ginko

Sometimes if the sweep are really bad, I've found it's worth trying putting a bigger sinker on. Sometimes the yakkas hang out below the sweep, and the sinker will get the little hooks and bait down to the yakkas. Sometimes, sometimes not.

go on the rising tide, and find either a good gutter (deep water running parallel to the beach, in close, and protected by a sandbar out wide) or a rip (water running straight off the beach in a deep/dark patch). Tailor usually hang out in the very middle of the rips. just watch out for the surfers riding the rip back out through the breakers. also, I've found that I was setting the hooks too close to the sand - my hook up rate improved with a ~20cm trace set about 90cm above a star sinker. There are a few around - I picked up two sambos at narrabeen on Sunday morning, around high tide, in a bit of a rip. (Narrabeen rarely gets good gutters).I've heard that tailor are more common on the beach in the late afternoon. I do seem to catch salmon in the morning, and tailor after dark. re: the moon - try going just before the full moon.

also very good as ceviche - cut all the red meat off, cube the white meat into small pieces (1cm cubed), and put in lemon juice for a day or two. same day, put black beans in water in fridge. for both fish and beans, drain and rinse. you should boil the beans for about 5 minutes, do not cook the fish (lemon has "cooked" it for you). serve fish and beans with fresh lemon juice, coriander, red onion. v nice. BTW - probably good practice that if you don't know what the fish is, don't touch it, and don't eat it. there are a few poisonous fish in the sea.

I tried with burley - but just attracted 500 ducks. I didn't have a sabiki rig, and had the same luck as you (none) with bread and tiny hooks. kept catching little bream - a cormorant noticed, and came over, and would chase and eat anything I put back in the water. Will have to try with the sabiki. any tips for getting rid of the ducks when burleying? also, did you wade out at all, or were you fishing from dry land?

I think the yakkas are out away from the structure at this time of year - all my regular spots (wharves, west head, etc) have gone dead, but I've found big schools of biiiig yakka out in the deeper water. Given the lack of wind, I've been spotting them on the rise in the dawn and dusk on the water. It seems liike the yakka's know that the pelagics are clearing out, and they are too big now for whatever's left, so they are going out into the open a bit more. In any case, I think squid are better bait, and easy to catch at this time. It's a dilemma whether to just go for squid themselves for a feed, or to use for bait.

Ozzydan - no bait on the sabiki's, or did you have a bit of bread on there? Thanks.

what bait and burley are you using on the poddies?

Probably swell was too small last night. I was out earlier in the week from 4-7pm across high tide and with swell just under a meter. There was no shortage of bites then. All the action was in the very middle of a big rip draining off the beach. Bream, tailor, and whalers, and I missed a bite maybe from a jewie by being too impatient for it to really take the bait before striking. As bait, I used squid (not popular with the fish, it seemed) and mullet, which was definitely a favourite. I find when the swell is small, the beaches go quiet and any action is less than 5m out from the beach.

At 30cm+ - you might consider eating those yakka's. Yakkas are a cousin of kingies, and are really excellent eating, if too fiddly to eat in the smaller sizes. Just scale, filet, skin, and then slice the fillets twice along the mid-line to cut out the line of bones and red flesh. OK, at 10cm, not worth it, but at 30 cm, I'd say it is worth it. Salt and pepper, dash of lemon. And Poseidon does nothing with lost rods. I've pulled up more than one lost rod in my time, and they are never any use. Straight to the bin. And yes, I've lost at least one rod out the back of a boat.

Was it a fish trap? there are loads down in Pittwater these days, and they're a fairly serious hazard IMHO. They are (usually) marked with a white styrofoam float, about the size of a cabbage and no light - the older floats are not so white and are pretty hard to pick up, especially if the sea is up a bit or if it's dark. The fish trap floats are a regular feature near the wrecks inside and over most reefs inside too, so it wouldn't surprise me if that's what was on your prop. A flag and a light would be a welcome addition to the traps' floats.

Meg126 what time of day and what tide were the kingies on the chew? Is my guess correct that it was about 8am, about halfway on runout tide? I'm hoping to get out this sunday and get my 9yo boy to land a kingie, so any hints would be helpful. thanks!

Pittwater's mostly sandy, but with areas of rock near the headlands, and that's where you'll lose anchors - esp close-in at west head. you might want to check if there are no-anchor zones too - there are a lot of grass beds where dropping anchor is not a great idea. Cool idea with the zip ties.

http://www.bom.gov.au/oceanography/tides/nsw_tide_tables.shtml full graphical calendars for the whole year, only problem is that weeks start on sundays, rather than mondays as it should be!

also check out the wind before you go - it's not so pleasant to fish with a gale blowing onto or along the beach (but fine if it's blowing off shore) so if it's really blowing, try to hit a beach where the wind will be at your back or blocked by a headland.

