactly sure what a z40 saltiga can handle but i think its more than 9kg's.

I should have my new saltiga loaded with 80 for the next trip so hopefully i can stop a couple more next time.

After reading countless reports of kingfish on this site over the last couple of months today was the day to have a go. We headed into the harbour and had no problem catching plenty of yakka's for bait although the squid decided not to play for us today. With the lack of squid we decided to head outside and slow troll our live yakka's south towards bondi. Not far from the heads we had our first hookup which lasted all of about 20 seconds before being buried into the reef. This happened on our first 4 strikes for the day and had me wondering if i was undergunned using 50lb braid. We continued trolling over a small area and finished with 10 strikes resulting in 4 fish between 55cm and 77cm. Even the biggest fish that we caught today was nothing like the first 4 bustups that we copped early on. Eventually we ran out of livies and with a few fish for the table we called it a day. A quick thankyou to kelvin for all of your tips. Cheers Shane.

We had a double hookup on jellybean yellowfin about 1km from the heads about 4 years ago. We had trolled all the way home from a sharking trip on the shelf and were just about to pull the lures in when they went off. I have a couple of mates that have landed yellowfin up to 25kg from the rocks at north head so if the water and bait come in close enough then anything is possible.

from the photo it looks like the boat is the lauren maree. Most of the charter boats in SWR will have accomodation that can be packaged with the trip.