Aardvarking

Sounds like assist hooks are the go. One of my favourite youtube fishos (Sand Flat Fishing Australia) swears by them, and after hearing all this I'll be sure to grab some. Does anyone have any recommendations for the best assist hook brand for bream lures?

I might try the scent thing and the extra split rings, thanks for that. I use scent on blades, vibes and plastics but for some reason I never used them on topwater. My pauses are definitely long enough. My dad always taught me to wait until all the ripples have fully dissipated between pops with a popper, so I've applied the same thing to a dog walker. Just another thing, I can't get over how annoying taylor are. On sunday I had spent about 15 minutes sight casting one of the biggest bream I've ever seen with my Sammy 65, and after about fifteen casts he finally looks like he's interested. He gets up behind the lure, stars slowly moving in closer and is just about to strike when the world's smallest tailor jumps in and eats a lure bigger than himself, spooking the bream and ruining my chances of beating my 47cm bream pb. What a useless fish

With the purchase of my lightest rod yet (1.5-4lb) combo'd with a stradic 1000 with 2lb crystal fireline meaning my ultra-ultra light setup is finally complete, I thought it would be good to have my first crack at surface luring for bream. I have had some great success so far with my lucky craft sammy 65, bassday sugapen 70f, berkley pop dog 65mm and atomic k9 pup (tragically lost to a pylon on Sunday, RIP). The problem I have had is that although every bream in sydney seems to want to have a crack at my lures, every single one seems to miss the hooks. I've had schools of about 8 or 9 bream following my lure and having a go at it one by one, and not one gets hooked. It's not even that the bream are too small to take the hooks, there have been some monster bream have 4 consecutive hits of a popper without taking the hooks. I know hookup ratios are generally lower with surface lures, but it's pretty frustrating to get a hookup in every 10 or so hits. Is there anything I could do to improve that? I have tried adding more pauses which didn't work, I tried having a less erratic action which only reduced the amount of interest in the lure and again didn't work.

Leatherjacket have jaws like a pair of wirer cutters, I've genuinely had a hook bitten in half by leatherjacket! They're also possible the dumbest animal alive, and will eat anything that moves. I've had a metric ton of soft plastics ruined by leatherjacket, but it's just a speck compared to the four hundred metric tons of plastucs ruined by bloody tailor.

When I go out in the kayak I use lip grippers, just a cheapo pair I got on ebay for about 5 bucks. I never lift fish out of the water with the grippers without supporting the belly, but it is a good way to make sure the fish doesn't bite through your leader while you try to land it.

Get a pair of Swiftwater Crocs, you will never regret it. I have had my pair for about 3 years and they are oyster proof, comfortable, have good grip and are impossible to fall off if you have the strap adjusted right.

Not necessarily. I have found the 5 days before full moon is the best time to fish, but only at the change of tides. The currents narrow the window that fish have to feed to the hour around slack water, and confuses the bait fish making the big predators more inclined to be on the prowl.

I can say for a fact that fish taste different depending on their diet. I love the taste of bream that live on the sandflats and each mainly prawn and nippers, although I don't eat them too much because of their slow growth rates. I once tried a bream I caught off the rocks which ate algae and cunjee and it tasted really fishy and wasn't very nice.

The boat ramp at roseville is full of yakkas, that's where I get mine. That whole area is full of squid too, especially the little cove just north of the ramp.

Just pulled the trigger on the Black Label. It is the original series not the V2, but from what I have found online there isn't much difference. The only thing I'm not sure about is that it is quite a bit shorter than the 7' rods I usually use, but seeing it is a finesse rod that might go to my advantage anyway. I'll let everyone know how it goes, I'm picking it up on Sunday and I'm very excited to try it out!

Just found a 6'3" Daiwa 1.5-4lb Black Label rod used for a good price, should I grab that? Are they better or worse than the gen black series?

They were probably trevally or tailor, I catch a lot of them on the surface in middle harbour.

Thanks for the spare spool idea Derek, that is a good suggestion. I do always like to have one rod with me rigged up for squid just in case, so I might keep the reel on my Tcurve for squid and get a spool for 4lb and 8lb for my stradic. The reel I currently have does the job, but it is a bit of a cheapo so it might be better suited to squid anyway. It is normally fine, but I once nearly got spooled by a stringray with it and it wore out my drag to the point where it just stopped working halfway through the fight. I'll check out the gen blacks, I've heard good things about them and the scratchy model seems perfect for me, 7' is my favourite rod length.

