monch

Because in circle hooks, the point of the hook is not pointing up, and is instead curved in towards the shank of the hook. This makes it so that if u strike, the hook gets pulled suddenly out of the fish's mouth but the hook point (usually) does not catch on to anything. They are designed to allow the fish to swim away with the bait, slowly tightening the line which allows time for the circle hook to slowly move towards the entrance of the fish's mouth. As this happens, the inward pointing hook point catches onto the corner of the mouth and then u have a hookup. Theoretically this is how they work.

Top catch there Buster 1! What outfit is that by the way, it sure brought that jumping torpedo undone. I can tell the reel is a TD advantage but that's about it. Mind giving some details on your setup (line class, size etc)? Much appreciated

Wow thats huge, must be 2m+ Also its mouth looks like that of a silver trevally, looks suited to sucking food up from the seabed.

Hmm... i always thought those darker blue/green patches running out to sea with no waves breaking were called rips, in my head i imagined gutters to be running parallel to the shore. Are gutters and rips the same thing then?

Congrats on the capture! Sounds like an awesome little session there... before uni as well! how do u find the time?! Would have thought that the kings would be gone by now seeing that its winter. Gives me some hope of catching one. By the way, interested in what time it was when you caught the kingy and what strength line did you use on that 6ft penn combo?

Yo-zuri squid jigs for $5?! Where is this?!

Geeezzz..... that is very unfortunate. Lucky you escaped unscathed but dam it hurts to see the boat in that condition. Wonder wat that 19yr old was doing, hope they are ok though.

I have tried Egimax and personally cannot tell whether it makes a difference. These days i'm not really putting it on my jigs and find i can still get squid, if i get no touches then i might try some of it. Its your call whether u wanna buy the stuff tho... quite expensive.

Sounded like you had a good little session....from the grin on your face I can tell you had a great time catching that kingie. Can't wait to get my first kingie, legal or not....sounds like they put up an awesome fight. Wouldn't mind a nice sized trevally like that as well

I don't think you'll need to tag this jewie, u can already recognize it from the scar on its back. It would also be interesting to see how many times you can catch this small resident fish (start a bit of a record hehehe), shouldn't be too hard for you now, you've gotten him wired and know where he lives!

20 hits in a session is pretty good I reckon...you must be presenting the jig at the right depth (sure your not striking on weed? ) If i was getting that many hits i would start to experiment with the timing and vigour of my striking, maybe try striking later like zephi said (although my experience is that squid sometimes drop the jig after a little while which is why i strike as soon as i feel the weight) I also agree with A.dawg, maybe your striking too hard and/or too much drag. Also, as squid always attack the neck area, if they are smaller squid they might not slide down properly into the jags when you strike. In regards to zephi, i find that squid during the daytime will like to hang in deeper water so they are not as exposed (like most other fish). When squidding at gymea bay baths at dusk/night i find that most of the squid venture up into the shallow water (ie less than 2m) which is why gymea fires up at night. I think daytime squidding can also be successful, (albeit, typically not as good) provided you put the jig into deeper water with preferably plenty of weed beds. So that means getting long casts from the wharf into deeper water and using slightly heavier jigs. I have gotten, and seen plently of other people get squid in the deeper water on the right side of gymea bay baths, they also tend to be bigger squid in the deeper water. If you are after smaller squid, inside the bath along the weed beds and dropoff is a good spot.

Plenty of people use them for catching bait fish like yellowtail (yakkas), slimey mackerel etc. They are commonly called bait jigs, or sabiki jigs (sabiki is a company that makes them but there are others). They sink very slowly if unweighted but u can also use them with sinkers to get the jig down deeper and faster... i've found that the fish prefer the jigs to be wafting down slowly tho. The jigs with the really small hooks are best, say size 6 to size 10? You can choose to put some bait on the hooks but they are designed to be used with burley and i've read advice on the forums which says this latter method is more effective. Putting tiny pieces of bait on the many small hooks every time the bait gets stolen is extremely time consuming but sometimes it might work better. The jigs usually come in a 6 hook packet and i cut this into two separate ones so that there is 3 hooks on each section... makes it more manageable in regards to tangles etc. Hope you have success with using them, i have only had limited success and usually resort to using only 1 hook to get bait fish but maybe i am not burleying enough or effectively .

Maybe this guy is a new species of cephlapod, using a 'brown' ink instead of black to escape its predators The shark must have gotten confused when it saw something jetting along the surface and leaving a thick brown wake

Come to anywhere in port hacking and clean them out for us please I'm sure you will get many 'thank you's from other fishraiders for doing so. In regards to actually catching them... i seem to always catch them on anything (all kinds of stinky baits and scented lures) when i don't want to catch them... but as soon as i start to target them they seem to disappear... hmmm Also, if you notice that you keep losing your baits without feeling much... then they are most likely leather jackets. Try and use small baits and hooks because they have small mouths.

Nice to hear u got onto some squid. Good work You might want to have a look at this thread about posting pictures though: http://fishraider.com.au/Invision/index.php?showtopic=23284

I had always thought that they eat bread and maybe small pieces of peeled prawns but i only caught mine on small squid pieces which really threw me off. Burley i've heard bread or bran etc works. I also heard that the bait has to be close to the surface since they hang around the surface to midwater area. I would also be interested in some ideas on how others catch them and whether squid is a common bait used to catch them (or was mine just a freak capture).

