amkr

Plenty of boats around Browns today, not much going on there. They said it was 18.5° out there. We went out to the peak, was lumpy as coming back, we stopped for flatties and it eased off at 10:00 but around 12:30-1 it picked back up again as the forecast predicted. There was a report of some 40kg fin SE of browns but it was disregarded with most people replying with "ok captain Pinocchio".

we made it out to the peak, was REALLY lumpy on the way back in. 6knot trip back. Cleaned up around 10:00 when the wind died down.

Keep an eye on the wind forcast. I'm planning to make the same trip if conditions aren't too bad. Take a sea anchor as I suspect you'll get blown off the marks pretty quick in the morning.

I wouldn't worry about extra anchor rope. I don't anchor over 15m - mostly because I dont want to haul an anchor in. Get yourself a sea anchor, I recently got one and it makes a huge difference if you're getting blown away trying to fish. Snapper might be a bit harder in a boat that size unless weather is awesome. I don't know of any snapper spots off Sydney. Only the humps and belambi which are both a bit of a haul from the nearest ramp.

Mate you're an absolute gun on those horse snapper!

yeah I've done the earmuffs too hahahaha

If im not mistaken the cootacraft are based on the old V17 / V19 haines hull?

Yes definitely, in summer troll out of the heads and up/down the cliffs. We've done quite well on Bonito, Tailor and Salmon doing that. Also, straight off the north headland, in about 35-45m of water we always seem to catch Morwong. A bit further north off little bay roughly, in 50m of water you can drift for flathead. Those are all really accessible with 25L of fuel. If you take a jerry can theres no reason you can't make a trip out to the peak in good weather too.

Theres some warm decomposing ones in my garbage bin that you can have, my bait freezer kicked the bucket so I personally wouldn't go within 100m of them.

They are both alloy boats, pretty light and easy to move around - shouldn't have any dramas

oh man thats an adventurous trip! I've got a mental checklist that I do before I go start towing the boat, before I launch the boat and before I drive it home. So far we haven't had any serious trouble *fingers crossed* Sounds like most of those things wont happen again though, anchor will be tied off permanently and you'll more likely remember the channel markers

I looked into housings for my 7D and quickly discovered 1500 other things I'd rather buy for the same money. That Sony looks impressive, I'll look into that more!

Nah there is some really warm water around at the moment. Not uncommon to see 22.5 off sydney.

Sea Hog caught bluefin 31nm off Tathra. Theres some ok looking water down past Narooma but everything off Sydney looks like dolphin fish territory.

Tried to head out Sunday.... Was too lumpy and windy for us, turned it around and headed back in to bottom bash.

It's all down to transducer. To do it properly you'll need the AIRMAR transducer, which is $1500 on its own. You'll also need a head unit which has a 1kw output power which the entry level lowrance ones can't do. You MIGHT be able to achieve that depth with the 50/200 transducer but I don't think you'll be able to distinguish targets on the bottom properly (assuming you want it to fish gem's). If you're going to be out at Browns and the shelf regularly, keep saving and get a 1kw transducer. If you're going only once or twice a year and just want to know how deep it is, try your luck with the 50/200 transducer. As far as head units, you want one with proper bottom lock, from memory the lowrance elite range only zooms in on the bottom, it doesn't re-scale the images. Maybe look at the Ti range or the Simrad GO. Otherwise look at the FURUNO range. But it really depends on what kind of fishing you do and how serious you are about fishing deep.

The depth will depend more on the transducer than the unit. The units tend to come with 83/200 transducers usually, these top out before 200m deep. The 50/200 transducer will get you to around 600 but target discrimination will be average. For reliable deep water stuff you really need to move up to something like a 1kw AIRMAR unit (like the TM160)

May as well just paddle around with oars with those kind of restrictions.

I did. I made note to climb into everything that was there. To be honest I was not impressed by the Formosa or the telewater equivalents (Trident and Yellowfin). The clear winner for me was the Surtees, It was easily the best boat at the show as far as build quality and features go. Only problem is now I want one Biggest suprise was a 5.6m haines that was tucked into a corner somewhere - Not sure what the go with it was but it was a very nice boat and finished quite well, better than my 495 haines at least.

I have trouble getting my boat to go slow enough when I'm downrigging live bait!

They come with the comfort adapter.

I'd have it tied off next to my Maratimo.

There generally isnt a lot in the way of tackle. its 95% boats and boat accessories.

I've been casually browsing for 6.5m alloy boats. Best boat i've seen has been the Extreme boats from NZ - hefty price tag but they are seriously decked out. A mate of mine is going to buy a trident in the next 12 months too, they aren't too bad feature wise. Surtees look awesome, im just not sure on that beam. It may make the deck feel a bit crowded?

Let me see if I can help. The transducer will have an angle rating on it, so the area it covers will vary depending on the depth - I think the lowrance ones are 18 degrees off the top of my head. It also shows more than what is currently under the boat, for example the items on the far left of the screen have probably passed you by The whole screen isn't dynamic, it draws the signal on the left hand side of the screen and scrolls it across. So you could have a fish swim past your transom and swim off but the sounder will display it as if it hasn't moved. Basically the beam width isn't all that important. You're right in saying that more dense objects show up a darker colour. What I think you're seeing on the sounder there is a school of very small fish, like sweep for example. They usually show up without any great density and will easily cover the entire sounder screen. I have had similar images appear on the sounder and downsized to sabiki rigs to find out what was down there. It's always been plagued of sweep for me. I think the sounder gets tricked by the size of the 'school' and identifies it as a larger less dense object. Abither trick I've started using recently is to bump my sensitivity up on the sounder so there's just a little bit of noise in the clean water - it gives me a better target seperation. I Also split my screen into 3 views. 83khz, 200khz and downscan/chirp. I find this lets me view the same area with different parameters and helps me decide what is actually there and what is noise or crap fish. Sometimes things show up on one frequency and barely register on another. Using this set up we trolled over a school of tailor, only showed up on the 83khz, didn't even register on the 200 or chirp screens - I actually said to Welst at the time "we've just driven over a school at the right depth, you should hookup" and sure enough, just after the images moved off the left of the screen the rod bent over. My 2c