laddercat

I wouldnt bother with frozen squid. It needs to be caught that day. Especially when fishing outside of the summer months. Secondly you are really going to have a hard time without a sounder. 219 dollars gets you a lowrance hook 4 sounder which has conventional sonar and downscan. Small enough to fit on your yak. A sounder is possible the most important item in downrigging, you can manage without a downrigger you can even manage with subpar tackle and average bait. But without a sounder you are basically flying blind.

Illawarra fished really well on sunday, post full moon,barometer very active and overcast conditions were prime. Pitty about the lack of current. Reports of quite a few 5kg reds being taken off kiama. I boated half a dozen 3kg mowies and panny reds. Also rats kings off the blowhole point. Fly fisherman were into them as well as salmon. Love fishing out of bellambi but i cant deal with the boat ramp anymore its basically a sydney boat ramp these days. Too many people not my thing.

The ATD is just a new drag lubricant DAIWA are using which has different viscosity and thus creates a slightly different initial 'uptake' of drag pressure. Basically imperceptible unless you are fishing very high drag. Even then there is no different feel to UTD as there are no new washers just different lube.

Salmon turn up midway to the end of winter in sydney. School size will increase as it goes into spring.

It is the collateral damage from prawning and netting that hurt mulloway, rather then actual numbers of mulloway taken. Prawning destroys one of the main sources of food for nearly every fish the mulloway predate on. Mulloway stocks wont recover in the hawkesbury until it goes rec only. Time and time again it is proven that estuarine evironments even large bodies of water like the hawkesbury cannot sustain fish stocks under commerical pressure. As previously mentioned beach hauling mullet and bream can wipe entire schools of mature mulloway in a single morning. This to me is outrageous especially considering the pitiful price for bream and mullet. The value is in mullet roe. Commerical fishos will say "oh well forget fresh seafood if you kill commercial netting". Absolute bullshit response as mullet roe has a basically non existent market in australia and it gets exported straight to the Mediterraneann, And show me an Australian that buys bream from the fish market ?? We only have ourself to blame though, the commercial industry makes up a tiny percentage of the population compared to the rec sector. Our inability to organise and make a united front meas we have basically no lobbying power.

Here you go son https://ansa.com.au/senior-gamefishing-records/ Australian records with every tuna you can imagine taken on ludicrously light line classes. Line running quickly off a spool dosent always equate to a hard or challenging fight like you suggest. This is only Australia the IGFA records are even more impressive with larger fish on even lighter lines. You are more then welcome to your opinion on drummer being "an average fight". However i believe you will find overwhelming evidence and consensus that agrees drummer are a very hard pulling challenging species, requiring line classes far heavier then their size would suggest. Their habitat, feeding habits and behavior are very well documented and widely regarded as making them a Very hard fighting fish.

After you have caught a 60cm drummer id love to hear about how they are an average fight. Tuna to massive size and weight can be taken on 3 kilo line given enough capacity. The same cant be said for drummer.

Knife jigs on the deep wrecks do work but you need the boat to get out there. The most reliable and most often used by most of the sydney harbour guides is downrigging squid. I wouldnt spend a huge amount of time trolling for kings in winter, you will get a VERY occasional beast along the cliffs but more often then not you will just catch nothing or salmon. Spend the time catching your squid and mastering that art form and then move to downrigging, the guides do it for a reason and that reason is. It is the most consistent technique in the colder water.

Ive seen very few people target luderick in washes from their boats. Sure ET wasnt chasing drummer ? closely related. Far superior as a sport fish and table fish in my onion. Pull harder go harder and less likely to have the weed taint. Also the old blokes you talk about chasing luderick in storm conditions sound more like drummer. In The annual eastern lowes around the start of winter, luderick schools up in harbours and bays and fisherman target them there rather then on the exposed rock faces where drummer are more prolific. It is VERY hard to chase luderick when a storm and swell hit a certain point because line lay and float management become extremely difficult. Compare this to drummer where you can fish largely by feel with a sinker directly to the hook. Flathead werent considered a table fish until more recently and whiting were considered a fish for the elderly now they both cost a fortune and are targeted elusively by certain anglers. Multiculturalism has been one of the greatest gifts to fishing and seafood australia ever received, japanese and migrants from the Mediterranean have shared their vast wealth of knowledge on which fish to eat and how to prepare. A shame the 60's and 70's were spent raping southern bluefin and yellowfin because they were considered easy targets and used for cat food and fertilizer. You could drive from bermagui harbour or twofold bay to the continental shelf across one giant school of migrating bluefin. Yellowfin could be seen along the entire south coast chasing bait as close in as just behind the surf zone. Our ignorance and arrogance toward certain species has condemned them. Now personally i realize there are very few 'trash table fish' nearly every species is consumed by some ethnicity or community using techniques which can produce incredible flavour. On the topic of overfishing if the NSW DPI dont rectify luderick and drummer bag sizes in the future we might be once again reflecting on our ignorance. Luderick and drummer have seen an absolute incredible surge in popularity as sport fish and table fish and bag limits of 10 per person are ludicrous. Not to mention now with the advent of high performance spinning reels and graphite rods these species are accessible to nearly any angler regardless of experience or skill. Fishing pressure will only increase.

