dato

I tow a caribbean intruder (2t ish) with a nissan pathfinder 2.5 turbo diesle with all the trimmings (leather dvd player) and my mates would much rather go melb to bermi in my 4wd over thier 2wd triton petrol. The pathfinder pulls better up the hills and never sways or anything untoward it has a 3t tow capacity and at a reasonable puchase price and good resale you cant go wrong with the right 4wd.

I have the Hyper PE which has the shallow spool I have caught sailfish and barramundi using it and it is excellent, I got spooled over the weekend by a bluefin 20kg+ but you get that in over a 500mt of water. I managed to squeeze on 300mt of saltiga surf braid today in 30lb (previously had 200mt of 20lb braid. The certate would be the choice for me with good capacity and up to 8kg of drag!

A bit of overkill for sails I got a couple last year on a certate 4000 and nitro magnum but 4-6kg!

As I understand it the shoot through transducer cannot be used in an alloy boat.

Try nitro range, very, very good I have a 4-6kg 5 piece and it punches above its weight, I think they do a 10-15kg stick about 7ft.

I have recently fitted a muir drum winch to my 2006 caribbean intruder, I added about 2kg of f/g resin and about 4-5mt of chopstrand matt and about 1mt of woven matt and a kilo of flow coat to the bulkhead in the anchor well. The bulk of the glass went into the corners where the bulkhead joins the hull and about 5mm of glass accross the bulkhead where the winch is. I was quoted about $800 for the fiberglass work but it cost me about $100-120

I would say items like pliers, line cutters, gaffs, bait needle, lure bags, rubber bands, dacron, then a decent set of lures in various colours (I like the JB range of lures but my first marlin was on a $5.00 ebay skirt) hooks, crimps, leader, storage, storage, storage.

I lost a 120+kg black earlier this year when the albright knot failed after 2hrs and 40min (only about 20mt from the boat). The knot was between 50lb finns and 150lb leader. I think my problem was twofold my practice with knots between braid and heavy leader was limited and I was over the fight without a harness and I cranked the drag up to about 11-12kg in an attempt persuade the beak to the boat. For light braid to light leader when snapper fishing I use a double uni and have never had a problem breaking the leader through the knot.