wazatherfisherman

Hi Rebel and thanks- more posts coming soon

Let me just say that Derek's article needs no editing- it's really comprehensive, brilliantly composed and will help all who read it. I conveyed to him that it's the beginning of a book in my opinion and was chuffed when he asked me to add a little from a rod building/custom perspective- which I working on while here in hospital

Great write up mate! I've been lucky enough to see a larger preview of Derek's article and it's "text-book" quality!

Thanks Donna! I'm in hospital with cellulitis again and that put a smile on my face! Always happy to help anyone wherever I can

Top write up! Congrats also on becoming a moderator

Congratulations and best wishes Dave and Amy- nicest story I've ever read on Raider

We have a rule about them- NEVER to be brought on board, they are extremely aggressive and dangerous creatures. Read my Pike Eel story in Waza's Yarns. They grow much larger than the information profile on them suggests and don't let go when they bite someone/thing! People do eat them and a commercial fisher asked me for the locations we've encountered numbers of them- which I was only too happy to provide- he was exporting them and said they were worth good money. Better (and safer) things to eat than them

Also the old 'Pescaro' range with 'S' shaped points

Hi Fab hook-eye offsets are for different reasons. Considering that hook manufacturers make hooks 'for purpose' some of the considered variables that I'm aware of are things like: size of food that fish naturally encounter/therefore likely bait being used- eg some patterns in hooks used to tie Trout flies have different offsets depending on if they are 'surface' (dry flies) where food (fly) is taken off the surface or 'wet' flies that are considered 'sinking' food- these are probably the most radical examples. Next you have 'turned out' eyes, which are common and the best examples are suicide hooks (often mistakenly called 'octopus patten' (Octopus were actually a brand)- these obviously are good for 'snooding' but have great penetration power through short shanks and personally I reckon they are the best penetrating hooks for general bait fishing as their leverage point enables maximum penetration with less energy from the fisher's side. They can also be fished 'straight' by employing a snood type knot. Turned-in eyes allow for more 'straight-line' bait presentation- which can be important with more delicate bait presentations- like using green weed for Luderick. Other common purposes for turned-in eyes include keeping hooks in a proper alignment for the purpose of ganging- if you don't have turned-in eyes (or turn them in yourself) then the hooks fail to achieve the correct alignment and any bait like whole fish (such as Pilchards or Garfish) just won't sit correctly (or at all) on a flight of hooks. Straight-eyes such as Limerick, Kirby etc are commonly used for trailing baits/lures as they maintain a better profile when using a line in motion (no offsets in hook bend either or twisting occurs). Then there are specialised 'eye' patterns such as 'small ball', 'tapered' and flatted- flatted in particular are the most indicative of these as although straight-eyed they help achieve symmetry with ultra-delicate bait presentation such as using single-leaf cabbage bait (again for Luderick) -these have always been my preferred hooks. More 'specialised' hooks that have been designed for species overseas (such as Carp in the UK) are made for using particular baits and how they present in the water. I hope this makes some sense!

Hi Scooter that is the dreaded Pike Eel not a Hairtail sadly. Hairtail are flat sided and look like they've been chromed for want of a better description. Pike Eels are extremely aggressive and we banned bringing them onboard on houseboat trips as they are mean and nasty critters. Apparently good eating, but I've never tried them personally. They also have an extra row of teeth down the centre of their mouths and grow to larger sizes than stated in their information profile.

Have a great time!

Now that's money right there! Good informative video's. I thought my mate's 12ft tinny sunk in his yard was a good pond and his bathtub full of yabbies pretty cool- wait 'til I show him this!

