Mike Sydney
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Posts posted by Mike Sydney
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Cooks river at Tempe, sunrise and sunset
Underneath the Wolli Creek bridge , evening and night
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Well done mate, you’ll get plenty from here now you’ve busted the first one out. Look how quickly you got the second! The floodgates have opened. Another retrieve you might try for flathead is short fast rolls and sudden stops.
Being able to vary your retrieves with different speeds, hop heights, pauses, twitches etc is what I love the most about soft plastics, there’s always something you can do to change things up.
Great report @SpeedyGiraffe49 well done.
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I fish there heaps at night it’s great to be honest. Lots of bream and flathead near the wharf and tailor under the bridge itself.
@linewetter that’s the wharf by the car park last night-
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BFFs forever @linewetter 😍 😁
Great to meet you too, shame about the donut. A couple of “almosts” with some big splashes at the lure but it wasn’t to be.
still, all lures retained and (not counting me) only one crazy person encounter. (An old lady basically body checked @linewetter walking right at him, basically tightroping the ledge in a strange game of chicken). A wild and woolly night but let’s do it again soon.-
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Yeah they had Velcro I found them on retail shelves at a shop in belfield a few years back but haven’t seen them in stores lately.
I got the biggest they had in store (don’t remember the size) but they were very snug, hard to take off I would’ve loved a slightly bigger size. -
On gloves, I’ve had the Daiwa DG2223 gloves and they were awesome. Got caught out in a storm one night and they went to pieces when they got soaked though. They could handle regular wet but not total saturation.
Great gloves, I used them for both a bit of warmth and mosquito protection. Having thumb and two fingers exposed meant I could still handle line without needing to remove them.
Have been meaning to buy another pair. Here’s some photos I can find wearing them.
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My take on it is that they have elevated levels of dioxins , higher than many food but almost all dairy has dioxins too so as long it’s only very occasionally why not. One every couple months probably won’t hurt (not a doctor…!) .
I’ve eaten flathead from Balmain, but wouldn’t from iron cove as I read that’s particularly polluted too.
I think it’s frequency that’s the danger as evident from the recommendations of eating east of the bridge.-
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@linewetter great fish but that sucks about the rod. Worse, they were on sale last week for $99 at the big snake but the sale has ended from what I see. Should’ve broken it a week ago 😏
Huge Trev that one on 6lb gear.
Welcome to the snapped rod club.
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Great read. Congrats on so many fish and finding your float again at a different location too!
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Happened to me too, can’t recall why, I posted here by taking a screenshot of the old photo and uploading the new screenshot
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I worry about hooking cormorants too. My friend hooked a bat which took his lure mid flight in parramatta.
I imagine the law would be that it’s accidental by catch and as long as you made reasonable efforts to free it you’d be fine. It’s not like you were targeting them (….right? 😄)
Community outrage would be the biggest issue I think. A video on social media or a harrowing picture could raise a lot of anti-fishing sentiment.
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Yeah @faker that’s what I was thinking maybe a long mono leader for a bit more stretch as well
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1 hour ago, Steve0 said:
Thanks for the report. Using artificial light for Tailor is news to me, but I have caught them under a full moon. It seems obvious, they are using the light to silhouette baitfish.
The first year I started hunting Salmon and Tailor I bulk-bought 50 metals, thinking they'd last my days out. They were gone inside 12 months! Loss rate reduced with experience, but Tailor will always extract a toll. Losses to schools of small Tailor seem higher than to schools of big ones. In sunlight, when you see the shadow of the school, casting to the edge of the school reduces the lure tax. Maybe if you toss your lure wider from the light source, you'll reduce lure losses?
Thanks @Steve0. See for me I’ve always found them on artificial lights and had never clicked to targeting them on the full moon.
A lot of my losses last couple years was on bream gear 6lb . The losses were just cut line as they hit the lure - a big splash and then slack. I was running 12lb last night mainly to throw heavier lures and didn’t suffer any losses yet.
Interesting you say throwing to the edge of light source / edge of the school. I got a lot of hookups / started follows on the light edge but wasn’t consciously targeting those areas, rather it was more the angles available to me from the land spot.
If smaller tailor cut more lines than bigger ones, then is the logic that the bigger fish are naturally on the outside edges of the schools (I.e. closest to the bait ) -
2 minutes ago, Little_Flatty said:
Great report Mike, two sessions on a work day eh?
At 50+ tailor are great fighters on light gear. Don’t mind them when they’re that size.
Just getting my workmanship and design right, but I’ll give you a few dowel stick baits when I have made them. You won’t need to cry if they wreck them or steal them😎
Ah but in my defence Mike only one fish was during work hours 🤣
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6 hours ago, faker said:
I love catching tailor but don't like what they do to Soft plastics.and my jigs. I normally switch to metals when chasing them or big hard bodies. Is the reptide a surface stickbait?
Yes it is. The one I was using tonight is the “Fatso” model. I usually find tailor a pest when I am targeting bream but during this window I love chasing them on surface lures. Big splashes is just too good to pass up.
6 hours ago, Yowie said:A nice catch of big choppers, a close up of the toothy mouth is the last thing many baitfish ever see.
