Derny Driver

Put your mount front and centre, over the top of your anchor chain ...angled. The MinnKota will clear your hatch on the angle

They look exactly like cycling gloves Mike. Try a bike shop.

That would be my set up to catch the yakkas 😁 For kings it's 80lb braid with 120lb leader.

I havent Blacky but I probably should. I will do that this weekend. I used a mat and a sticker to triple check it but I will check everything with a tape measure.

The fisheries officer did measure mine to the tip. Unfortunately due to 2 hours bleeding in the ice bath it still came up a centmetre short. The thing that annoys me is that these guys obviously know fish shrink when they are in an ice slurry - but he blamed me for having a dodgy measuring mat.

No I have a 2004 Yamaha 70B 2 stroke with only 320 hours on it. Overheating alarm went off 10km off Jervis Bay and I had to call Marine Rescue for a tow. Mechanic told me that it's likely a build up of salt in the cylinder heads and it will be an ongoing problem. I've decided to bin the motor and upgrade to a new 90hp 4 stroke with hydraulic steering. A lot of money but I intend to use it heaps as I am retiring soon. Shame about the old 70 but I dont trust it.

Thank you for your response Couta. That's pretty much exactly what happened to me. Im new to fishing and still learning ... keen to learn all I can which is why I'm on this forum. And keen to do the right thing. I wont make the same mistake again. Thanks again for confirming what happened. I had no idea at the time.

All before my time Noel but I understand what you are talking about. My interest is more the 80s although I have bikes from 60s 70s and 90s. That older stuff is quite difficult to find parts for. 28 and 27 inch tyres especially. I have a 1940s Blackbird which was 3 speed Ozgear originally but was upgraded to Sturmey archer in the early 60s. Sounds like yours was a nice old bike, quite special.

I will be from now on mate. Cheers

It was perfect conditions for outside fishing over Easter so on Good Friday I headed out solo from Murray's ramp before dawn to middle ground. Had no luck with squid or livies but I had plenty of frozen bait. It was pretty quiet out there but I was able to hook a good kingfish early. Measured it at exactly 65cm. Double checked it by flipping it the other way on the mat. Yep 65. My mate made me up some stickers with a CriCut machine, I have a 36cm flathead, a 30cm snapper and a 65cm kingfish stuck in vinyl inside my boat. I held the kingy up to the sticker and it matched. Cut it under the gills to bleed, brainspiked and into the fish bag with a full bag of ice and half a bucket of seawater. 2 hours later Fisheries arrive. There were about 15 boats out, they came straight to me and I handed the kingy over for official measuring. 64 What the actual!!! I was shocked. Embarrassed. Bewildered. They took the fish and threw it on the floor of their boat. Took my details and told me I would get a official warning. 2nd offence will be $500. They were polite enough. I apologised profusely as I am really careful about size and bag limits. They checked the other boats and then went out to the banks where they confiscated 12 more undersize Kingys. To say it spoiled my day would be an understatement. I spent all day wondering how I could have measured it wrong. I even have a photo and it appears to be 65 in the photo. Then I wondered.... if you bleed all the blood out of a big fish, put it in an ice bath for 2 hours, will it shrink? Im convinced it did. And from now on I will have to allow for that when I catch fish. No more " just legal" ones. They will need to be over from now on. Has anyone else noticed this? I never even thought about it. I spent Saturday at home moping about my kingfish, and on Sunday hit Greenwell Point Ramp to head out to the Banks solo for the first time. It was dead flat and calm. Caught 2 red rock cod, 2 wrasse, 1 leatherjacket, 1 brown cod which all went back. Not interested in rubbish fish. I had a surface livie out for a Mahi Mahi and a weighted livie out for kings as well as my snapper rig. Nothing. Tried trolling for a while then called it quits about 11.30. Only made it a short way in before my engine alarm went off. I shut it down and assumed it was overheated. But after an hour it was still going off. I spoke to marine rescue shoalhaven and after a while we decided to call for a tow. The guys were amazing. I was of course embarrassed but I made a generous donation to their service when I got home and will get the motor looked at. The alarm is still activated which might help them find the issue. All in all a pretty crappy 2 days for me.

Hey Noel Thats only 1 shed. He has 2. The other one is the workshop. We don't have many cotter pin bikes. I have a nice 1932 Sydney built bike called SJH ( builder was Stanley James Hillden). It has inch pitch gears and is really old and cool. Cotter pin job. Danny builds wheels and trues them. He's an old school bike mechanic. I just collect all the parts and watch him put it all together. There is a whole underground retro bike collecting community who buy and sell ancient frames and old parts ... there's a big swap meet and show and shine show coming up in 2 weeks time at Randwick.

This is my mates shed. We built it together last year. It has a wood burning stove in there. We sit in there a couple of nights a week and build bikes or just solve the world's problems. He has about 40 bikes and I have 50. Restoring old classic steel frame bikes back to showroom condition is a hobby we share. Not fishing related I know, but its still a cool shed. And some fisherpeople have more than one interest, like I do.