A few tips not mentioned in articles often include rod choice and rod work. Graphite rods really are not all that great for drummer unless you are using ISO rods which start at around the 400 mark. I would suggest using fibreglass or my personal favourtie composite. A soft rod tip is incredibly important. The mono filament and soft rod work in unison to absorb the runs from the drummer. This is also where a Lever brake spin reel or LBD reel or Alvey are seriously superior to a standard spin reel. I will use an alvey as an example because they are far cheaper and more readily available. Now many guys will say you get your 20lb mono and you tighten your spin reel down until you cant pull line. You hook the drummer and when it pulls you pull harder. While this can work, you are effectively losing alot of the art and skill employed by generations of fisherman before us, Where a locked down drag on a spin reel will bust off on a drummer the direct wind instant free spool of an alvey means u can instantly give a drummer line. Not only this but if you want to give absolutely no line, you simply grab the handles. You can go from locked up to zero drag instantly and repeat the process at a moments notice. Spin reels just do not have this ability. The fisherman from yesteryear werent simply skull dragging drummer like we so often hear today is the way to do it. They were using their long sloppy rods and expert drag management on their alveys to play drummer out. Outside of playing a fish an alvey also offers you the ability to apply more advanced techniques like managing line lay down current line and managing line with surging swell. The ability to feed line out at will means you arent constant dragging baits out of the strike zone from wind and surge. Lastly i would say with drummer you dont strike bites you dont strike at anything until the rod is basically already loaded up. Your initial strike should be violent and high, often pausing and holding at the top of the strike to hold the fishes head up. Accomplished rock anglers use alot of side strain on drummer, drummer will dive down and away. After your initial strike to lift their heads, you should proceed to lower the rod and work side strain onto the fish. Continuing a generic pump and wind up and down motion will put the most amount of strain on the line, as you are effectively pulling directly against the direction of the fish. Placing side pressure gives the chance for the long rod and stretching line to cushion the strain. Have fun, targeting drummer from the boat gives you massive advantages over landbased and puts you a real chance of landing the 50cm plus models.

Live baits reign supreme for large mulloway. If you are chasing size and consistency live baits of any kind out fish dead baits everytime. I have used yakkas extensively and have had great success. Mainly slide baiting. Large Mulloway have short bite periods because how successfully they can predate. I dont believe they are particularly fussy in variety. They are just fussy on quality. I have found leatherjackets, flounder, sand crabs smaller jew and snapper in the belly of Jewish. This time of year is good for live baiting because bronzies and other sharks are far less common. I use a 'lawn cart' you can get them at bunnings or masters. To haul a 80l tub and 12v battery and pump along the beach. Other live baits i use regularly include WInter:Tailor, Salmon, Squid Summer: Whiting, Bream Slimeys Also if you are near a breakwall Luderick this time of year are high on a Jews menu.

Fished the rock ledges in the illawarra region post storm for the biggest and most numerous run of snapper ive had in more then 5 years. none smaller then 55cm and hit over 15 fish each day thursday friday and saturday. All of them came on fresh tailor strip baits. I also took the jet ski out saturday afternoon to fish the in shore reefs in 15-20m and boated 2 jew. All the tailor jew bream etc have fled the estuary and the fresh and are on the headlands and inshore reefs. Every snapper i caught was bloated and football shaped.Gorging themselves on all the debris and estuary escapees. Same goes for the Jew, The tailor i was spinning up for bait was coming in 20m of water on a rock ledge. Nearly an endless supply of 20cm models with a few 30-40cm models about.

Hi mate, your old jarvis walker was probably fibreglass, fibreglass loads much more slowly through the blank giving a very 'sloppy' feel. What this means is when fishing bait a fish bites and takes a run and the slow sloppy action of the rod allows the fish to more easily hook itself. Any input or 'strike' from the angler is recieved a fraction later at the fishes end because of the slow nature of the blank ( blank meaning rod blank ). Now that you have a new graphite rod you are feeling bites and runs more easily as the graphite communicates these more subtle interactions from the fish more easily through the blank to the angler. Any input or strike is much more immediate, meaning you are literally pulling the hook from the fishes mouth before it gets a real good run on it. The second element is monofilament versus braid, first of all braid was not designed to be fished with for finese bait presentations. Bait fishing is generally not considered a finese approach however when fishing for bream whiting etc sing finesse presentations such as light leaders minimal lead and 'delicate' bait. Braid can assist as it provides much higher breaking strain at lower diameter. Lower diameter means increased sink rate and harder for fish to see. The negative of braid in this equation is its no stretch nature wherebv when you strike if the fish is running you exert maximum force on the hook resulting in pulled hooks in some situations. Monofilament in this scenario may stretch providing that split second longer for the hook to set rather then pull. Therefore going from fibreglass and mono to graphite and braid anglers will often strike too early or strike on bites rather then on runs. To remedy this try and give the fish more of a chance to take and run with the the bait before striking. Also remember not to strike as hard. 6lb is a great strength of braid for bream bait fishing i would suggest matching it to at least 1m of 6lb flurocarbon the FG knot is widley considered to be the best for strength however a double uni will suffice for starting out. Goodluck mate

