fishmaniac

Nice fish, did you get a measure of it?

Just finished replacing all the plastic holders with stainless steel rod holders, it looks way better too! It is a bit annoying that some boat manufacturers don't use better quality fittings. You are paying big coin for a new boat, what is the extra cost to them? $40 wholesale - if that? That was not us fishing the wreck, we were fishing inshore reefs in the 20m range.

Headed out on friday last week with Jim77 to chase some kings at some reefs south of the hacking. Our first mark was fairly uneventful with 3 hrs of downrigging resulting in nothing but peckers. We then moved to another mark which turned out to be structureless so we started heading home. We had one last stop and just as Jim and I started ranting about what a dud day it had turned out to be, Jim's rod buckled. Hooked up and pulling line on heavy drag the hook pulls shortly into the fight... We set up again and the fish continued to take a liking to our offerings of live squid and live yakkas. In about 2 hours we had around 11 strikes and landed 8 fish between 85 and 98cm with one rat. Jim likes to leave his rod in the holder when downrigging whereas I prefer to hold it. A word of advice to those who like to leave it in the holder, make sure you have high quality rod holders (not that plastic rubbish that comes standard with most boats). The plastic one broke instantly under some pressure. There are some good fish around, but you certainly have to do the time to find them.

Excellent capture mate. Although I do not target jews, I can appreciate the effort you put in to land that monster. So well done, I bet you were ecstatic!

A couple of nice fish mate. Was it two bigger fish you landed?

We were out on Sunday. It was pretty sloppy first thing in the morning but had smoothed out by the early afternoon.

The rod is the PE8-10 Overhead. It is currently matched with the saltiga LD35. It is absolutely brutal. At full drag it packs some real punch for a small and agile reel yet remains silky smooth. I am sure you will love it

With some decent weather on the cards the gf and I headed to some inshore reefs chasing some kings. We managed to get some squid with ease and so began fishing some reef in 20m. We landed 10 fish between 80 and 90cm and two rats. The fish were very well fed and fought great for their size. I tried out my new rod (Saltiga PE8-10) and it was a bit overkill for these fish - being able to skull drag 85cm kings - but it is a good outfit to have for that day in the hopefully not so distant future we encounter some monsters!!! The most success was had downrigging the baits off the fringes of bait schools. We had to spend a bit of time betweeen hookups as it seemed the fish were very picky, probably since they were so well fed.

Check your PM

No worries mate, The rubber piece i am referring to is an "O" ring. I have spoken to several mechanics and often they inspect impellors for wear and may not actually replace it. Check on your service reciept to see if you were charged for the part (which would mean it is changed). How long ago was your engine serviced? Impellor/seal failure can result from being exposed to the elements even though you are not clocking up many hours on the engine

Hey mate, From the time you start your engine it should only take a second or two for water to start running through. You should not continue to run the engine if water does not pass through (you don't want to get to the stage where the alarms turn on). Some of the problems include: - A build up of salt which has blocked your lines. However, if this happened it would probably have built up over time and the engine would have been struggling while you were running it and probably would have overheated. - You have a blockage in the line, which should have been avoided from the strainer at the intake location (check that is not damaged) - Your impellor has failed and you need a new one - The rubber seals in your impellor housing have failed and you are losing water - Your hose pressure/seal around your water intake is insufficient and you are not getting adequate pressur eto allow water to pass through the engine. If you submerse your engine leg in either salt water or a deep barrel of water to save you going to the ramp (to the depth it would usually be when you have your engine in the water) and the engine fails to pump water it would be your impellor/rubber seals. Hope this helps.

Nice work Matt, I was looking forward to seeing the footage this evening! As always, top effort!

The Catalina has a gear ratio of 4.3:1 so it would be a low speed model. I had a go with a mate's saltist high speed 6500 spinning reel and found the retrieve uncomfortably fast for jigging so I opted for the lower retrieve. You would certainly get the power out of the reel but being such a high speed I think you would struggle gaining line over a long period of time, particularly if you are struggling to move the fish much. I suppose getting one or two would certainly be doable but if you were to target marlin a lot it would probably be a bit uncomfortable!

I have 400m of 50lb on the Saltist and 300m of 80lb on the Catalina. The most I had out on the saltist was about 200m and the most I had out on the Catalina was maybe 130m. Obviously If I kept the boat stationary i would have lost a lot more line but when the fish ran I kept the boat mving to help gain some line.

Hey mate, The details of the two outfits are as follows: 1) Saltist 40H Overhead Reel with a 60B Saltiga Rod. It was loaded with 50lb braid, 80lb shockleader and 80lb flourocarbon trace 2) Catalina 6500 Spin Reel with a 56B Saltiga Rod. That had 80lb braid, 80lb shockleader and 200lb trace Fishing a tad north of uladulla

Here is the link to a short video of the striped and black marlin we got last weekend

It is pretty pathetic how politicians take any opportunity to grandstand to the public. These animals are breaking the law by taking such action so all a ban is going to do is impact those doing the right thing. The logic behind such a ban is like saying "some hoons are going 150 down suburban streets, we may as well ban driving". It would be nice if the authorities focused on the real issues on the water instead of stuffing around with random breathe tests on mid-week fishermen and busting people's nuts for not having a rope attached to their bailer bucket!!! All we need is a patrol car to cruise past the wharf every night or two and slap out $1500 dollar fines. And any of those who try to start fights should get a taste of some pepper spray. That will sort things out pretty quick. But acording to government, "it is a waste of resources".

