zephi

natural at 1.8 works the best for me. Catch a lot of those little squids easily... Make sure its got double barbs on there ^^ increases the likelihood of hookups.

wow that's an amazing haul of fish there. That huge cuttlefish was a huge surprise.... Any good to eat lol, cuz it looks really gross.

I don't know... but I sometimes have the feeling the snag are caused by crabs pulling the bait into their holes, stingrays, and octopuses pulling into their holes. Using sinkers greatly increases the chances of it. So I tend to go weightless, but even then when the fish weakens it sinks down and snag...

ah those old diagrams I drew ... Nice to see people still using them. Well I'll answer part 1... Just go to any wharf, pontoon, baths... Basically any structure which can give the baitfish some sorta protection. I've been to balmoral and I gotta say there are plenty there, although sometimes they're not feeding when the water is too dirty. Best rig I use to catch them is a 2 hook rig, size 10-12 hook, with the most smallest split shot sinker you can get. Bait.... pilchards, beef, chicken, yellowtail meat, bread. Burley up with lots of find bread and you will see them cruising around. What I do is burley up, if I don't see any then drop a line down, if within the next 10 minutes of burleying and fishing and you don't land one.. Move to another spot. BTW, they love calm waters. I dont' fish the parramatta river much, or sydney harbour for yakkas... But down at Port Hacking, they are literally everywhere.

lol i totally understand your frustration. Seeing the squid and not hooking up is much more frustrating than when they are not around... I've had that many many times.. Although I was able to trick them occasionally with my natural coloured jig, I've developed a really interesting technique which worked one session... But I gotta test it again before I can confirm if it works on these picky squid. Basically move the jig fast, rather than that slow boring retrieve. Just wondering though, where do you see all these squid? I've never seen them around in the Hacking before. I'm guessing you fish in one of those places not many people know about... Anyway if you want I can give you some more info, just pm me.

I wouldn't attach any more unnecessary weight to your jig. Just let it sink. Alternatively you can run it on a paternoster rig. I find that bait on squid prongs, it's best to do a slow retreive on it, if you are fishing shallow or the squid are close to the surface, put it on a float.

What I've found is, if you fish in an area which is muddy... There is a high chance there are plenty of prawns,crabs and yabbies in that mud. I always see people throwing in HUGE slabs of chicken fillet, and beef without much luck, but when I use some natural bait I catch in the area, I get more hookups. I've had a lot of luck catching bream using crabs, and usually when it's a nice bite size and is a hard shelled crab. It usually hooks up to a legal. If not, it's usually in the low 20s cm. Fishing in sandy areas (ie picnic point, east hills etc), there's sandworms, soldier crabs, nippers, and other types of animals. I don't really bother with bream in these areas, but there's always a chance. Float over weedpatches and rocky structure will usually get some good hits. I find casting out far doesn't do much at all... Fishing deep water, (towards the ocean), I find baits like mullet fillet, guts, chicken fillet, fish fillet, and all of the above except crabs work like a charm. Cast out far, or aim at some structure. Basically wherever you are fishing, research the area before you throw in a line. Spend a few minutes when it is low tide to look at the area. Finding out what sort of environment you are fishing at will save you hours of frustration and fish-less trips.

wow there's so many blackies up there! I still don't trust that area very much, I've seen how bad it looked at Georges Hall already, can't imagine how it would look further up. I gotta agree it looks cleaner but the stuff you can't see which is still buried in the substrate, such as heavy metals is the toxic stuff. After heavy rain it's the worse time to catch a feed.

yeah when there's large ones around I'll go and target those of course! But when all is quiet I might as well just sight fish a few small ones for bait... Anyone know the best and most effective method of baiting up these tiny ones to catch kingies? I've only had one kingfish take my squid, but the rest were picked by tailors.... I'm always fishing off landbased. What water column should I put these squid out on? surface / few metres below surface / deep down with sinker?

great job getting that flatty, good to know your new rod setup got a little work out already

It's for bait. Squid are plentiful, and since there is no size limit there's no problems taking what you catch. They're really difficult to get anyway, so I probably only get like 5 of those sizes a session, the larger ones are much more aggressive and a little easier to get.

wow you killed em out there! Great haul of squid, mate I was pleased with myself for bringing home about 15 nice sized squids. You easily doubled mine in such a short span of time. Great job!

Totally agree with Monch, they're small and normally back off when they see the 1.8 sizes.

Yeah the fight was well worth it, glad it broke cuz I wouldn't wanna try landing it. the other day I hooked up again! on another ray, this time it attacked a shiny snapper lead attached with a baitless hook haha. Fight was short cuz it ran straight for structure. Anyway we got lucky with those squid, they happend to cruise past us.

