Burnsy

Yep, Some mates and had an encouter with a Mako about that big in 5.9 meter Markem Whaler up at Port Stephens back in 1988. They are awesome beasts, especially when they swim past the boat lock their big evil black eye on to you and roll it back as they go past... I will never forget it.

I spent a few days down at Lake Jindabyne over easter. The lake is down at 42% capacity which makes for interesting boat launching from the bank. I saw two unfortunate soles bogged down to the rims whilst trying to retrieve boats. On the fishing front trolling my favourite little SX40 in red/white/green produced some good results. Not sure what it is about the SX40 but it does not matter what other lures I troll next to it. Over the three sessions I took 14 strikes in a row on the SX40 all from Rainbow Trout, the fish were all between 1-1.5kg and excellent fun on bream spinning gear. Also had the chance to go to the Rise Fly Fishing Film Festival which was an excellent night. The dvd called "Chasing down the Man" which is an excellent movie about a couple of crazy blokes chasing Roosterfish off the beach in new mexico has to be seen to be believed. Burnsy

Coollaman, I have dealt with quite of bit of this crap with my work. A few practical cost effective things that work well. Simple $20.00 window deadbolts from Bunnings, Deadbolts for any sliding doors. Sensor Lighting that monitors the areas around your house and a good old hand held air horne kept handy to your bed will frighten 6 months growth out of anyone you find sneaking around your house.

Good luck with the cameras. I know a bit about them having used them on several occasions at my work to catch scumbags breaking into cars. A couple of tips when setting them up. Have a good look at your place from the outside looking in and work out the obvious choke points were the scumbags have to walk though. Do not fall into the mistake of having the cameras covering to large an area as they will not record any useful detail. You are better off to lose some of the area of coverage and concentrate the focus on key choke points where a would be scum bag has to walk through so that you get some good detail. Also, if the cameras are going to be used at night set them up at night so you can check the quality of the footage. They work well in tandem with motion activated lighting that makes it easy to fast forward through an hour of footage and know exactly when there was movement in the camera focus area. EB

I might as well add my 2 bobs worth. I had a chance to meet with Peter Debnam a few weeks back. Interesting how political spin doctors sieze on comments and turn them around. In regards to the much publicised 20,000 public servants, the aim of this was to streamline some of the public service departments of the beuracratic pen pushers who do nothing but waste our money. Most of you would have had some dealing with government/council departments where it is plain obvious that if those departments were actually accountable for the results they acheived they would not be employed. What is frightening is that this election will be won by the party with the best marketing department not the party that has the best policiies. God help us if the green fruit bats get any more power... We will all be sitting in the dark and walking to our fishing spots

A good mate of mine put me on to this. 1. Go to the supermarket and get hold of those fresh squeezable tubes of - Corriander - Mild Chili - Ginger 2. Grab a couple of lemons and a can of spray on olive oil. 3. Mix the corriander, chilli, ginger and squeeze in enough lemon juice to make it a runny sauce. 4. Spray the foil and the fish fillet (Atlantic Salmon is good) and then coat the fish with the mixture. 5. Bake the fish until cooked. 6. Yum

It was a rough day on the SP's mate. For those who asked I Forgot to measure that Bream, was a decent fish though on a 2" Gulp Prawn in natural. Snapped a better fish off a bit later in the day that ate my prawn, pulled the hooks on a couple. There were a few big tailor boiling up around the place as well. Those bastard leatherjacket can be chew thorugh a packet of gulps in no time.

This one happened many moons ago up at Nelson Bay. I use to work at the main marina up there. One lunchtime some mates and I took a 28ft Bertram out for a run. We pulled back into the inner most birth of the Marina which was packed with about 100 people eating lunch. As we pulled into the marina berth I jumped from the bow to the Marina and grabbed the bow rope in hand to tie the boat up. I had the rope in one hand and the railing of the boat in the other. At the same time my mate put on the rear bow rope which caused the nose to move out. Instead of letting go I held on and ended up suspended in the air above the water between the bow of the boat and the marina. I am thinking this is not going to end well and I am looking at all the people who are all now staring at me. In almost slow motion as I lost my balance and turned upside down still holding on for grim death. I then went head first fully clothed in trousers and collared shirt into the drink. My mate sorts the boat out and drags me out of the drink. Neither of us say anything and I start splodging up the marina soaked to the skin and the whole bloody marina full of people started pissing themselves laughing.