Very informative video Jim, explains the 'line out' pressure perfectly

When you have mates living at different places along the coast, naturally you get to fish places far away from your regular domain. One such mate- Fraser- until recently, had been living in the Coffs Harbour-Nana Glen-Sawtell area and while on trips up to visit him, I've been fortunate enough to experience plenty of different fishing trips. We've fished the beaches, Bass fished a couple of rivers, live-baited for Mangrove Jacks in the Harbour, tried the creeks for Whiting and Flathead and had a couple of trips using live Mullet off the walls, with mixed success (those Jack's in the harbour are very hard to get the better of!) however, it was a trip to the south wall at Urunga that proved most memorable. The south wall of the river is pretty 'user friendly' compared to many other river walls on the coast and there are heaps of relatively comfortable spots to fish from. The wall doesn't extend very far out seawards, in fact on this particular occasion there was dry sand off the very end of the wall because there was a large sandspit running north and the river took a 90 degree turn to the north before flowing outwards at the end of the spit. One of the fishiest looking spots you could find, as everything entering the river system from the ocean had to travel this awesome looking channel formed between the spit and the shore. We'd gone there to drift some live Mullet around under bobby corks, with the target species being a big Flathead. It was early spring and the beautiful clear water looked perfect for floating our livey's around- surely any predators would see them and hopefully be willing takers. We'd decided to fish the last hour or so of the outgoing tide in the hope that a big Flattie would be waiting for a feed to be carried downriver to where it would be hiding- in amongst the numerous small eddies along the edge of the wall and just before low tide was when we'd had success at other locations using this strategy. For anyone who hasn't been to the area, two major river systems- the Kalang and the Bellinger meet up a short distance in from the ocean and both are great fishing locations, offering up a great variety of species. There is a fantastic boardwalk that runs from Urunga all the way out to the beach, a return distance of some 2.5-3kms. The boardwalk is wheelchair friendly and travels over the sandflats and shallow waters of Urunga Lagoon, then adjacent the mangroves, parallel to the river's retaining wall and finishing up at the end of the wall overlooking the ocean. Of particular interest to fishers, as the tide rises and covers the flats, plenty of fish can be seen from the boardwalk and no doubt some nice fish are caught over the flats as the tide gets high. It's definitely a tourist 'must do' if you're in the area. This day we ended up deciding on a comfortable looking spot just before the river took it's 90 degree turn at the mouth and set our live Mullet about 3 meters under bobby corks about the size of a large egg. Rig was just a small ball sinker sitting atop a swivel on 6kg mainline then a leader of about 60 cm of 10kg line and a 6/0 suicide (octopus pattern) hook and the bait pinned just in front of the dorsal fin. After having quite a few drifts along the edge of the wall- where you try and keep the bait as close to the wall as you can without snagging up- we decided that in order to have a much longer drift, it would be much easier to do if we climbed a bit higher and walked along with the bait, due to the higher you were, the less large rocks to navigate. This meant you could keep a better eye on your cork also as you didn't have to work out a 'path' through the larger rocks and we could walk the bait all the way to the sandspit and in fact follow it right towards the entrance by going down on the spit where it became exposed from the river. This new strategy saw us cover plenty more area and as the tide slowed right down we were able to get out on the sandspit and follow the bait almost all the way to the end of the spit where the river did another 90 degree turn a flowed straight out to sea. We didn't lose a bait unfortunately and after doing three or so circuits of deploy bait, walk the wall, climb down to the spit and walk out to the entrance, then slowly swim bait back and repeat we thought we'd better try something else. We moved back to where our gear was on the larger rocks, back near the first 90 degree turn and decided to change rig in order to send the bait out into the channel which had pretty much stopped running out, so the bobby corks came off and a simple running sinker above the swivel put on instead. Fraser got his out before me and remarked that the water had started coming back in- there had only been a really short period of slack water, which is often the case at river entrances. I watched as his line was moving along fairly quickly and decided I wanted to put a much larger sinker on in order to keep my bait in the slightly darker looking water- indicating the deepest spot we could see. Back in the live bait bag went my rigged Mullet while I searched out one of those grapnel sinkers with the wire arms from my backpack. Sinker located and attached, Mullet still seemed lively enough (we only had 6 Mullet when we started) so rather than change it over for a fresh one I stood up and got ready to cast. As I looked towards the entrance from my slightly higher vantage point, a massive dark shape was visible in the channel and it was coming towards where we were. Was it a tightly packed school of fish? Maybe Mullet? Then as it got close it came up nearer the surface and revealed itself to be an absolutely giant Manta Ray followed closely by a second one. Wow! How cool, neither of us had ever seen one bar on television and here were two of them and they were true giants, about the size of a room- for want of a better description. Then as if on cue, just as the front Manta was slowly swimming right past us, out from underneath ducked a big black fish quickly followed by three more. Fraser yelled "sharks" but I had not long read about American fishers who search out these giant Manta's and cast lures right next to them- as big Cobia are often their travelling companions. "Cobia" I replied but we were so awestruck at the Manta's, even though I had my live Mullet genuinely ready to cast, the fisherman in me gave way to the nature observer and I was transfixed watching the two giant Manta's accompanied by four massive trophy sized fish (all probably 25kg+) just swimming past less than 20 meters away. We watched as they moved up river and out of our vision before realising that we could have plonked our live bait right on the top of the big Cobia- probably would have got spooled on the 330 meters of 6kg line as they were really big fish, but we were both so genuinely awestruck (I know I keep saying awestruck!) that neither of us did the "fisherman" in us justice and at least had a go at the Cobia- who knows- it was a sand bottom after all! No just kidding, they would have smashed us, they were thicker than one of those 20 litre buckets. About 20 minutes later, as we were packing up to go and try further up the river, another dark 'blob' started moving in, much like the Manta's had. This time it was a tightly packed school of fish and after at first thinking they looked like Snapper, without getting a real close look, believe they were probably Mangrove Jack coming in from outside to start their 'murderous' spring stay. There are a couple of well known Jack haunts along the lower end of the wall, but we'd just been made look like rank amateurs back at Coffs Inner Harbour when targeting them with gear twice as heavy only a few nights earlier, so didn't even attempt them on 6kg amongst oyster covered walls. Nevertheless, it was really cool to see a good sized 'gang' of them in clear water during the middle of the afternoon. We ended up trying the live Mullet under bobby corks again, this time in about 2 metres of water after getting off the boardwalk and picked up a couple of nice eating sized Flatties to take home for a feed, but seeing the Manta's, Cobia and Jacks (if that's what they were!) will stay with me forever