The exist is really a tournament largemouthbass reel, where the morethan is a Seabass shore based reel. Think of a seabass as a medium sized jewie in terms of dimensions and power. Exist has the newest Auto drag system which helps with finesse size lines and avoiding breakage on intial strikes, it will have better line lay and communicate more feel through the body to the angler for finesse presentations. The Branzino is the pinnacle of daiwas medium salt game lineup both for landbased seabass and boat. It has stronger internal gearing as mentioned and a more rigid denser body. the branzino is the winner in this scenario for your chosen style of fishing. If money is no obstacle go ahead and buy one. A certate will do nearly as good of a job A luvias will do nearly as good of a job. Then there is a significant performance drop to the caldia range, although these are still very nice reels. another reel to consider is the Daiwa XFIRE 3012h a mid tier reel positioned in the same category as the branzino but of less quality etc. Lastly if your using a 3012h on Kings i would suggest getting the thinnest pe braid you can afford daiwa just released the first 12 strand braid in japan with pe 1 coming in around 22lb, 3012h arent a huge capacity spool so you will need to maximise the amount of line you have on the spool.

Nice kings always fun on the jigging gear. Why keep the samson ?

Bithry is a tidal inlet about 20 minutes north of tathra salmon all year round much bigger models in winter obviously and during summer usual suspects like flathead and bream. Wouldn't bother chasing bream or flatties till he water warms up there though at the moment at 13 degrees the salmon are loving it though

Much better then I've been doing on the plastics lately

More salmon today all coming in less then a metre of water, vac sealed a few of these for snapper bait

Location: Bithrey Inlet, NSW Conditions: 20km southerlly, tide change on high. Water temp 13 Gear : daiwa SeaBass 11ft 7-15kg , daiwa ballistic 3000, 15 lb braid 60lb fluorocarbon leader. Lure: 45gm tweaked spanyard custom trebles and siliconed split ring. Fishing far south coast again , decided to fish Nelson's lagoon and Bithrey inlet in hope of tailor or some sneaky bream, after spending roughly 2'hours at both places for donuts using vibes and plastics . I thought alright high tide I'll grab the SeaBass from the car and chuck a slug around tide was perfect for salmon and I had caught small salmon on fly at Bithrey inlet. Second cast was the start of an hour of typical salmon mayhem landed a dozen fish and pulled hooks on another dozen ( despite my stupidly expensive pimped slugs with Japanese trebles ). Most fish were in the 55cm range making a great account of themselves with their characteristic aerials. Biggest landed was an east coast PB for me and went 70cm had the drag screaming and fought as hard as any similar size king I have caught. Found loads of bait in the bellies of the few I kept. I really had hoped to get into the tailor hence the monster 60lb leader but I'll settle for a PB salmon !

