fragmeister

I have a theory on this for what its worth... Fish in the surf are chasing food that is moving around a lot more... they dart in and out of the gutters and wash and I think it makes them take baits more aggressively. Cheers Jim

Great haul and a nice reward for the effort in tough conditions. Do you find they bite more aggressively in the bigger swells?

Too right mate! Yakkas are in the same class. They are all closely related I suspect. I take my trevally fillet them and slice off the boneless top of the fillet for sashimi. This is a quick and delicious feed when I get home from fishing. I pin bone the bottom of the fillet and cook them up in beer batter later on. Cheers Jim

Headed out into the harbour on Friday. Pretty much the same routine for me. Head out early catch some yakkas and squid ( although I missed out of the squid this time) Fished around the markers off Rose bay. Plenty of trevaly and bream around. Put a few live baits out with no takers. Water temperature was around 18 degrees. Cruised around looking for salmon schools to no avail. Stopped at sow & pigs with the tide running out and burleyed up. Dropped unweighted baits down the burley trail and caught a few good sized bream. Went over the the point off the quarantine station a saw one of the fishing guides there so I thought this was a good sign. I anchored a reasonable distance from him and cast out a dead squid on one rig and a weighted live yakka on the other. I could see the tour guide was using squid baits and was pulling a few in but I can't be sure what they were... they could have been small jew. My squid bait and my yakka bait went off at the same time but there was clearly more weight on the yakka bait. I picked up the rod and started the retrieve. It was a big fish but a slow and steady run as if it was not sure that it was hooked so I gave it a short sharp hit to set the hook and to wake it up hoping it would show some signs of being a decent jew. But no... just more of the same even powerful run so I am thinking a big ray or a shark. After a fight a bit reminiscent of pulling a sand bag up from the bottom a Wobbegong of about 1.5 meters was the result. I got him in closer, pulled the hook out and sent him on his way. In the meantime the other rod was still holding a fish but without much fight left so I reeled that in and there was a nice flathead which I kept for a feed along with a few bream. Saw some interesting wildlife while I was there including a seal lazing around on the rocks and a turtle bobbing around on the surface. I trolled around the headlands for a while both on the surface and down rigging but no luck on the pelagics. Typical of my Sydney Harbour trips of late I have no trouble catching a feed but I wouldn't mind a fish raider record or even a PB for that matter! Next time perhaps. Cheers Jim

Fantastic! Thats an impressive catch and what a battle you had. 10 out of 10 for patience when it was holding up inside the structure. Cheers Jim

I believe that is the case. The cutting of jobs is in their unprofitable market sectors. They are increasing the number of days parcels are delivered to cope with the volume.

Cracker Night... You know why they called it that... because it was a cracker of a night! Even though it frightened the children Even though it scared the hell out of the dog Even though I blew up things I shouldn't have Even though I kicked a ball shooter and it went up the leg of my pants and near burn't off the wedding tackle Ah yes... cracker night... one of my favourite memories. On the queens birthday for the last 5 years or so you may have seen a rocket set off from Deeban Spit in Port Hacking. (We kept a few big rockets we bought in Canberra). Not sure if we have any left but if we do that will be me and the camping mates. You won't see us because we will be hiding from the park rangers like a bunch of 12 year old school boys. Ah boys.... we never grow up really. Cheers Jim P.S Thanks for the post Ryder. Great topic.

I was there collecting bait a few weeks ago and a guy on the wharf was catching these. Kingy Candie he called them. Looks like that is a bit of a nursery for the squid. Cheers

No mate. There is a problem. Cheers Jim

Was collecting live bait last week and after getting a dozen or so Yakkas I motored accross to Camp Cove to target squid. I was having a little trouble with the spot lock on the Minn Kota so I was distracted immmediately after a squid jig cast landed over the kelp beds. I just put my squid rod in the rod holder without winding in and attended to the remote control. About 30 seconds later I picked up the rod and there was weight on it and a nice bait sized calamari attached. After about 5 minutes and numerous cast and retrieves I could see that I was drifting so I put the rod down immeditaley after a cast and again attended to the remote control which was hanging down from the rocket launcher. I fixed the issue and again picked up my rod and the same thing happened... another bait sized Calamari. This leads me to belive that as long as you get the squid jig near them and allow them to sink naturally you will catch your fair share of squid. I tend to think that place, shape and movement rather than colour are the most important factors It also suggest that even though I do reasonable well when I fish for squid I would probably do a lot better making sure that my retreives are slower and the jig is always allowed to sink back down to the kelp. Cheers Jim

