andysinmexico

Never eaten a yakka but years ago while attending the blesing of the fleet at nelson bay the crowd had burleyed up a massive school of slimeys due to the number of prawn heads and shells going into the drink. A few handlines promptly appeared and as quick as they were being hauled in they were getting butterflied and popped onto a hot bbq. Little squeeze of lemon and quite pleasant to. Cheers Andy

Awesome effort, great to see kids getting out there, these are the kinds of experiences that set a kid up for life

Great pics mate, on the topic of no gear i can sympathise, my work has me by the coast a fair bit of the time so i have learnt from disappointment to keep a small two piece rod and a couple of lures in the car for such emergencys.

Great news mate cheers for the headsup.

Would perhaps be best to consult Yamaha as they are the folks who designed and built the motor, i would be inclined to go along with them, however most 2 strokes ive played with have been 40:1 or 50:1 . Cheers Andy

Fantastic effort mate, a fine and tasty result. In regards to the bones, yes they have lots but you can eat them and heres how : Once you have scaled and gutted the fish i place it on its back then spread out the gut flaps then use a rolling pin or other cyclindrical object to "roll" the fish sort of flat or butterfly it, given a bit of practice you can also remove the backbone as well. Then a quick coating of flour and then cook in a little oil until the flaps are crunchy, you can then eat the bones relatively hassle free ! Cheers Andy

Lmao Gday David how are you ? Unfortunately once you do something you like for a living it becomes work and that isnt cool so i will stay an enthusiastic amatuer. Cheers Andy

I think it depends on where you are fishing and for what size king. If im off the wharf and theres lots of structure i go heavier and longer (up to 2M) in case they wrap me around a pylon, off the boat i generally use around 1M . Would be interested to hear other thoughts. Cheers Andy

There are many formats which can be used to express an identical position on the earth. The most improtant aspect is the DATUM e.g. WGS 84 or AUS66, most GPS marks available on the net unless specified will be WGS84 which is the standard DATUM or formula for charplotters/GPS systems on boats. If you enter an AUS66 coordinate into a WGS84 system you will be off the mark by over 100M. Now to the actual mark, depending on you GPS system it could be : 38°57'33.804 which is DD MM SS.sss or degrees minutes seconds .(thousanths of seconds) or 38°57'.804 DD MM .(thousanths) which is also referred to as degrees decimal minutes. Note the position (on your sounder) of the ° " ' symbols and from there you will have the format. Then any GPS mark you find or are given you can compare to the format in your system and adjust it using the convert coordinates website or wok it out manually. i.e 38°57'.804 = 38°57'48".240 by multiplying the .804 (the decimal) by 60 to convert it to seconds from decimal minutes. If you take a picture of your your GPS showing a location i can verify the format if you like and point you in the right direction. Cheers Andy

I have attached a screen shot of my google earth off port stephens

G'day Hooked up, their is a much easier way to do this using the following website (hope it is allowed to post short cuts but this will save every one a lot of time) http://www.earthpoint.us/Convert.aspx Then simply enter your co-ordinates in the lat and long boxes then click "view on google earth" This will open a "pop up" dialog to download a .KMZ file, click on this file to open it. This will open google earth (if not already open) you can then right click on the new way point and rename it. I have a paid subscription to this site so i can do bulk uploads via an excel document. Once you have them all in google earth remember to save "your places" by going to "file" - "save" - "save my places" This will create a ".KML" file in your default google earth folder (on computer) this location will depend on what version of windows you are running so you can just google its location. This is where the fun and beauty of google earth comes in, you can now COPY this .KML file to a new folder and begin to play with it. Download EASY GPS (free off net) and use this to open your new copied .kml file once open zoom into the area you are interested in and copy and save the waypoints by left clicking and dragging to select and then save your selection to a new .GPX file. I know this is long winded but now you can open up the newly created .GPX file with a program called GPS BABEL (also free off net) and use this to convert the .GPX file format to a format that your Boats chart plotter can use in my case for a Lowrance HDS7 it is a .USR4 file. Once converted insert an SD (or whatever memory card will fit your sounder) into the card reader of your computer, you can then copy to this card and then import all these waypoints to your plotter. These programs require a little practice and a little trail and error but the results are well worth it. Any questions please feel free to PM me. Cheers Andy

Good report mate, always good to try new things. It is interesting but in the united states they use tailor or bluefish as they call them for live baiting tuna. Cheers Andy

great effort mate and what a quality feed !

