XD351

There is an oring between the manifold and cylinder , for the extra two minutes work I always felt it was worth replacing. I also always replaced the cut out plug and boot as well . While the carby is off I always removed the snorkle and sprayed the cable with wd40.but I’m a fastidious person . While you have the carby off suck some vacuum in the decompressor hose with your mouth to check for leaks .

Trouble with your mate's attitude is that if it doesn't get cleaned up, sooner or later fishing will get banned on that wharf. Not my mate - just some random dude flicking lures, anyone of my mates that came out with that would be excommunicated 🤣🤣

Nice panies and tailor Yowie! I haven’t heard much about inside PH on the socials, mainly decent squid out in bate bay. Must drag my sorry a- hole down there for a fish !

I have pumped nippers along the shore west of the pub at Harrington and both beaches had pippies and worms - was a fair while ago and before the floods but I can’t see why they wouldn’t still be there. Also Harrington lagoon is worth a look for nippers . There used to be a tackle store opposite the pub at Harrington so if it is still there they will give you up to date local info . It is always worth a shot for a Mulloway or tailor - if you put the effort in you might get a reward , I mostly fished for Bream and whiting and more towards the end of summer and into autumn. Are you camping in the national park grounds ?

I started fishing the harbour in the late 70s and once my mate got his P’s it was nearly every Saturday, Mostly drifting for flathead along the edges of the shipping channels either side of sow and pigs but this seemed to die off once the deep water outfall fired up - it took the food source for the baitfish away and the flathead with them . Once I got my license it was Saturday at the channels , one or two nights a week either at cabarita for mulloway or folly point for bream on green nippers .

The last wharf I cleaned up was at Bayview Park, lure packaging, bait containers with rotting bait inside and a whole heap of takeaway food packaging- not on the ground but on the bench seats where commuters want to sit . I cleaned it up and put it in the bin that was no more than 5m away 🤬. Another guy fishing there said this is a daily occurrence and he said he just gave up on cleaning it up . This is upstream of halvorsens , fished there many moons ago and nearly got spooled by something that wanted my Mr twister more than I did ! Iirc there is a track following the creek - we used a small tender and motor to get up there .

Nice work ! I hate when I go to a spot and grubs have left their rubbish behind - I don’t call them fishos coz a real fisho cleans up after themselves ! Anyhow you got a reward for your work and a feed as well ! Great report and nice fish Mike !

Great report and nice salmon! I haven’t been able to catch one since I bought a smoker - it is like they know what I’m going to do to them and just vanished 🤣🤣🤣

Great fish and report mate ! Not having a sounder in a place as big as lake Mac makes life much harder !

G’day Robbo , It's the Navionics boating app , there is a free version but the maps are old and a lot of the functionality is locked. I purchased the subscription which for me was worth the $40 a year . You can also get C-MAP but it is twice the cost and I didn’t like it as much - you can get the free trial and try it for yourself . All I do is take a screenshot and edit it in photos . Don’t forget the Deckee app , it has some great features as well . Along with those I use the map app on my iPad and google earth to sus out fishing spots . I could use my theory in pretty much any river that has a reasonable tidal flow but in places like Sydney harbour (east of the spit and harbour bridges) , Botany Bay and Jervis bay where there is less tidal flow will require a different approach . I think Port Hacking will sit somewhere between these two extremes as it is not really an open bay like Botany and it doesn’t have the river system like Sydney harbour.

Nice fish and Squid ! Strange how Botany Bay seems to only have small squid at the moment but a few km south you get those beauties!

Hope so , the last few trips have cost me a phone , a rod and a trailer light ! There were 4 pelicans there -3 small ones and a big one that was a bully so i deliberately didn’t feed it - I can near on guarantee it was that mongrel that crapped on my car !

G’day Raiders, Today was another trip to the Hawkesbury ( monotonous I know ) with a low tide at 8:11 am I thought I would explore a few spots I had identified using the theory I wrote about in another thread and this did prove to work - with a bit of tweaking and today’s bait was half pillies and garfish fillets. First stop was the western side of Dangar but as I had arrived around 5am the tide wasn’t really running at full pelt so defining the dead spot was a bit harder than imagined and the area was much larger than first thought- I could run a dozen drifts in there - I only ran one for no fish Western side of dangar I then went to moony moony to do some sounding and decided to run a drift here , I started at the north east side of the island and drifted down through the channel and out into the delta where this current meets the main river current and there was a clearly defined current line. As my drift approached this current line my garfish fillet got smashed and after a short tussle up cam the first and biggest flathead of the day 58cm on a garfish fillet and as I had no fish in the freezer at home this one’s time was over. I continued the drift down to the rail bridge where I was met by a hungry school of small mulloway - time to move ! Moony moony. Next stop was the western edge of Peat island and as a few decent arches had shown on the sounder I wasn’t overly enthusiastic but dropped a bait to see what was down there - my suspicion was true - smallish mulloway so I moved a little upstream towards the passage that runs behind the island and started my drift . I was beginning to think this was another donut spot but as I was heading for the main channel it thought I may as well keep drifting, lucky I did as it produced two flathead - first one 44.5cm on a garfish fillet and as I hit the main current line another at 57.5cm on a half pillie and they also took a holiday in the esky ! Peat island I then moved up to the eastern end of Milson island and ran a drift along the edge of the mud flat and this was uneventful- the tide was on the turn by now so I drifted up the Milson Island passage to see what was lurking in there . I got to the edge of the first hole and my Gobbler’s paddle tail got hit and I was on to another decent flathead, This fish didn’t really fight and I thought this was going to be easy! When it got to the surface this mid to high 50s fish went berserk - it literally launched out of the water and tail walked! Each time I got it in the net it went nuts and tail walked itself back out 😡Third time it shook the lure and disappeared into the depths 🤬 I continued to drift right through the passage and out into the main river for a donut result - I now officially hate my landing net ! Milson island passage Finally I ended up where I fished last weekend ( Melvey’s wharf )but this time the tide was running in.I wanted to see how this changed the dynamics of this spot and was surprised to find a bubble line where the depth drops Into10m of water out of around 6m and after a few failures to get the drift right because the wind had picked up and wanted the drive me into the shore I finally got it right ! I was surprised to find the flathead were still sitting on the edge of the trash / current / bubble line but were on the down river end . This drift produced the last flathead at 45cm on a garfish fillet and a few small mulloway . Melvy’s wharf It is hard to see but there is a bubble / current/ trash line . After this I fished the Milson island steps where I got the last decent flathead last weekend and the hole at the point just east of the railways bridge on the southern end but only managed a few pickers . Milson island steps The point to the east of rail bridge on southern end of brige. When I finished cleaning my fish a few guys lobbed up with a few flathead around the 40cm mark and said they got them near Patonga so maybe the fish are starting to move down to breed now the water temp is up over 18.5c . Oh and I learned a hard lesson today - never ever leave your car door open at a boat ramp , did and a pelican took a dump on my car , it splashed off the side of the roof and all over the inside of the door , the end of the rear seat (has a cover fortunately!) and all down the door recesses - it stinks like rotting fish 🤮 Anyhow I hope you found it interesting and helpful!