Hi guys, would just like to make a 2-day report on the hacking. Get ready for a wall of words, I like to describe my day so that pros can get the details and analyse / make suggestions and also so other newbies like me can learn from them. Sorry for the people that get bored easily.. i will try and make it as interesting as possible (there are a few pictures ) I went down to my local haunt late yesterday arvo (5pm) and threw around plastics to no avail. There was also a little bit of wind which made things slightly difficult and there didn't seem to be much action around. After an hour or so it got dark and people started to leave, i then took out my squid jig and started prospecting the usual areas. The wind had died down to near non-existent but there was still some tidal movement. I got 1 rogue small squid early on and after not much action was planning to leave. However, the last couple left and i had the wharf all to myself so decided to stay abit longer. I had noticed a school of tiny squid (the size of my yo-zuri 1.8 jig) around in the shallow weedbeds (1-2m) and tried to jig them up. They were shy and would occasionally attack the jig but their tentacles were too small to be jagged by the squid jig. I figured there should be some bigger ones around out of sight so cast out further and worked the jig across the shallows in between the lighted and shadowy areas. This worked a treat and i managed to hook a heavy weight but it didn't react in the usual squiddy-way of hitting the reverse button. Keeping the tension on and slowly reeling in, i began to think i might have tangled in some really heavy floating weed but when it came to the light, i could see that it was a massive arrow . We locked eyes and it went beserk and started shooting backwards in strong and long bursts, taking line off me. After some careful manouevering i slowly grabbed the leader and hoisted it up onto the wharf. Judging by the 30cm length of the cork handle on my rod, it would probably have a 35cm hood... yay another PB It was so big that i couldn't put the lid on my small bucket. I quickly threw the jig back out to the previous spot and continued the fairly aggressive jigging motion (japanese squidding style ) that got the arrow previously. Not long later i manage 2 largish calamari around 22-25cm hood length (2 more PBs) and a medium sized one. Happy with the haul of the night i went home for dinner. Had some pics of the other squid but they are blurry as i was eager to cast the jig back in the water and my hand was shaky . Also there were some fairly large splashes everywhere and i thought there might have been some bream or even jewies around but couldn't see anything and my other lures were untouched. Afterwards i met a bloke who said some of the splashes were from longtom or garfish but i didn't get a good look. The next morning i arrived at the wharf at 7am (later than i wanted) and proceeded to cast plastics and blades. Got a hit on the blade but failed to hookup. Tried again and BANG finally i'm onto a reasonable fish (for my standards anyway). Ended up to be a 20cm+ snapper (another PB but still not legal)... back in it went. Burleyed up with bread and sent some unweighted bait down on a baitjig and managed to get a 25cm (approx) blackie. Too close to legal for comfort, back in it went, still happy with the PB tho. Went quiet for a while then up comes a yakka... FINALLY! A few more tiny trevally and yakkas later i see some slimies but failed to get their interest. Suddenly me and another bloke spotted a large white fish swimming slowly along the bath nets. Holy moly! it must have been 60cm and was shaped like a blackie but was bright white! (Albino blackie lol?) Very sure it wasn't a ray, had a large flat tail, don't think it was a jewie cause it was white... not silver. Any ideas? My friends arrived at the wharf later and by then the sun was well and truly up and the fish went off the bite. Eventually we spot some garfish which i called for longtom because they weren't even slightly interested in any bread. My friend was playing around with a blade and suddenly gets a hit and brings up a garfish!.... on a blade?!?! I start running out of bread trying to burley up and gain the attention of the gars but not much interest. I then put on a bit of squid and try for some more yakkas before i see a SWARM of gars... i saw 30+ but there must have been over 50 in that school... and they were following my squid bait.. no bites tho. I try again and start reeling in slowly and holy moly i hook another one! ....on squid?!?! Another gar falls victim to the blade again (once again mouth hooked, no fluke) and by now i am well and truly confused on whether they are garfish or not because i have never heard of garfish attacking lures or eating anything other than bread... but after checking pictures on the net, i'm pretty sure they are garfish. While they were alive, they were more green on top and had a red spot on the lower jaw of the beak. Ended up getting 4 garfish and losing quite a few more from the hook not setting and also right at the wharf. Kept the garfish cause i've heard that whilst small, are good to eat. They smell kinda funny tho...quite a pungent smell that i can't describe . Any good recipes you guys can offer? Edit: OMG just did a word count and at 1000 words this is an ESSAY!

I think its ok if your catch is legal and you're using the fish immediately as bait.

Sounds like a cracker of a time. Very good work on getting the big bream

Looking very nice Are you guys secretly making a new show......... ie. Pimp my BOAT!

Most likely candidates would be frigate mackerel and bonito like u said. Did u get a good look at them? If they were fat little bullets with a dark green-blue on top and wavy lines on their flanks then most likely frigates. If they were sleeker and more silver on their flanks with dark horizontal lines then bonito. I made a topic recently asking about tips to catch frigates, quite a few replies with some good ideas, maybe you should have a look: http://fishraider.com.au/Invision/index.php?showtopic=40554

Lucky you, living within walking distance to the groynes. I have not had any success around kurnell for squid yet but there seems to be weed beds around the place. Do you find that most of the groynes have squid?

That thing looks prehistoric, look at the teeth on it.. like a dinosaur

I heard the exact opposite, in that the lead up to and after the full moon provides for some good fishing. Haven't had much personal experience so i wouldn't know the validity of that... Also full moons and new moons put high tides around both dawn and dusk, would this be a likely cause to the "good" fishing action that i have heard of?

There are a range of jigs from both yo-zuri and yamashita, some are cheaper models, some are new flashy innovative ones that cost a fortune ie $25+