Jeff

Hi Riggy, to the site. I'm landbased and fish Figtree a lot. Have caught many different things there but yours are the first Trevors I've seen. Fished Figtree on Sunday morning for one bream (38cm) and a small flatty. Water was very clear and there was very little bait around so it looks like the rain has stirred things up. Do you wade the sandflat or fish the rocky shoreline? Cheers, Jeff

I have 125yds of 4lb Fireline on my 2000 Laguna (with mono backing). Based on how much the Fireline filled the spool, I think you could put 300yds of 4lb Fireline on a 2000 Capricorn. You could do a rough calculation based on the diameter of the Fireline in comparison to diameters of 4 or 6lb mono (and the stated spool capacity). One way to to do it and get it right first go is to use the spare spool. You put the Fireline on first and either cut it off at the correct level, or add mono backing when you run out of Fireline. Then take the spare spool off the reel, fit the spool you are going to fish with, and wind all the line from the spare spool onto the reel. Would be keen to hear how much Fireline you fitted in the end. Cheers, Jeff

Hi Joe, From memory there was a thread on Ausbream about a faulty batch of Fireline. Cheers, Jeff

Hi Evan, Thanks for the reply. Appreciate you sharing your knowledge. Cheers, Jeff

Hi Evan, Thanks for the quick reply. Lanox is virtually the same as Inox, ie a light lanolin base lubricant with similar viscosity to WD40. I have a further question regarding lubrication of bearings. Do you use grease or oil on the larger bearings (such as the rotor bearing)? Cheers, Jeff

Hi Evan, Welcome to the site and thanks for volunteering your knowledge. 1) The question has come up lots of times about which grease to use when servicing reels. When servicing a car the replacement grease and oil is specified. I have never seen this info for a reel. Can you provide a specification for the original grease used in Daiwa threadline reels? Also where can we get this grease? 2) Would Lanox be a suitable lubricant for the line roller bearing? The manual states a light machine oil but I would rather not use any petroleum based products in an area where they could get on the line. 3) After use I have always washed the reel off in fresh water (light spray), dried it and used Lanox on the exposed moving parts. Diawa's recommendation is to spray the reel with WD40 to displace water then polish off the excess. In your experience is washing the reel in fresh water OK? Cheers, Jeff

Hi Ian, Sorry to hear about the foot, hope it heals quickly. Good job on the trevor, 1kg is a solid fish and the first one I've heard of from the Figtree sandbank. Looking forward to the photo. I fished Figtree from 5.45-7pm on Saturday 2/4 using HB's. All the action was in the first 1/2 hr (probably too dark after that). Got 1 flatty, two bream and a tailor. I've swapped from SP's to HB's when fishing Figtree the last couple of months because sacrificing a whole packet of SP's to the toads each session was just getting too expensive. Cheers, Jeff

90% certain I can make that date. What's the general plan, fish in the morning and have a BBQ lunch? Cheers, Jeff

Hi Tim, I got 10 poddies in 1/2hr at a small drain a couple of hundred metres up the road from the Woy Woy Baths a few weeks ago using one of those clear plastic traps. Kept them alive in Dad's garage overnight in a 9 litre bucket using an aerator. Used a kitchen tidy bag to line the bucket and knotted this loosely over the bucket to stop the fish jumping out. Never tried keeping mullet this long before but they were fine the next day. Cheers, Jeff

Hi Joe, Thanks for that, will check them out. Its definitely time to change the hooks. I bent them back into shape and sharpened them before a session on Sunday, then managed to drop at least 5 fish (3 in a row at one stage). Guess my idea of the right shape is a little out. Cheers, Jeff

Tony, What are the correct replacement hooks for the SX-40 and the SX-48? Where can I get some in Sydney? I also find the SX-40s mostly need some tuning out of the box. I would also appreciate a tougher finish on the lures. I find the brighter coloured finishes get scratched very easily. Otherwise dammed good lures - could they just drop the price a little. Cheers, Jeff

Whenever I fish Brisbane Waters I get lots of weed around the lures. Are you rigging them weedless or with very light jigheads to avoid the weed? Cheers, Jeff

Back when I used to scuba dive regularly I did a dive on a reef out from Sydney Heads and must have seen about 100 anchors in various states of decay along just 50m of reef. Ended up retrieving a large brand new sand anchor with the help of a lift bag The reef consisted of large round boulders just touching each other and the shafts of the anchors had all wedged between the boulders with the prongs caught underneath. Unless you were lucky, pulling the anchors out involved straightening all four reef anchor prongs at the same time. I wonder if F&S reef has similar boulder formations cause it sure catches a lot of anchors. Cheers, Jeff

Hi Mystic, I don't believe adding bubbles to a live well will allow you to hold any significant amount of additional bait. Bubbles are used in closed systems (aquariums, ponds, etc) to increase surface area so that oxygen can diffuse in faster and replace that which the fish are using up. Lots of aquarium impellers have air injection. A standard live well is an open system. It sucks up water from outside (which is already carrying as much oxygen as it can) and replaces the oxygen depleted water in the well. You just need to make sure the amount of water you are replacing is sufficient for the amount of bait you are holding. If you increase the water flow to hold more bait, you can create too strong a current which tires out the livies and then they are not as good so there are limits. I used to make diffusers to spread out the water so it doesn't all enter and leave at the same point (rigid PVC tube with lots of small holes). Just my $0.02 worth. Cheers, Jeff

Hi Mick, Just spent the last two weeks at Port Macquarie. It blew a gale most days so outside charters were cancelled for all but one day (guess which day I didn't have a reservation). They managed about two boxes of dollies up to 8kg but the bottom fishing was very slow. I fished the river most days from the shore. The best place was Blackmans Point. Its a couple of kilometers up river and on the tourist maps. Its a large sand spit at the junction of the Hastings and Maria rivers. Its chockers with nippers and lots of boats pull in there to pump bait. I spun lures at low tide and got bream, whiting and flathead every time. Best fish was a 62cm flathead. Used both soft plastics and hardbodies. The standout lure was an SX40F in gold/black. The Hastings river side of the flat yielded the most fish. The sandflat is positioned so that a nor'easter puts the wind at your back and you can do 50 metre casts with light lures. One thing to watch while wading is the stingrays. Had a couple of close encounters in thigh deep water. Most of them just move away but every now and then one buries down and stays put. I also spun the canal alongside Settlement City shopping centre with SPs. Both trips yielded flathead but nothing else. Also took some flathead by wading the sand flats near Pelican Island (look to your right as you drive past Panthers Club). Previous years have yielded good bream on live bait at the Co-op wharf but this year all we got were babies. Previous years have also yielded trevally on SPs from this area but nothing this year. The locals recommend Limeburners creek as THE place to spin for bream but say its a boat option only. Hope you have a good trip. Looking forward to reading the report when you get back. Cheers, Jeff

No, you don't want any weight at all to get rid of the twists. You will be surprised at how much drag 70m of line in the water has. Cheers, Jeff

I have found that when you spool up a reel you often put twists in the line. With mono a few twists don't seem to matter much but braids knot very easily. I troll the bare line behind a boat for a couple of hundred metres to get the twists out and the problem disappears. Give it a go. Cheers, Jeff

Hi Guys, When not fishing I design electronic equipment. A while ago I did work on a 12V sealed lead-acid charger and learnt a bit about how lead-acid batteries are supposed to be charged for longest life. I'll put something together that explains the basics. In the meantime Macman's advice sums it up perfectly - don't overcharge, don't flatten - both these things kill lead-acid batteries. Cheers, Jeff