GregL

Hi Reel Blue How old is your motor? My Etec (225HO) used a fair bit of oil in the first 30-40hr of use but now (65hr) seems to have leaned back alot! Same with fuel to, at the start we were only getting 3 trips per tank now it's at least 5. Oil smell dies off when the oil consumption drops to. Greg

Sorry to hijack the post but always wondered with the rod holder on the down rigger, are they capable of holding 10kg of drag with a screaming king on the other end or are they just for lighter applications? I wanted to stick 2 down riggers on the bass boat but can't put rod holders into the gunnels because of the shape(not flat). I was thinking of mounting them to the back of the rear casting platform. Greg

Hi My boat is only drive on and off. It has 2 skids covered in carpet. I can unhook the boat with some one in it, reverse down the ramp, sink the trailer to the wheel arches and then the person starts her up and reverses it off. All done in under half a min. To drive on, the boat self centres on the skids and can be adjusted while driving the boat on by slight turn of the steering wheel. Stops when you drive it onto the winch post. Car driver drives up ramp, no need to hook it up or get your feet wet! With the boat sitting on carpet it wont slide or anything. You can't even wind the boat up with the winch if it's out of the water. Not sure of the reasoning but they only seem to use this system on glass ski and bass boats. Greg

Excellent catch Arp1980 and son! Mate best thing to do is get an old light rod or just buy one of tho's $20 kits for the back yard. Wack on a rubber casting plug and make it a game for you and your son to cast at buckets out the back or down the park. My son started when he was 3, by 5 he was very good at casting and could land it within a couple of feet every cast. Now 7 he can flick light lures under trees and skip plastics under structure at will! Good luck to the two of you and hopefully we will see ya up there one day! Greg

Hi Pete My fav bream popper! Did ok with them on the bass to. Twitch the rod tip and you can walk em slow, great for when you deep in the cover and you know a fish is in there. Greg

74 footer that does 40 knots!

Nice one Andrew and Mark. The way you two are going it wont be long till you get those podium finishes! Greg

Nice Tuna guys, conditions look superb. Bob you must be knackered! That's a BIG day out mate. A big day out for a lazy bream spinner like me is a 8 hour day in total!

HAHAHA Buz! That's funny, we watched Zoolander on the boat to! How's team Woody going mate? Getting ready for the Open in January? Greg

CF The M is 2.75". I would give the full "L" a run when the bream are really on the chew so it might make the bigger ones grab it before the little ones can inhail it. So when your seeing a few fish raising for it, it should be fine. What area are you fishing? Greg

Haven't used the "L" but the "M" is perfect for bream. Greg

Thanks for your comments guys. damariboyz The tunas are in there off season plus I think the bait was all around the other side of the tip feeding on the coral spawn. No bait no fish....... On the way home just as we neared port we started to see the coral spawn as the currents pushed it in off the reefs. Bait and tunas got thicker and thicker as we neared the top of Cape York. Bummer........ tomahawk1999 There were cobia on the Manta's, I hooked one but the bloody thing kept going back under the manta till one of the wings clipped the leader and pop.... You could see them following them but very spooky. The good old unweighted sluggo was the best bet with our limited lure choice. hottyscotty Mate just bite the bullet and go. We had 2 new people in our group and both caught their biggest fish's of their lives plus so many new species. That's from the slowest fishing I have ever experienced up there. I have just uploaded some short clips we took off my little still camera. I was an absolute lazy butt and didn't even pull the video camera or the SLR out the whole trip! There is some great footage of the mantas and one particular one where it's doing loops while feeding. Here is my you tube link. http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=greglfishing A few other randoms. Sun sets Here comes the rain! There is the other half of my Monster Mesh! Perfect way to end the day! Cohiba and a Orange & mango mineral water with a sh!t load of vodka! The end Greg

Oh some one asked about Monster Mesh rods..... Buy the Saltigas! mine broke Beach fishing was another great sport. Drive the dory along the beach, spot some biat and cast slices for blue salmon and queenies. If your lucky you will find a manta ray feeding. Under the Mantas were small GT's and Goldens, awesome in a few feet of water. We spent quite a few mornings just watching these magnificent creatures! With the fishing very slow and the temps rising a call to go up into the fresh water reaches was the call. With a few eskys full of piss we went rock pooling! No better way to spend a lazy afternoon! Massages by the running water, awesome. Back out on the deeper reefs a few miles off shore more Goldens, trickies and Grassy snappers but then a nice trout comes up! Well thats it in a nut shell. We fished hard, still caught some ok fish and some great times with the boys! I havent got the bug out of me yet so I think it's time to book a Nomad trip ASAP! Cheers Greg