I get stale bread rolls from the local bakery. Dry them out in the oven. Chop them up and put them through the blender. Then into ziplock bags.

I use a tiny little kids rod with a $30 reel, 10 lb nylon line ...samaki jig for yakkas, Squid jigs for squid. Works a treat.

If this guy is busy, I have used an amazing aluminium boat building company in South Nowra. Great prices and the workmanship and service is brilliant. The company is named after a mythical immortal greek bird which obtains new life by rising from the ashes of its predecessor ....

Finally got my first legal kingy on Sunday ....two actually, one 66cm and one 65cm. 66 was on squid and the 65 on a livey. Lots of rats caught and returned. Lost another nice one when he took about 30 metres of line off my reel and broke the leader on the reef bottom. It was a decent sort of swell out there on Sunday but again the boat handled it quite easily. Lots of time wasted getting blown around, by the time I land the fish and unhook it, Im 300 metres away from where I hooked it. Then I have to start the motor and go back to the waypoint. Im getting a big Minn Kota fitted this week so I can anchor over the school which will be a game changer. Cant wait to use it.

Thats a great idea. I was fishing in the Breckenridge channel and there was a bloke with 2 kids fishing near me. He saw a crab pot buoy, motored over to it and pulled it up. Nothing in it luckily but these morons seem to think stealing is okay. And showing his kids that he is a thief. Incredible.

I was on the Wallis Lake every day over Christmas. Caught quite a lot of flathead and also 3 good sized flounder. Nice work with the crabbing! The talk at the time was about people's crab pots disappearing every night. Apparently the Pros pots were always untouched but everyone elses got stolen. Infer from that what you will. I didnt fish real hard either. I docked my boat every morning at the Waterline Boathouse cafe and wine bar and just watched the world go by.

Cheers Noel that is very helpful Thank you

Thank you Noel Im looking in to having a big auto deploy minn kota fitted which will help enormously. Yes im drifting but really need to anchor. I will try what you have suggested.

I need some advice from the experienced guys here. Every time I go outside I hope and pray for a snapper but have never caught one. I try to fish reef areas using single and double paternoster rigs with fresh caught squid baits. Number 6 sinker. Nothing. What am I doing wrong?

Mate and I landed another 6 kingfish on Thursday... largest was 63cm so getting closer. Snagged my single loop paternoster rig on the reef and tried everything to bust it ... after 15 minutes of fighting it I had to cut the braid. Lost about 50 metres. 80lb braid and 120 leader. I've got good confidence it can handle any size fish.

Woke up at 4am and Willy Weather said Jervis Bay was calm so I launched at Wooloomai and headed out. It's a long way out to the heads from there but being solo, that ramp is easy to launch from. Murrays looks quicker but it's a 2 person job. The swell and wind started coming up but I decided to have another crack at these kingfish. Took a while to find my GPS mark, dropped a squid bait down and got hit by a big kingy straight away. Felt huge. He was ripping line off the reel so I had to tighten the drag a bit before he cut me off on the reef. Then the hook ripped through the line at the dropper loop and he got away. Possibly a legal size one I reckon. Suddenly the wind dropped and it was calm out there. Amazing. After that it was rats. I landed 6 in total including 2 at the same time on different rods which was interesting. All returned safely. All roughly 58cm. Apart from an Australian salmon, that was all I caught. Other people around me seemed to getting a mixture of fish , I just got kings. Single paternoster rig with squid. Not sure why. Anyway, again a learning experience.. 50lb is not enough ... slightly bigger seas than I've previously been in but no issues ... need to think about how to target snapper and other species better. Was able to stay out till 1pm and run full bore home the conditions were that good. Fisheries inspectors were out but didn't check me. Nothing to see lol. Great day out.

Woke up at 4am and Willy Weather said Jervis Bay was calm so I launched at Wooloomai and headed out. It's a long way out to the heads from there but being solo, that ramp is easy to launch from. Murrays looks quicker but it's a 2 person job. The swell and wind started coming up but I decided to have another crack at these kingfish. Took a while to find my GPS mark, dropped a squid bait down and got hit by a big kingy straight away. Felt huge. He was ripping line off the reel so I had to tighten the drag a bit before he cut me off on the reef. Then the hook ripped through the line at the dropper loop and he got away. Possibly a legal size one I reckon. Suddenly the wind dropped and it was calm out there. Amazing. After that it was rats. I landed 6 in total including 2 at the same time on different rods which was interesting. All returned safely. All roughly 58cm. Apart from an Australian salmon, that was all I caught. Other people around me seemed to getting a mixture of fish , I just got kings. Single paternoster rig with squid. Not sure why. Anyway, again a learning experience.. 50lb is not enough ... slightly bigger seas than I've previously been in but no issues ... need to think about how to target snapper and other species better. Was able to stay out till 1pm and run full bore home the conditions were that good. Fisheries inspectors were out but didn't check me. Nothing to see lol. Great day out.

Im hoping so Mike !