Seagoon

Hi mate, I understand - there is more to it than just the outcome. There is the process, and also the satisfaction etc etc. A man has to have a hobby! Also, you will know your boat inside out once you have done it. Looking forward to seeing the photos come along :-) Cheers, Jon

Gidday all. Had a bait tank water pump failure on the weekend. Major inconvenience especially since I had a full load of yakkas on board, and was squidding with the intention of putting some squid in there too... How often do people have to replace them? Anyhow had one fail recently? Both my bilge pump and bait tank pump are Rule 500gph, identical. So i bought two new ones, and from now on I'll carry a spare. But ill run it from the cigarette lighter, and put a length of hose on it too. If another one goes, then i'll put the spare in. And then change brands probably, and get the absolute best I can. This fresh water pump is probably only a year and a half, or two years old. The bilge pump has been in for the same length of time, and is running OK still. Is this the normal life expectancy for a salt water pump???

I concur on the volume of stripper. I repainted my fella about 2yrs ago, and its not a small job, I can tell you. I went through many, many litres of stripper. And countless manhours of elbow grease. Seriously, get it blasted, as the BlacknBlue suggested. In hindsight, I would have. I know nothing about this process though. A have heard that sandblasting is no good for aluminum? The thing about the blasting is that may allow the paint to key (if it is anything like sandblasting). And this is a DOUBLE BONUS, because you don't need to etch the aluminum, probably. The process i went through: scrape strip wire brush clean fill sand etch prime paint Add to that the removal of all the fittings, and it becomes an effort. I'd suggest that fishing is more fun!! But I understand your motivation because I have done it myself. In hindsight, I'd probably not bother, or buy a new boat. But I am extremely happy with my boat and the result. PS BlacknBlue, are you a Chain fan?

Oh yeah I'm addicted. It's like trying to control a medium-sized untrained dog while walking it down the street on a leash, but with the leash on a fishing line. It's that much weight and power... amazing!

Thanks for the comments fellas. Gee, I can't wait to get back out there. We did try injuring the yakkas and that didn't help either. Seemed like a very plausible idea, and I recon it is for the future too, but i dunno, i guess royalty always gets to eat whatever it wants!!

We had tank full of yakkas, and were set on complementing them with a few squid to assist in busting our kingie cherries; and also busting our harbour squid cherries too... Things seemed to be going pear-shaped early on, when the bait tank water pump packed it in not long after pulling up at the squid spot. We had no choice but to abandon the squid hunt, and run with the yakkas, who surely wouldn't last as long as normal. We rotated the water by hand for the remainder of the outing. Not to worry, yakkas would do fine... well, not really. The kingies were around but must have seen & been inspired by the finale of "The Biggest Looser", because they were certainly dieting today. We had a heap of semi-interested 'follows', but no hook-ups or bites. We tried every jig and lure and plastic on board our good ship, to no avail. Even adjacent boats who were dropping fresh & inky squid baits down were drawing blanks. What to do? Well, we settled on a high-impact yakka marketing campaign, based on a voluminous amount of good old burley and yakka pieces. And the response was excellent - within minutes we had 8 or 10 kingies circling the boat like small sharks, and our jaws were dropping as we drooled over these impressively sleek and beautifully coloured animals. They were so close we could have netted them - they were literally only 30cm under, next to the waterline of the boat. But they still didn't want a bar of our yakkas. We dangled them here, and dangled them there, pulled them left and right, but NO! Not interested. Until we put down one demon yakka which, at first sight of the school of kings, went totally psycho, unable to take any drag & cavitating on the surface. Well, bless this little battler, because the kingies got excited and decided to go for him - about 3 at once, and BANG I was on!! What a thrill to see a big monster take your bait at you feet and then accelerate with raw power to the scream of the reel. I was screaming with bliss, shock and amazement, and forgot all about fighting the fish - my day had just been made, and anything beyond this was a bonus, and almost irrelevant! He was on for maybe a couple of minutes on my heavy rod, and then dived and I couldn't turn him, and he busted me off. Owing to none of our remaining yakkas being as committed as their old mate, that tactic didn't work again. But, in a rare & critical moment of acute observation, we noticed that the kingies were actually picking through the burley trail, eating small bits of fish. Smart arses - they were snacking! Hmmm. Out comes the bream rod, with a small unweighted hook & tiny bit of bait drifting in the burley trail, right beside the boat. It was like trying to jig for enormous yakkas. What a long shot... I drop it down not expecting anything, and was still watching the kingies swim past my live yakka when my little 4lb bream rod bends in half and its drag screams like scalded cat. Holy crap! I was sure that I had no chance of landing this sucker, but after about 4 or 5 dives, I landed a 61cm kingie - my first kingie - awesome! By this time we are sight-fishing for these fellas, as we had come to the conclusion that this is the only way we are gonna get anything on a hook - so, all rods were fitted with bream hooks and small bits of yakka. Then my mate Chris has a fight on his hands with a similar setup to mine, small rod and hook, tiny piece of bait. 66cm keeper, throat cut & on ice. Disappointment loomed as we ran very low on burley, and it was just a matter of time before the kingies moved on to blue-er pastures. In desperation, I ripped his guts out of Chris' kingie, and lobbed the guts into the burley pot. Accept for two pieces of extra-nice looking gut, possibly the liver & kidney - looked prime for bait, and I loved the idea of catching kingie on kingie! On goes the kidney - kingies swim by and sniff - no sale. Kidney into burley pot. Liver on hook. Hook in water. Shazam! Kingie hooked on kingie guts, kingie in boat, about 55cm, good fight. All out of bait and burely, we pull up anchor, gee it was heavy. Me thinks: it must be coated in mud. But NO; bonus! Two anchors came up instead of one!! How's that?! Caught kingie on kingie, and anchor on anchor. We headed over to near quarantine & got my first harbour squid, which was later massacred by jackets, along with our tackle. Time to go. Geeze, what a sensational day on the water. The weather was beautiful, and the yakkas plentiful, but other than that, it was a tough hand of cards to play, but we played them pretty well and had a damn ball. And learned a heap about kingie and harbour fishing.