That to me would indicate a bait that is flailing around , fillet baits tend to do this as they have a relatively large surface are to weigh ratio . Try a paternoster rig .

Try 1-2m of heavier fluoro tied with a FG and run this through the sinker and on to the swivel . What is getting tangled ? Is it the bait flailing around during the cast and getting wrapped around the main line ? Are you using a really long trace ? this can cause this as well . You might need to switch to a paternoster rig.

I love old outboards too - always wanted a victa jet or British sea gull . I did have a clinton outboard briefly- it was missing the reed block and carby so never got it running . There is a YouTube channel called aussie outboard collector - his collection is amazing! Also always wanted a blaxland putt putt motor to play with but it never happened.

To his credit he got it in the end !

My mate had a small savage with a 18hp blue band merc on it that sat in his yard for at least 5 years - it sat there that long the wheels sank into the ground and rotted off ! It was never drained , never started and all he did was flush the tank out and fill with fresh fuel , prime it up , gave it a few pulls on the starter and it fired up and ran like a clock . I must say that little merc was reliable as he never had one problem with it and the only thing bad about it was it was the noisiest outboard i have ever heard - 3/4 throttle and you couldn’t hear yourself think ! I started out working in a mower shop in the mid 80s reconditioning victa mowers and the only ones that had any varnish build up were the very old mowers like 18 specials that had sat under someones house for thirty years and i think the cause was the oil of the day - castor oil .

I tried once to fly fish once - it wasn’t pretty 🤣🤣 I got a good laugh from the video below - until I remembered my attempt which made young josh look like a master caster🤣🤣🤣

Thanks Ron ! Wow! Big flatties on1kg - that would be sphincter clenching 🤣🤣 My PB was 87 at the spot marked by the green dot and is literally a stones throw from one of the most famous mulloway spots in the Hawkesbury- flint and steel . It was caught on a bid dead squid ( was an old one I bought for catching leatherjackets ) it was my last bit of bait and I thought stuff it I will sew it on and maybe a decent mulloway might go it - it was on the bottom for maybe two minutes and it got smashed ! It was that fish that sort of focussed my mind on the flathead theory and also lead me to try jigging in the deeper water for flathead. I have had it in the back of my mind since then that to catch really big flathead I would need extra big baits and the bonus here is you are always in with a chance of a big mulloway! Spot zero on my map is really my knife and fork spot and the flathead there are generally under 60cm. Thanks for the heads up with the mulloway/ big flathead link and I already have a few spots in mind to try - the eddy at Juno pt is one of them ! Once again thank you for the feedback and ideas Ron! Ian.

Hope this picture shows what I mean with a dead spot against the shore where a current hits it , it was part of a drone video of a Canadian river and in the video I could see the current inversion where a fish could hold and expend very little energy and have its food delivered to it by the main current . They are both the same spot just different parts of the video , the top photo shows the area where the trash line would form in the Hawkesbury at point zero.

I used to run mine dry or at least until the engine coughed, these days I don’t bother. Modern fuel and oil doesn’t seem to cause the varnish build up like the old days . Yep seen the run dry brigade at the ramp plenty of times , still waiting for someone to back their boat down the ramp then arc up the bbq on the back of the boat while it is still on the trailer and cook brekkie on the ramp - give it time it will happen one day 🤣🤣🤣

Thanks for the award Donna ! Much appreciated!

Thanks Waza! All this is me trying to solve the 1m + flattie puzzle in the Hawkesbury and another thing I like about many of these spots is they are sort of out of the trawlers reach - even spot zero is close enough to the shore that the trawlers won’t run that close . It is also opening my eyes to the fact that even though I have been fishing this system for near on 45yrs , fished from Warragamba to BarrenJoey , most of Berowra , Pittwater and Cowan there are still places I have never been , like right up moony moony , mangrove and mullet creeks . Fish or no fish - this season I’m determined not to fish spot zero until I get desperate for a feed of flathead 🤣🤣

Thanks Isaac! I plan to hit those spots hard over summer and I have also been eying off a few spots in Botany.