Good read. Heading to the port this weekend. We camp at Bonnievale every couple of months. I fish from the spit for flathead. Thoght about taking the boat this time as I have never done that before. Not real sure about the the "boat ramp" that is there. Looks like a little bit of challenge getting the boat down to the water. Any experience with this? Cheers Jim

I have read some people use them when anchored with dead baits but if you have a live bait it is more likely to wrap itself around the bomb cable. Cheers Jim

I have a 6lb bomb. It works pretty well all round. Sometime the down riggers come with a chart that shows you how deep it will really run based on trolling speed and the weight of the bomb because they always run less than vertical. The lighter the bomb or the faster the trolling speed the shallower they will actually run compared to the down rigger depth meter. If you have a sounder that is very handy because a larger bomb will show up on the screen and you will know what depth it is running at anyway. That's the ultimate of course. Cheers and good luck with the new down rigger... they open up a lot of new possibilities. Jim

Cool! I belive that the Nauticraft are not a boat builder as such. They sell this technology to other boat builders... this boat appears to be for their promos. Still... I think I need one!

Well done fellas. You certainly got around today. Cheers

That looks like it just below the weir.... Didn't know they were building that. I am sure I came trough there a couple of months ago. When did they start construction?

Fished the harbour from about 4am to 3pm for a mixed bag. Started off by getting some yakkas at Rose Bay Wharf. Went looking for squid at Camp Cove ... just one Calamari before the sun started to rise. Fished the sticks with yakkas but no kings around. Moved to the spit. No kings there for me either... lots of pinkies but nothing to keep. Moved over to sow and pigs on the turn of the tide at found a few legal trevalies. Moved back to the sticks and dropped a live bait over. Not much happening so I sent out some burley and dropped an unweighetd squid bait in the burley trail. Still more Trevs. Pretty soon my rod bent over double and it was obvious there was a rat king on the end but I couldn't stop him heading into the structure. Couldn't get another rat no matter how hard I tried. Thought about using the squid but decided I would eat it instead. Picked up a decent bream which I kept. Batteries ran flat on the iPilot so I was set adrift and accidentally picked up this blue swimmer on a yakka fillet. [ Went home about 3PM, cleaned the boat and had a feed, Used the calamari for salt and pepper squid Baked the bream in foil for the missus Cooked up the blue swimmer using a Matt Moran recipe I found on YouTube ...it was bloody delicious! Bit blowy but a great day really. I love fishing!

Yes, this is a bit odd. My son asked me the same question. I am familiar with taping that runs along the muscle from the shoulder which protects from over extension and stabilizes the muscle but his goes around the muscle. I would like to know the answer too.

Nervous end to the game hey! Never seen a worse knock on decision in my life... could have resulted in a NSW loss. Still.. we won. That's all that matters... Lets hope all the shoulder injuries recover by the next game.

I have caught squid off the rocks at the south end of Deeban spit ( the north end of Horden's Beach) but all the best places are on the other side of the Port.

I'm with you buddy! I have my own business so I have some flexibility. I like to take Fridays off for fishing (meetings or training I call it...shhhhh) and it usually ends up being a 3 am start and I am not back until the sun goes down. I work from home on Mondays but if the conditions are right I can't stand looking at the computer screen so I ditch the company accounts and nick off to harbour in the boat for a fish. Whenever I can get the kids out I get a weekend trip in too. Sometimes I feel a little guilty for neglecting my work but that passes a soon as I hit the water! Sometimes I have to work longer hours to catch up but its all worth it. Addicted ... hell no.. I call it committed!

Great fish on light gear. Well done!

Hi FishingGuy, I have seen this too apparently it is caused by bioluminescent plants and animals. My dad used to recon that if this was prominent it would wreck the fishing for the night but I don't really notice any difference. Pretty cool though.

One of my favourite fish. Aggressive, hard fighting ... a lot of fun. They say when the first fleet arrived they would turn the rivers black they were so numerous... imagine that. In later years they were so overfished that they became rare north of Eden. Because the commercial canning industry collapsed they eventually bounced back. ... another lesson in the problems commercial fishing causes. Cheers Jim

I agree, getting a half decent fillet means a lot of wastage. Take a look at this link for using the fish more economically. http://www.fishraider.com.au/Invision/index.php?showtopic=57060 Cheers Jim