Cracking bream mate, all the big oldies are moving back in now after their run

Beautiful fish mate and great to hear the water is on the improve

G'day mate, gar fish are easy to attract and easier to catch. To burley them up buy bran from the supermarket, this is better than bread as it gets them going but wont attract birds which could potentially spook them. Gar fish generally love calmer water and you will generally find them in areas which also hold squid, once you get your burley trail going they will actively follow it up current. Once they are feeding i prefer using a suicide fly hook, cant think of the exact size but it is about half the size of my little finger nail, this is suspended about 30-40 cm below a float, i generally use a slice of wine cork for this and an elastic band tied to the line above and below to hold it in place so that i can adjust as necessary. The best bait i have found is just tiny pieces of prawn but i believe bread and squid will also work. Good luck hope this helps as there is nothing tastier than a feed of beakies. Cheers Andy

Great effort mate for a quality fish, one of these years i will put in the time to try for a beach jewie.

Awesome feed mate, bread and butter fishing at its finest

thanks for the report mate

Jackets have ruined many a day live baiting for mulloway, a couple of weekends ago we had a solid band of them 15M off the bottom and they were taking everything, even the swivels were getting eaten.

Sounds like an awesome day out mate and a great feed to boot !

Well done mate, people (particularly tourists and those from other countries) have some weird ideas about how dangerous water can be. Had to help rescue a guy from the surf at Birubi before it was a patrolled beach, moderate surf but he was in a rip and just bouncing up and down, i got to him and kept him up until a surfer came and took him in, after he regained his composure he said he COULDN'T SWIM and had just gone in to refresh himself before the current had taken him, very lucky. Further to this theme a mate of mine works on tourist boats on the barrier reef and he said it is now mandatory for foreign passengers to wear life jackets when in the water as due their cultures need to save face they will say they can swim which led to too many close calls. The worst part about these situations is not the fact that there was potentially another darwin award given out but the fact that some one who is doing the right thing then has to risk their life to render asistance. Cheers Andy

Nice one mate, not a king but it still gets the blood pumping on hook up

G'day guys, bit of a late post but better late than never. Managed to get a late notice flex day and was able to take the boat to Port Stephens last friday, with the weather looking perfect for Saturday morning a cunning plan was hatched to head up to Broughton and chase Jewies and snapper on the sponge beds south of the island. My primary decky (the wife) managed to twang her back so an emergency call was sent out to a few raiders for decky duty without any luck as every one was working (always the way when the weathers perfect) but thanks for the replies guys. Ended up launching by myself before 4am from soldiers point and headed out to my favourite spot without incident on a beautifully calm sea with next to no wind. Initially had a lot of trouble anchoring on my marks as the wind and the current were cancelling each other leaving me to do lazy circles around and above my rope. Managed to put a couple of livies down and then started stuffing around with a SP. As soon as my SP was on the bottom the livies started going nuts !! i quickly dropped the sp rod and checked the first livie, limp nothing there brought it up nothing left, checked the other same deal but the hook was gone also, re-rigged another livie and slowly lowered it poor thing lasted until about 15M from the bottom and then it was gone, the sounder was showing a solid band of something at about this depth so i rigged a couple of long shank hooks with squid and sent them down. My suspicions were confirmed about 30 seconds later i was on and brought up a bloody chinaman jacket, at this point my sp rig went limp too, tried to perservere for another half an hour but i was donating too much tackle to these mongrels so i pulled the pick and headed wide. By this stage the sun was up and i could se that the water in close was a green tinge with lots of stingers/jellyfish, water temp was 18.2 in close, i found blue water on the 50 fathom line which was 19.8 degrees but there was still a lot of algae present. I was able to drift in 50 fathom pretty much straight up and down without the sea anchor i was only going .2 Knots so ideal but just no fish showing on the sounder or taking baits, ended up trying a few known spots on 50 fathom before heading to springers then 3 mile, a flatty spot further west produced spikys, then tried drifts across 21 and outer 21 with no baits lost and ended up back at my original starting spot. The wind and current were still working against each other but the current had picked up so i dropped the anchor and then put out 2 sea anchors to put some tension on my anchor so i wasn't fishing over it. This worked but it was still covered in jackets so after an hour i admitted defeat and headed home. A great day on the water unfortunately lacking in fish, if i had known conditions would be that good/stable it might have been worth a run to Allmark. Cheers Andy

Well done mate another quality fish