Around this time of year, many years ago before I had a driver's licence, I used to ride my pushbike to the Captain Cook Bridge on the Georges River in the early morning, near the northern end, and drop over a handline with ganged hooks and bait, and hook up a few tailor. It was a long way to haul up the fish with a handline.
Always fishing in the dark, so that when first light appeared on the horizon, the tailor would stop biting so time to ride home with a few fish in the bucket. The bridge lights would bring them on the bite.
That is a big height for a handlie with such big fish - must’ve been working those biceps @Yowie!
I agree the lights seem to be what do it. It’s the same at any ferry wharf at night. The only difference is the size I find during these months (I presume it’s them leaving the estuaries for the open seas)4 hours ago, big Neil said:Excellent photos of the pointy end of the Tailor Mike. Great fun to catch, spirited fight, and ok for fishcakes or even better when smoked. They, along with Aussie Salmon, make up the bulk of good catches in numbers in many estuaries. I have many happy memories of big number catches using gang hooks and the humble Pilchards.
Cheers, bn
The “pointy end” has cost me a lot of money in lost lures. It’s nice to get a return once in a while 😂
I’ve been stocking up on topwater hardbodies each pay since Christmas as I’ll probably lose several to those teeth in the next few weeks!
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Every year in mid April through to end of May, schools of big tailor come and play under bridge lights in the estuaries.
The season started tonight and I was chasing them on surface using the Nomad Riptide 95.Last three years I’ve picked up dozens of 50cm+ models in the Parramatta and I find it doesn’t really matter what you throw at them or what tide it is. Permanent lights and bridge pylons they’re around night after night until early June.
It had been a fun start to the day, I hooked up my first kingfish at cooks river mouth on a grubZ 1/4oz only to drop it trying to net it. Was disappointed of course to lose my first but boy did the reel get a workout.
Anyways tonight I landed 8 big tailor about two hours into the tide, the smallest a 40ish and the largest at 52cm.
Some blokes stopped for a chat including an ABT finalist last year and while we were talking we saw activity on the surface and I was delighted to cast in and catch straight away with them.
Some happy snaps below of almost 4 meters of tailor on surface. I find they like a pop and commotion more than a walk the dog so was dragging/sweeping the lure tonight.
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The approach to Tempe station at high tide.
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Went down to Tempe bridge this morning cooks river.
several cars submergedsomeone had driven through the SES tape blocking the road more cars trying to go through.
I waved many back but several idiots ignored me and drove past, three of them bogging out in the floodwaters.
the bridge was closed anyway so they had nowhere to go, one moron even thanked me as a I spoke to him only to ignore me and get stuck in the floodwaters.
I know people are stupid but the idiocy I saw this morning was mind blowing
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Hahaha 😂😂 what a tale. Lure gone. Lure back. Lure gone. As I started reading I was shaking my head you’d lost it already - it was a gift to replace your recently lost splash prawn after all! - but glad you got it back. Though at least you were casting it and getting hits before it decided to take a break from you.
I ended up gifting a Cranka crab to another fisherman on Sunday night. He left delighted and minutes later I snagged and lost another cranka so now I’ve only got one one left with a missing claw. Losing lures sucks!still @Little_Flatty did you keep that found lure at Iron Cove? That balances out the loss of the wobbler 😂
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1 hour ago, mrsswordfisherman said:
Nice recovery there. Do you think it may have been some chlorine on the cover too?
It was basically bubble wrap. The cover had been off the pool for several weeks so Amy gave it a hose clean and left it to dry. Just the magnifying glass scorching it up but the speed it happened was wild.
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12 minutes ago, Fab1 said:
Fair enough.If it’s a running type grass like couch or kikuyu even a nuclear holocaust won't kill it don’t worry.Its coming to the end of the grass growing season as night time temps are dropping and grass will slow down.
We’ve got Sir Walter in the back yard. A few weeks ago my wife put the pool cover out to dry, two hours in 26 degrees. Shocked to see how quickly it died:
Brought her to tears. But just a week later after some watering and seasol she was basically good as new again. A sturdy grass for sure, a couple weeks later it’s too long for the mower to clip in one pass !
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Stunning photos Dave and what hospitality. I’m not sure which is prettier, the sunrise or sunset photo. What a beautiful part of the country.
The other birds nesting, are they apostlebirds?
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I realise it looks huge in the photo (which is a screenshot of a paused video) but they were of course about the size of my little finger. Each of them came out of the water a muddy brown looking like a moving piece of algae/seaweed and didn’t “blue up” until they were placed on the rocks (which were probably pretty warm for them TBH).
I wondered about residue on the lure but just gave them a quick safety rinse. From what I read after, it’s only direct contact from a bite that’s the concern but better safe than sorry!-
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Ouch @mrsswordfisherman that hurts. I am battling critters in my lawn too - first time I’ve had to deal with funnel ants. Lawn is only a year old after we did a knock down rebuild. Dozens of these little mounds of dirt they’ve pushed out from their tunnelling. Started on the edges but they’re everywhere now front and back.
We’ve an exterminator coming to deal with them next week, they inject something down into each hole.
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No Longer The Donut Boyz...Just Donut Boy
in Saltwater Fishing Reports
Posted
hahahaha I told you don’t give that donut boyz tag oxygen we can’t have that sticking
@XD351 that moniker was below the belt, I’d been sulking about it all day, muttering to myself, snapping at the kids… 😂