I have been fishing a Shimano T-Curve 2-4kg 7' rod for ages for all my lightweight spinning needs and it has tackled anything from bream to flathead to trevally with ease, a great rod which never serves me wrong. The problem I have had is that having one rod for all those purposes means I have to either put on a 10lb leader for flathead or a 4lb leader for bream, and have to chose what I target at the start of the session or waste a ton of leader. I decided to get a lighter outfit for bream and bought a stradic 1000 with 4lb line I want to pair with a 1-3kg rod for all ultralight applications. I had an Okuma Precision X I bought on Gumtree to pair with it, but I accidentally stepped on it and broke it in half, oops... Seeing the rod I accidentally broke was a fairly low-mid range rod, I figure I may as well upgrade so I don't feel like as much of an idiot paying money to replace a rod with another rod of equal or worse quality. My budget is about 150-200 dollars, and I'm looking for something to cast ultra light lures as far as possible, as I often cast out small poppers on the flats for whiting and bream. Sensitivity is also a concern, I'm sure anyone knows how annoying bream hits on plastics can be. I'm looking for a 2 piece between 6'6" and 7'6". Any advice helps, thanks. Also, if anyone is selling anything I'm a fan of buying 2nd hand, so dms are accepted.

Just did a bit of analysis of the photo for it's size, based on the photos I have the trevally is nearly exactly 2.5 times the length of my forearm from it's nose to the tip of it's tail. My forearm is 25cm, making it about 62cm, even bigger than I thought!

I would see if you can find a used 2500 Stradic on Gumtree for the Shimano rod. I got one for 100 bucks in good condition, balances my 6'6" 5-10kg Shimano Jewel perfectly. Because that rod is longer you might need a 4000 though.

Went out to Middle Harbour on Friday night to have another crack at my first jewie, and even after having about 5 yakkas bit clean in half I couldn't get a single jewfish or kingfish to take the hook. Despite that, I had a great day of fishing and caught this stonker of a trev: Didn't have a tape measure on me, but using my rod and measuring that when I got home I measured it at about 58cm, considerably longer than my previous record of 42cm. Got him on my second cast of the day with a 42mm blade, after getting a small flathead on my first cast. It was a hell of a fight with 6lb braid and 8lb leader, at first I thought it was a big breeder flathead before it did some huge pulls and head-shakes as it approached the jetty. Very happy with my biggest fish of the year so far. A great close up of me and the fish:

I used to be taken out fishing on a boat by my dad, and thought it was awesome. That is, until I had to go out fishing by myself. Oh my god is owning, maintaining and taking out a boat a pain! Plus they are expensive, you need a trailer so you can't park everywhere, you need a license. they can spook the fish and can't be used everywhere. I have a hobie I can chuck on the roof, and it is fantastic. Sure fishing from a boat is more comfortable, but it's just not worth it. I would never go back to a boat. My only recommendation is to go for a foot pedal kayak, I can tell you for a fact they are worth it. You can find hobies used on gumtree for one or two thousand, you will never regret it.

Tie an FG knot, by far the best fishing knot. Also nail clippers are a good way to tie tags close as possible.

I have found most of them are about 8-10m or so from the shore, all pretty close. If I cast out any further I find trevally are the main species I catch. I can catch them at most depths, but usually I just run my standard rip of a single suicide hook with a small sinker on it, no swivel.

Those both definitely look like schools of baitfish. The bottom one I would say with 90% certainty, the top one around 80%. I have a striker 5cv+ and bait balls tend to look like that on mine.

The south side of the spit bridge is full of leatherjacket, I've caught tons there. That said, leatherjacket are harder to avoid than find, so you can find them pretty much anywhere.

This is a great suggestion, thanks. I might even try a jig as the stinger. I'll run the squidgy wriggler they kept attacking, and attach a jig behind it with a metre of leader. I'll have to see how it actually swims in the water, but I reckon it's worth a shot.

I was using a 1.8 and a 2.0 jig, both roughly similar in size to the soft plastics I was using.

I went for a fish at Roseville yesterday for another crack at getting my first Jewfish, and got by far the closest I have ever gotten. I got a hit on a 100mm squidgy fish from what I am 90% sure was a jewfish, and later on hooked a jewie on a yakka before he spat the hook. Frustrating stuff, but at least I'm getting somewhere! One thing that got pretty annoying was the squid that would attack basically everything I threw at them except jigs. I started out throwing a squidgy fish, and every 2 or 3 casts I would get a weird bump which didn't feel like a fish, but I assumed it was my lure hitting a rock. Eventually as I was pulling my lure in I saw three squid following it, and realised they were the culprits. I rigged on a squid jig of a similar size and colour, and casted it for 20 minutes without even a sniff. I switched back to another soft plastic and continued to get hits from squid, and then changed to another jig with no results again. This same thing happened another two times, not a single hit on a jig while my plastics seemed to only attract squid. I was fishing the jigs with a pretty standard retrieve, casting them out and doing a double or triple twitch, before giving them time to sink and repeating. Is there any reason my squidgies were so much more appetising that any jigs?