Really? Fish in Thirlmere Lakes? Hmmm... I can feel a Sunday drive coming on....

Yep you brought up the half century nicely - congrats.

I believe that 'cabbage' is the pick. It actually looks like cabbage, sort of.

Lovely shape to him.

Gee interesting procedure there! Glad that you are all well.

I'm with you. Horse racing is up there with watching paint dry and grass grow.

Oh I hate eel-tails... I've been stung once too. Same sort of situation, fishing the pines, trying to get a hook out, and I had the bugger wrapped in a towel. I didn't realise they had a spine on the top of their head too, and that's the one that got me - it went through the towel, into my finger, and all the way to the bone. Well, I let out the loudest expletive that I have ever mouthed. It was sore for the rest of the morning trip, and then was right after that. No side affects for me. I didn't perceive any danger cause I hadn't seen them flagged as a dangerous fish. I caught a small stingray in a witches hat near juno not long ago, and I noted that the spines on the ray were very similar to those on the catfish. But the ray had a set of three in the one spot, about half way up its tail. Hope you are feeling better now.

Try the red channel marker opposite waratah bay. It's not too far from bobbo. If the tide is not running too hard, its good. In waratah itself can be ok - hae seen some monster lizards cruising around in there, but haven't caught one. It'd recommend that you go for something a little more modest though, in terms of fish size - the biggest you may get typically is a small soapie jew. If you can pick up some live worms or nippers from a tackle shop on your way there, that will add to the quality of the day, i'd suggest. Pillies get picked to pieces by the little reddies in cowan ck. And though I'm not a fan of trawling in the hawkesbury, if you do take some frozen bait, make sure you take some hawkesbury prawns. They must be hawkesbury prawns - windybanks.

Nice looking outfit there too!!

Good point mate, I hadn't thought of that!

This is what the boat looks like - the pic was taken during my tinnie makeover. Its the best shot that I have that I can find that illustrates the location. Thanks.

Good point - it's the small version of this fella:

Hi all, I've just bought on of those sexy bait boards for the tinnie. It has the rod holder type mounts. Any tips for mounting it? Was thinking of putting some rod holder either on the inside of the transom itself (not preferred) or on teh back of the rear bench seat. Other option is something on the floor around the floor ribbing. Cheers, Jon

Hi mate, That battery would launch a rocket, so I doubt that there is a problem with it in your instance. Its normal for loads to vary dynamically, unless they are really static, like a light or something. If you are seeing the voltage jump around, it may be an indicator that your cabling is a bit light, and a bit too resistive for your load (how long is it and what cross sectional area?), and is producing a significant voltage drop. As the load varies, so do does the voltage drop and hence the voltage goes up and down at the load. If you are concerned, i'd try turning everything off accept the sounder, and monitor the voltage reading. Sounders draw a bit of juice in quite an abrupt manner, as it pings the bottom, so if its jumping around that could be the cause. You could try looking at the voltage with a multimeter, but they are a bit slow - what is the update rate of the sounder's voltage measurement? Other things to try are putting in some really thick cabling temporarily, or connecting the sounder directly over the battery terminals with a really short cable. Are you able to disconnect the transducer from the main unit? If you can safely do it, then try that as it will further narrow in on the problem. Divide and conquer!! If the battery voltage is varying slowly over time, that's normal too. Battery discharge and charge curves are not flat at all. They vary the most near the fully charged and flat sections of the curve. Cheers, Jon

Hey Chris, thanks for that reply mate - sounds very sensible :-)

Yep i recon yabbies too. Also I have had excellent success with small yakka strips in the hawkesbury. The pickers can;t get it off before the big bream come along :-)

Hi all, Has anyone got an tips for getting the ink out of squid and storing it in a reasonably controlled manner? I have been told the following - does anyone concur? "If you treat the squid gently, with a landing net they seldom drop their ink. Take them out of the net, point away from self and gently squeeze until the squid squirts it water jet reserves out then place in ice slurry so that squid goes to sleep. When you pull its head/guts/tentacles off the ink sac is usually still intact. place whole sac with others in a jar of sea water and store in bait fridge or, even better, use fresh from the squid." Cheers, Jon

I know from experience that there are some monster bream in there. Fishing around the pontoons and structures on foot, with the drag right up and a yabbie on, with a really small sinker. Hold on for your life!!!

Cool. Yeah it's a walk and a half, with no luggage, let alone gear!! Lovely place. How did the creek look?