Dday Col, I once devised a plan to tie a fly from a boags label and catch a trout in the North Esk on it. I wrote to Boags who sent me half a dozen boags shirts for my mates and I. I still have a couple of the fly's in my fly collection. Mate if I lived down there I would be in the car and off up to the highland lakes every chance I had... gods country. Burnsy

Ocean Trout are farm bred rainbows that are put into pens in the saltwater and grown until they are ready for harvesting. They do a lot of it on the west coast of Tasmania.

Thanks guys, see my post in the lures forum.

With all the posts from the Bass boys I decided to slip the gear in for a planned day trip with the family sking on the Hawkesbury near Windsor. Middle of the day Saturday the river was more like the F3 Freeway with ski boats roaring around all over the joint. I nicked off for a quick session throwing spinnerbaits at some structure. To my absolute delight I was rewarded after 15mins with an excellent 35cm fat healthy bass that darted out from under an overhanging legde at scoffed my spinnerbait. The fish was in excellent condition, although had signs of a previous human encounter with an old scar on its mouth. I figured if I could pull a bass in the middle of the day with boats roaring around I had to come back for an early session. 4.30am this morning I put the boat in the water at a little ramp down near Pitt Town and worked the edges with a Cicada pattern fizzer. I could see a lot of surface action and it did not take long before my fizzer dissapeared in a boil of water. Bass No. 2 for the weekend, a bit smaller than the first was in the boat. I had a couple more strikes after that, but as soon as the sun showed itself the fish shutdown. I had one more strike on a spinnerbait at about 6.30am and was home by 7.30am. Great to see there is bass up there even with all boat traffic. I can't wait to get up there again for an evening session. I have a couple of photos that I will post if someone can reply and tell me how to insert them. Burnsy

Grenades are good!!! Bastard carp... a scurge on our waterways. Nothing better than working in pairs, one catching em, one belting the crap out them with a big stick.

I use to live down there and fish the area around the bridge with sp's all the time. Back then the channel was slightly open (about a meter of water deep x 5 meters wide on a high tide). I use to do really well early at the very start of the run out by anchoring 20 yards short of the green pole and casting 2" Tsunami shads in holographic and working them super slowly. Not sure if there is any water exiting out the channel there at the momement. Good place down there...

Thanks for the heads up Stewy, I haven't been bass fishing for a while. I am planning on throwing spinnerbaits around the structure along the riverbank. Any other suggestions. Burnsy

I was hoping someone might know how far up the hawkesbury you have to go to find bass. The family is organising a water sking day near windsor and I was thinking about sneaking off in the punt to chase some bass. Does anyone fish for them up that way? and how far up do you need to go? Burnsy

Hbs - Palamons in black and gold are an excellent all round lure for fishing the racks. Sps - 2" gulp prawns in natural fished almost weightless, 2" power hawgs in watermelon if you can find them, clear squidgey finesse heads with 3" clear powerbaits trimmed back about 2cm will all catch fish.

I am heading down to Narooma for five days in a couple of weeks and will be taking the 3.9 punt with the electric. I am planning on chasing flatties, bream and jew. Wondering if any raiders have fished the Wogoona Inlet down there or know anyone who could point me in the write direction. Burnsy

I spent the long weekend down at Crookhaven Heads and got out for a few early sessions. The first couple of days I worked the lower section of the river chasing bream and flathead around the oyster leases which were pretty quiet. I managed a few 45-50cm Flatties but worked bloody hard for them. The bream were almost non existent. Talking to a few locals, they think that with the closure of some of the major south coast rivers to the pro's the Crookhaven is now seeing an increased level of pressure. Interesting... After hearing someone talking about schools of fish just outside the heads on Sunday I took the punt out through the river entrance to find a huge school of salmon and tailor at the back of the beach. I motored up to the school on the electric and had got smashed on my first cast. I was using a three inch powerbait in the clear colour and the salmon certainly liked it scoffing it on the sink. I was using my 3kg bream gear and the first fish was a decent salmon of about 3kg that took me near 20 minutess to boat. All the time there were salmon busting up the surface all around me and I could see thousands swimming around the boat. With the first one boated after a slug fest down deep, my second cast got smacked a few times before I was bitten off. I switched over to a metal lure on my 6kg baitcaster and caught a tailor first cast. Followed that up with a another smaller Salmon on the second cast. By that stage the mass of holiday mugs turned up and started trolling straight through the school and they went off the chew pretty quickly. That is the first time I have chased Salmon on my bream gear and they were bloody good fun. I will post some photos tomorrow if someone can tell me how? Burnsy

The water was noticably warmer than last week and there was a fair amount more baitfish particularly around some of the fallen trees and timber on the edges. Funny, at about 8.30am the wind changed to a hot nor wester on the water and I thought shite... that is bush fire weather. Not sure if the fire made it to ATB or not.