Does anyone know anywhere in Sydney where I could grab a few good quality, size 1.0 to 1.5 squid jigs. I've seen people use them, but have not seen any in stock at my local tackle stores. Does anyone know if these jigs can actually be found in Sydney? I've seen some and bought some cheapy $3 ones from a certain tackle store and they sank really badly and caught nothing.... Does anyone know if yamashita or yozuri make those sizes? If not, are there any other companies who make quality squidjigs in those sizes? Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated. I really wanna go out and catch these really finicky squid... Cheers

We arrived at Rose Bay wharf at about 10:30pm and found it was packed with people fishing... So we walked along the edge to drop a few squid jigs to get a couple of tiny squid and cuttles for livebait. They were very picky and extremely annoying to get. Altogether it took about an hour and we ended up with only 2 of each species. We noticed a group of people had left the wharf so we all migrated over there, we tried squidding there for about an 2 hours without any success.. Although we ended up with a couple of yakkas instead. Looking around us we spotted about 4 HUGE rays circling the wharf, they were about 1.5m wide. Another group of people left us, and more came at the same time (although they didn't fish for long, they quickly caught 2 arrows in quick succession and left). Soon afterward I finally hooked up to one, this is my first time I actually caught a squid without spotting it first lol... Ended up being a nice 20cm arrow squid measured at the hood. Very satisfied with my first catch. We kept going for about 2 hours (by now, it's about 3am), and ended up with about 3 arrows. Live yakkas on one of my rods weren't getting any hits for several hours now, and I thought I would rig up some old squid heads we head from a previous session, within 10 minutes I noticed the rod tip moving, at the same time my uncle was bringing in his line and I thought he had crossed over mine, so I didn't really react to it until he responds saying his line is already in. I rushed to the rod just as it was starting to bend heavily, damn massive hookup, reel screams, I progressively tightened the drag to almost max and it's still pulling line out like its no tomorrow. We all believed it was a massive stingray (probably one of those which were circling the wharf all night), my god they are unbelievably powerful on my light rod, (4000 reel with only 20lb fireline). Probably got back about 30 metres of line all up in the whole fight. The fight lasted well over 15 minutes before it broke me off. My brother recorded this during the fight. Re-rigged and stopped fishing for a while, and went back to squidding. My brother hooks a nice sized arrow squid, and he kept bringing them in for the next half an hour. A nice sized school of Arrows had finally moved in to the area and we brought in about 13 in half an hour. Greatest squidding session ever. My uncle ended up with about 5 as well. (All up 18 squid). Well that's gonna be our Christmas feast of calamari. Managed another 2 squid just as the horizon started to light up, quickly put a squid on to a sliding snell rig and threw it out. About 20 minutes later the rod goes off violently and a rat king at 58cm is landed. Snapped a few photos and back it went. Soon my uncle's rod goes off, he was using a large live tailor, this one pulled like a train and didn't stop, he had no chance of bringing back any line, and it reefed him. I threw out another squid without any takers, and called it a day/night.

go with what snooze said. Or better yet, IF you want a better advice, tell us what baitcaster it is, what rod you got, what fish you plan to target and where are you fishing from.

thanks for all your replies >SZ1. yeah definitely a bargain (comes with warranty too). I'm currently using a 7'6 rod for both landbased (wharf) and for boating occasionally... Nothing special. Shimano 762 Snapper ET series rod. It's done me well and I haven't had much to complain about it. The length isn't too long for boat and isn't too short for land based imo. I've been using that rod for so long, so I guess I just became accustomed to it.

Well in between 8 foot and 11 foot. Would you think a 9 foot would be great for both fishing locations? O yeah forgot to mention, it's gotta be a 2piece.

I just purchased a Shimano Stradic 6000 FI reel for under $200. Probably will spool it with 30-50lb braid (haven't decided which one yet). Does anybody have any recommendations on what rod I should get for this? I'm mostly going to be targeting kings, jews etc on this rod. Mostly landbased, but occasionally will head out on boat. So I'm pretty much after a multi-purpose rod which can handle both these fishing types (I cannot afford to buy two separate rods). What rod length and line class would be best suited for these fishing conditions? You can suggest a specific rod, as long as the price range is under $130 lol... Cheers

best braid... there's a lot of debate on this one. It's all up to your preferences really. You can get any of these braids, they are all good. bionic braid, power pro, tufline, platil, fireline(not braid) etc. There's a lot more, but I cannot remember. Just avoid those cheaper no name ones, as they usually fray a lot easier, have lower breaking strains and weak knots strength.

I eat yakkas... lol whenever I have leftover livebaits I just take them home and fry them up. They got this sorta sour after taste in the meat, but it's sweet still. They are quite easy to eat, not too many bones. I've tried both sashimi and cooked, and I have to say, it's not worth the effort to sashimi them.

man they're small ey, fishing at gunamatta for a heap of those sizes about 2 weeks ago. Wonder where all of those ones went.

I'm still saying it's a squid. I've had many squid take my live yakka. They pull REALLY hard, definitely enough force to set the baitrunner off. Remember that most large squid are caught on bait rather than squid jigs. A bite like that is indicative of a squid. I've had plenty of squid target the underbelly of my live yakkas rather than the top dorsal fin area. Simply because the hook (placed on the dorsal fin) is in the way.

not necessarily stronger, but it's a lot thinner than the mono at the same breaking strain. Casting further because it's thinner. 4000 reel is fine for your style of fishing, since you are using bait. As for your rod, I recommend you upgrade to a longer rod for landbased fishing. It will allow you to cast further and guide the fish away from snags in front of you.