Great read very jealous

Middle beach is south of short point north of long point. It is very rarely used even in summer it faces exactly due west and the rocks face exactly north east on the southern end of the beach. DAY 2 Location: eden naval wharf Target species: anything that bites I arrived at the naval wharf south of eden around 6am fishing an upcoming tide. I had with me two daiwa gen blacks both spooled with 4lb Fluro straight through. Also a daiwa saltist hyper LBG 9ft behemoth spooled with 50lb braid 80lb leader. When I'm fishing land based game I generally do away with all notions of fairness and sport. I set the LBG rod up with a half slab of salmon from the night before on Ganges hooks, down rigged about 2 metres, sitting pretty high in the water column. The two smaller rods I threw metals and softs for 20 mins with no takes. By now my burley had finally worked consisting of 8 cans of home brand cat pilchards 69 cents each and soaked bread. Slimiest had turned up EVEB in the middle of winter, it took me bout an hour to catch two slimiest they were being extremely flighty and non committal. With the slimies in the container with aerator I set about setting up a live bait rig with balloon. That's when the LBG. Rod screamed off, the drag was very loose so I knew it sounded better then it likely was. I picked it up and good feel heaps of violent head shakes too fast for a Jew and was taking line way too quick for a ray. Even too quick for a shark really, after I watched about 200 metres of line dissapeared I had th drag at full lock about 12kg th fish was still screaming out, it was this point I realised I had no hope. I couldn't turn it with th line have a breaking strain way higher then the reel. Eventually ping it had rubbed me off on th leader. Fish remains unknown I'm going to say by a few too eratic for a ray too quick not a rat king too much pulling power, I actually have a feeling it may have Been a mako but no aerials. It's speed and the fact it rubbed of 80lb makes me thin mako, they have caught bluefin and albacore off there but I highly doubt that. The remainder of the morning saw me pull it a few small flatties and trevally, while the live bait just continually swam back to the wharf even with me altering rig splits shotting trying to weight him down. Really my heart wasn't in it after the loss of the mystery fish. Having fished everywhere from th tubes to broome landbased a loss of a big fish like that still hits me far harder then any fish I've caught in any other method. Location info: Drive south from eden about 15 km on your way there is a petrol stations slash general store it offers frozn bait a small selection of terminal tackle and ice and food. It opens at 6am. The turn off for the wharf will be on your left called Redon road. The turn off is well sign posted. At the entrance is a big signs aging naval wharf closed or open. Look here first better yet call the harbour master before leaving home and ask if it's open. Drive down dero. Rd until you reach the turn off for the naval wharf. It's about 1km of walking on the wharf itself. You can access water level piers either side of the main wharf. I was fishing it in winter but in summer it is covered in baitfish either way bring burley in summer spinning for bonito Mack's and kings will get you a catch.

Day 1 Location: Middle beach Merimbula Target species: drummer Time : morning Blowing a stiff south westerl meaning the rocks were protected, collected a bag full of cunjevoi found the usual hole full of sand so had to alter the rig to with a float. Was getting hammered by trash fish no drummer to speak of , I decided to take the pants off and go get wet looking for some red crabs. Found five and wouldn't you know landed 5 drummer all 50cm models. All taken on 15lb mono on a 4000 size reel with the drag fastened with pliers. Info for Any raiders : walk down the stairs which lead to the beach and head right, the first rocky outcrop will be where you fish from . Bypass this and continue around the headland until you reach a small rocky bay where you can gather cunjevoi and red crabs. Be prepared to get wet around this rock bay is prime groper Territory here is a groper taken from here a few years ago by the old man. When there is no swell or bright conditions I fish this ledge I have taken leather jackets wrasse groper drummer and groper all from here, also bonito. For monster bream and drummer you fish the initial rocky outcrop I mentioned before. I would advise only fishing this id you are a confident rock angler, I have been drenched more times then I can recall, however all my biggest bream and drummer have come from here. Location: tura beach Target species: salmon Perfect conditions surf is breaking approx 80m out making a giant butter running the length of the beach. I had with me a brand me daiwa lateo 11ft which haven't hit stores yet matched to the new blast. A blast is what I had, landed 6 salmon within an hour on 60gm metals. Kept two for slab baits. Info for for any raiders: From the car park you walk directly to the beach walk takes about 3 minutes, nearly every afternoon will have a fisherman already there with his rod holder and hanged pillies. First thing to do is ask them if they have caught any ? If they have chances are they are fishing in a gutter, this is a great way to identify gutters if your are a beginner. Now all you do is cast as far as is possible and steadily retrieve the metal, work it to your feet as quite often hooks ups will happen metres from the shore. If you get tired from all the casting simply walk and sit a little way from the bait fishos. Watch them and as soon as they hook up throw your lure In, generally if they re hooked up a school is passing through that gutter. A trick which does piss some bait fishos off when you start pulling fish out right next to them. Days 2 3 and 4 to come

They grow huge in the states aswell where they call the' bluefish. Also been a hand full of metre plus models taken in st georges basin. Fishing world about as legit as it gets here's a 120cm model http://www.fishingworld.com.au/news/massive-tailor-landed-in-nsw

Picked up three flathead all over 45cm Two snapper both undersize And a school Jew. All taken on garbage servo prawns, I jigged vertically with two styles of blade tried three different profile of soft and worked metals from sunrise till 11am nothing on any lure. As far as I can tell gate is left open the night prior by harbour master if a naval ship is scheduled to leave, I was there at 5:30 and it was open. Bottom is snagless lightly weeded sand flats running into deeper channels. You can get to water level via side stairs it's lead to water level platforms.

Anyone have any facts at all about the naval wharf. Im down here visiting family and am heading to the naval wharf tomorrow for a spin and maybe a live bait. Does anyone know what time the gates open, i have checked the schedule on their website and its open tomorrow just not sure what time. I have aerator container all setup for livebaiting and ive set up a 10ft deep jigging outfit for some heavy vibes i want to try. also of course smaller metal outfits to spin salmon tailor and lastly some small outfits for bait. I know its winter so Tuna and Kingies probably wont happen but it cant hurt to try right ? Any last minute info would be a lifesaver.