DaveBM

No, snapper are pink/red. This myth might come from the inability of light at the red end of the spectrum to penetrate very deeply through water. Unless you're pretty near surface, everything just tends towards shades of blue.

Ta Cos - I'll bear that in mind.

Cheers mate. I guess I'll have to keep trying. The lure is clearly a good one though... had everything coming up for a gander even though they weren't hungry!

Hi all. Had a frustrating day yesterday on the flats near the entrance to Lake Illawarra, trying a popper in shallow water for the first time. A couple of nice bream and lots of big whiting were following my popper (clear prawn type) right up to where I was wading, but were not willing to strike. I tried everything I could think of - fast/slow, steady retrieve versus jerky, stopping and starting... the buggers just kept swimming along behind it. Any tips? Mind you, guys with bait weren't getting much to happen either - even fresh beach worms - so maybe the fish just weren't hungry and trying to piss me off for fun!

I've seen smaller, but never caught. What's cool (to me) is that while most fish go through distinct morphological stages, flatties look the same from tiny little specks to 1m+ monsters. A skilled photoshopper could take that pic and superimpose the fish on a different scale background, and I'd totally believe it was a world all-tackle record.

You definitely did the right thing, but yes it was technically the illegal thing. I doubt you would've been prosecuted with the video proof though - the black and white letter of the law is to stop people lying about being unable to save undersized/protected fish. In your position I'd do exactly as you did. The tiny chance of overzealous officers versus the certainty of a delicious fish dying a slow death for no reason is a no-brainer.

Looks like fun and deliciousness - good combo. Re: the pics - this happens a lot, and sometimes because the phone (presuming here) has screen rotation locked. So the photo is taken in whatever orientation you hold the phone, but something in the jpg's metadata tags the resulting pic to display the way your screen was locked to orient itself. This is a stupid and very fixable problem with the phone's operating system or the photo app it runs, but I can't help with that as I don't work for Google or Apple! If that's not it, then there may be a problem with the forum's backend (which I could perhaps help with). But seeing as lots of posts have pics in both portrait and landscape which display correctly, I think it might be my first guess that's correct. Sorry, boring tech info

I've heard of honourable rounding-down, but this is ridiculous! Clearly closer to 80cm mate! Well done.

You sir, are a paragon of scrupulous honour.

Is it just me, or is it actually 45cm?