Just as we boarded our new home for the week we received the news no one wanted to hear. The big low has now been named and is offically a cyclone. Western side of Cape York I have visited a few times in the past, our only problem was our gear. With the reef as our goal we went rigged for elephants! My smallest rod was 30lb!! Down the coast we travelled to our first of many rivers for the week ahead. Many thoughts of bad tides and why we werent on the reef went threw our minds. We originally booked the reef trip to co-inside with the coral spawn but the rivers have small tides and as we all know, "no run no fun". Racking the brain on what small lures I had acually packed and yep my worst fears, NO SMALL LURES! We raided the boats supplies and shared them out. I think I ended up with 5 slices and the rest were monster deep divers and poppers with 1 pack of worm hooks and a lone pack of 6" Sluggos. The first few days were very quiet out the front of the mouths and the total lack of tunas was a shock. I have never seen the area so void of life! A few good mackerals, queenies and goldens were hooked on the reefs on the slices. Find a bait school, drop your slice to the bottom and jig it back resaulted in some nicer fish. Afternoons were very hot and with the breeze now dropping the best option was to either bait fish or troll. We elected to bait fish as we had not done it up there to much before. Each time we would get to a rubble patch do a drop we were rewarded with goldens, tricky snappers and many small cods. Our only problem was the sharks would move in and shut the bite down or they would take up station straight under the boat and steal our fish on the way up!

Found it http://www.bwbmag.com/output.cfm?id=1059625 The test is on 200hp motors. H

There have been tests like this done. They are on other sites on the web. "Walleye boats" Greg

That's one lucky bugger! If he was in Sydney harbour he would have been showered by people chucking sluggos at him all day, lucky he was up there!

Off to Cape York on Sunday to get my ass kicked by monster GT's for a week!

Thanks guys for the info. The guys from Skeeter recon under $30k including building a create for it to sit in. Talking to my neighbour who is a operations manager for a shipping company recons he can get it for me close to half that!!! He got me a race motor for one of my boats not long ago air freighted in from Chicargo in under a week for just over a grand! So for instance that boat at $197k aussie I recon I could landed it and convert it to run here for less than $250k. That's about half of a brand new one from here! G

Thanks Col Thos Pirate's look nice but I would say pretty pricey! The Riv I saw in Trade a boat, looks great but I was told by someone who rode on it that it wasnt great. Been on the net over the last few weeks. Bit of home work on shipping and stuff. With the Aussie dollar so high the value of second hand boats in the States make them almost affordable! What do you think of something like this? Full add if you want to see. http://www.boats.com/sites/70westmarina/bo...tityid=17779301 Greg

Bloody big live bait! Taking "pin him threw the eyes" to another level! That's why everyone should wear sunnies while lure casting.

My vote is net damage. We catch plenty in the Harbour like that but hardly any like that in the Hawkesbury???? For tho's that don't think catch and release works, what do you have to say about them apples! We use to hate weighing them ones in comps, always feel ripped off with the chunk missing! Greg

Hi Raiders I am considering a change of fishing styles in the very near future. The bream have been great and a fantastic challenge but the call of harder pulling fish is becoming to strong. I have a back ground in game fishing from a long time ago. We use to own a few charter boats in the past out of Sydney but were mainly out of either game boats or profishing style boats. In the last season our team fished out of Glen Hunters boat when it was under a different name. I loved the layout of the boat but always wondered how much better a glass version would handle at sea...... I am thinking something in the 28-32ft range but must be twin shaft drive diesel powered as it will be left in the water. Toilet, fridge, sleep a few guys and I'd be happy. Air would be a massive plus! Second hand but not to old as I don't think I can justify the money for a brand newey! Anyone been in any of the new generation express boats? I am even considering flying to the states and bringing one back! Greg

Hi Wammo Sounds like it's gunna be a good trip. Lures I would take are some metals like raiders to cast at surface fish. Some deep divers like CD9's and Crazy deeps in a range of depths that your tackle can hold(upto the big 8m diver) and a few poppers like the roosters. If you have a bream rod loaded with braid, make sure you take some smaller plastics for flats fishing. Simple patterns like bass minnows work a treat on tho's trevas. Good luck Greg

Thanks again. Only 11 days to go now till round 2 on the Outa! This time I'm going alot more prepared, fishing gear wise and camera gear. Full high definition camera, blue tooth microphones and wide angle lens. Just hope it doesn't take me as long as last time to pull my finger out to chop it up! Greg