Hi Frigate Mack we used to eat Tailor for breakfast on the rocks all the time, just a bit of flour on them to stop them sticking badly to the hotplate. Other favourite way is to cook fillets on the BBQ hotplate AFTER cooking some sausages- they go real well in the sausage fat. Always bleed them for best results eating-wise

Thank you Donna, Stewy and all the moderators who manage this wonderful group. Happy New Year to everyone

Merry Christmas one and all, wishing everyone a safe and happy Christmas

Super well put together article that covers EVERYTHING! If anybody has trouble becoming a better caster after reading this, well, read it again! Thanks for taking the time and effort into posting such a great and informative article Derek, I'm sure that anyone reading it will learn from it.

Good topic James! Besides fighting time, other factors I considered were the actual terrain that my list were caught from, including 'difficulty to land' and in my ratings I thought of things like 'dirty fighting', stamina and actual difficulty of hooking the species. In some sort of order Hardest to land on light tackle- 1 Surgeonfish, 2 Black Drummer, 3 Mangrove Jack, 4 Kingfish, 5 Trevally Longest stamina (fighting time)- 1 Yellowfin Tuna, 2 Striped Tuna, 3 Salmon, 4 Sampson, 5 GT's Hardest to hook of all- Surgeonfish by a mile Honourable mentions to Mullet and large Carp (over about 6-7kg)

Frank the lures you made for me are way better than the original version and I love having them in the collection. Stainless steel and will outlast anything made these days. They will catch virtually anything that swims It was a great gesture - many thanks again!

Rapala CD 3 in 'Red Clown' colour is the best I've used as an all rounder- casts a good distance, sinks and catches Whiting as well as Bream and Flathead. Hard to find even on the net. Only problem with it is the fish genuinely inhale it, making for difficult releases, but fine if you're taking the fish to eat.

Great you got there Jim and caught some Drummer! It truly is a magic location and there are plenty of fish to chase when the sea is calm. The gutter there is just perfect when it's calm enough to fish there and the whole area has plenty of other spots to try for Drummer and other species as well. I camped at Burning Palms the very last weekend before it was permanently closed to camping- still one of my favourite places

Should have said Green Moray eel- the kind commonly caught off the rocks and in harbours.

What was the cunje like? Wouldn't have been game after having "cunje disease" where your skin peels away from your fingers after cutting a heap, but always wondered- it's all 'meat' after all

Hi Pete I've actually eaten them a couple of times but not since I found out how bad they are due to being at the wrong end of the food chain!