Another sad day for the fishing community.... Last saturday kissing point wharf was vandalised and ferry staff were threatened with fishing knives by young men of middle eastern appearance between the ages of 15 and 25 (no I am not being racist this is a direct quote from the article). Local residents have called for more police in the area but the local MP has said it is a waste of resources and that a full ban will be imposed. Once again everyone has to pay for the actions of a select few. So thankyou to that group of knobs!

Thanks for all the positive feedback guys!!! I was fishing about 20-25km offshore a bit south from Sydney. The water was 23.6 on the first day and 23.2 on the second day. There were plenty of birds working the area throughout the day. Matt, sad to hear about the longliners but I hope you get onto a few anyways!

Where to start…. Like many keen fishermen it is a dream to one day land a marlin. For me this aspiration has been growing over the past two years as I have found myself spending more time finding powerful hard fighting fish (mainly kings). With the purchase of my bigger boat last year and building up my confidence offshore I made it a 2012 objective to land my first marlin out of my own boat on my terms as skipper. Having never fished on any marlin charters or on boats that have caught/targeted marlin I relied on internet research and the advice of some great blokes (you guys know who you are and I greatly appreciate your time with respect to discussing tactics). I have been fishing many of those days that would allow a 450 Topender to venture out in search of marlin and have come up without much luck. I tried trolling lures a fair bit but that was not really working for me. This weekend my luck turned and with great weather I managed two great days on the water. On the first day I had no luck on finding slimies but had some big yakkas. I found a patch of bait and some other blokes were working it. I spoke to them briefly and they had gone 2-2-1 using slimies. They were rather dismissive of my yakkas but that’s all I had!!! So down it went on my jigging outfit. This consisted of a Saltiga 60B rod, Saltist 40H and 80lb trace. Before I could set up my other outfit the reel started howling and I set the hooks. Within a minute a huge striped marlin was doing the old ‘windscreen wipers’ at the back of my boat. I kicked the engine into life and so the battle began. The fish was dictating terms for the first 2 hours and we got some great footage of the fish leaping time and time again trashing around violently pushing my gear to the limit. After 2 hours I managed to dictate terms a bit more and control the fish. At the 3hour 15 mark I was starting to hurt (I had no gimbal or harness here) and the fish was boat side. He poked his head out next to me, so close I would have been able to poke him with the tip of my rod. It was extraordinarily thick hence my estimate of 100kg+. Another half an hour passed as I tried to pull his head up enough to get a grab at his bill for that boatside shot. Keep in mind I only had 80lb trace so I was in no position to man-handle the fish up to me although he was only 2m away. We thought that to actually grab the fish it would probably mean that it would need to be almost dead. We decided it was not right to kill such a magnificent creature that had put me through the ringer. This was it, and it counted!!! If we had a tag pole we could have put 15 tags in!! So I locked up and popped the leader right near his mouth. The next day we managed a few slimies and yakkas. On the way out to where we had caught the fish the previous day we spotted a marlin tailing along the surface. I watched as he coasted down the face of a wave and positioned the boat about 100m ahead of the fish’s line. I rigged up a slimie on my heaviest jig outfit (56B saltiga rod, 6500 Catalina and 200lb trace). When I dropped the bait over a stripy rushed in for a look and the bait went down deep. A minute later the bait was taken and up popped a small black marlin around 60-70kg. This fish put on some great displays, not as many jumps as the previous days fish but it got some serious air!!!! My girlfriend got some great snaps of the fish in action. After 45 minutes which included some great driving off the fish from my girlfriend to plane him up, the fish was boat side. This time I was confident to pull the fish up on the 200lb trace and so I had a beautiful fish right next to me. The power, size and beauty of this fish was something I will never forget, in fact I’m still coming to terms with it! Unsure of how I was going to hold its bill with a towel having forgot my gloves, I decided to lip gaff the fish and use this as my primary point of hold. Out came the circle hook and after some boatside photos and a swim we sent this great fish back to terrorise some bait.

Just be patient with the kings. There are fish around but i'm sure everyone would agree that they are not in big numbers in the harbour at the moment. This time last year there were massive surface schools and almost every marker was holding fish. Keep persisting and use this time to improve your bait catching skills and try to suss out some new territory.

Here is the picture of the fish. Just check out that grin Well deserved mate!

I personally find flourocarbon can help when the fish are finicky. However, it is quite expensive and so I (and probably most other fisho's) use it as a leader material as opposed to main line

Hey mate, I have been pretty slack on reports. I had a good run early in the season landing fish between 85cm and 1m. Jim77 and I also had a blinder down south landing arond 50 fish between 70 and 85cm over two days. Here is a pic of the last fish I caught. I just got back from a month in the US and I am currently focusing my efforts on trying to land my first billfish. It is shaping up to be a steep learning curve that will require plenty of hours on the water for success. Thanks briso for the water temp details.

Nice kings mate, well done. What was the water temp when you got the fish?