I was up at 4.30am and on my way for an early session. I made it as far as Lane Cove before working out that my polaroids were still at home. A quick U-Turn and that sorted out I put the boat in at ATB at 6.00am. I was keen for a few Lizards and was trying a couple of new drop offs that looked good on the sounder. First Cast... and I am on. A 45cm Lizard that swallowed a 4 inch powerbait way down. Second cast... on again. Another 45cm job. Third cast... on again... yet another 45cm job. Now I am thinking about bagging out on Lizards before 6.30am. It went quite on that drop off after that so I took off to find some boats to throw SP's at. Found a nice dirty hulled boat which by the look of it had a fair bit of water in the hull. First cast with a 2" Gulp Prawn got smashed. After a spirited fight a 30cm bream is in the boat. This fish swallowed the gulp so far down I could not even see it. On to the next boat. The gulp hits the water...smash on again. Smaller fish this time just over 25cm. How good is.... Third boat hull... smash... pulled the hooks... fish kept the gulp. It is 7.00am The sun is starting to burn already and the cicadas are going ape. I have taken to carrying ear plugs when I fish Cowan Creek the Cicadas are so lound. I fished a couple more drop offs for one more Lizard and hit some more boat hulls on the way back for one more Bream that I saw chase the gulp and smack it. 9.30 I am back at the ramp. Chaos reigns as the daytrippers are getting it all wrong and zig zagging all over the ramp. When I was cleaning the Lizards, I noticed one of them had a really full stomach. Checking out the stomach contents it was full of some sort of crustacean that I have never sean before. They were a bit like little Balmain Bugs I have posted a picture on the Fish ID forum to see if anyone knows what they are. I will try and post some photo's of the fish tomorrow once I load the Bluetooth software. I took the photo of the crustacean at home with my Nikon rather than the mobile phone. Burnsy

I have trolled Jindy quite a bit in my 3.9 V Nose Punt with Electric Motor Bow Mount and would agree with Davo that for trolling it is a bit of pain having them bow mounted. Trolling Jindy you need to be paying constant attention to your lures not sitting up the front controlling the electric. If you really want to put a bow mount on your boat, I suggest you get a couple of those bolt on rod holders that you can fit to the rails and mount them up the front of the boat. That way at least you are with your rods. I used a peice of marine ply which I cut to suit the profile of the front of the boat to mount the electric on. Looking at your boat you could fit one at an angle across the front. Burnsy

Randal, There has been a lot written about fishing hard body lures for bream. It is not all that different to SP's, cast them close to good structure, boat hulls, submerged rocks, pontoon, oyster racks or what ever structure is in the area you are fishing. Work them slowly, very slowly. You will find on almost every occasion the bream will hit the lures when it is stopped. The technique is to crack the handle of your reel a couple of times then pause, then crank a couple more turns and pause and keep doing this. Most of the strikes come in the first meter of retreive. The most common mistake made by people new to fishing hard bodies is to much speed and not enough pauses. Bream are great fun on hard bodies, they generally hit them a lot harder than plastics and you get to see most of the strikes. Best of Luck and stay at it until you work it out. Burnsy

Hi All, I am planning on modifing my Brooker 3.9 V nose punt. The plan is to have the front casting desk extended back for another meter and to have a platform put over the space behind the rear seat and the stern. Can anyone recommend a local aluminum welder that does simple boat modifications? Burnsy

I am finally about to lash out on a portable gps. I am keen to find out what brands models other people have found to be good. I need a portable unit that can be mounted and removed easily from my tinny. I am after something with a mapping/chart plotting capability By the way, fished Lake Mcquarie today with a mate of mine, best flattie was 65cm and we got a few thumper whiting as well. Got spooled by a filthy Eagle Ray that swam into my sp whilst jigging for Lizards. Burnsy