I've been out a few weekends in Pittwater - no kings and not for lack of trying. I've been sitting over schools of yellow-tail/slimies with livies and squid strips, but no luck. I did have a cormorant take a livie that was down with the school, about 6m down in 12m deep water. I was not happy when the zzzz on my reel turned out to be a bird with my bait in its beak. Maybe moving around is required to find'em.

Pete, JB does hold loads of food: loads of pipis and hermit crabs are all right along the shore line in the wash. Try going in for a swim. The water is lovely, and you'll see where the fish are hanging out. The sand is very desolate if you go out even 3 meters from shore and the water is so clear it provides almost no cover for fish. If there is no place to hide and little food, there will be no fish. Instead, look for a spot where there are some rocks poking up off the bottom. These are like oasis's in the desert and hold loads of fish. Try looking on google earth for this kind of structure. Flathead like to lie in among these rocks and then pop up at any passing fish/soft plastic. Equally, it's always worth a flick or two where little streams come into the bay. You'll note also, that the fish are adapted to the white sand, with most fish very light in colour.

The story has universal appeal - it even made the news in Denmark : http://ekstrabladet.dk/vrangen/article2133283.ece I don't think there are too many dolphin fish swimming in Scandinavian waters, but the story still carries there.

A new one may be cheaper, but it won't be the old rod. Another option on repairs: see if you can find an extendable rod from which one of the sections matches the broken parts of the rod, i.e. that the inside diameter of the extendable's section matches the outside of the broken rod. Saw out the appropriate section of the extendable to make a "cuff" that fits tightly over the broken section and epoxy, and then take some whipping twine and do a very meticulous job to whip the ends of the sawn extendable's "cuff" so that the stress of the rod does not splinter the cuff, and finally, epoxy over the whipping. A tip for better whipping is to carefully insert the rod section into a hand-drill, and then have a friend operate the drill to spin the rod as you feed on the twine. it's much better than doing it by hand. I did this to my heavy beach rod on which I'd broken the tip... after several months, so far so good, although I've yet to land a really serious fish on the repaired tip.

I also was out earlier in the week in the big swell - but my yakkas were just getting crushed in the surf after about 5 minutes out. Funny - also had difficulty getting yakkas - (eventually got them by burlying with small bits of pillies, and then a totally unweighted hook with a bit of pillie held on by ghost-cotton. Even a tiny weight seemed to put them off). On the beach, I was jogging with current, doubled the stars, but did not have any more pillies to try. I think in the heavier surf, livies are no advantage whereas something oily/smelly/better casting like pillies probably works better. Thoughts? On the up side, relatively little kelp for such a big swell. It looks like the weekend should be good off the beaches.

Earlier this week, I hit Dee Why for a donut too - actually, on the last cast I did get bitten off by a tailor through 35lb trace - but otherwise just a load of crabs eating the bait. V quiet all up. I used a poddy mullet and fresh squid and two snelled size 5 circle hooks. Maybe size 3 gang hooks would have been the ticket. The beach will pick up as the water warms. Mullet have just started showing up in the harbour, and that's always a good sign for better fishing in the rips at the beach.

They are great eating, but very difficult to dispatch and to filet. The spikes run through the skin and into the flesh and take a bit of time to get out. But in my opinion, the opalescent flesh is worth the extra effort.

Scratchie, I think hairtail are globally distributed. I was surprised when a friend who grew up in the Carribean recognised my last hairtail as a "cutlass fish" (and recommended that it be cooked up in a soup). Apparently, it is the same species, and it makes sense that such an ancient-looking fish should have spread through the world's oceans. There was also a post (I think in this site) from a Queenslander whose estuary was plagued by hairtail year-round, to the point where he could not catch his target species for all the hairtail. But it does seem that the last two years here have been very good, not only for volume of fish, but size too - 178 is a whopper by any standard. I got my pb 162 in October/November last year, and now this one a respectable 149cm. Much bigger than the ~1m models I'd landed up until that point. My last two big models were caught at dawn, in deep water that was holding a fair bit of bait.

CapnMac, They are nice to eat, but only if over one meter. They have many bones, but on the bigger specimens these are easily avoided. Streaming is the best way to cook, since it is ready to ruin such a slender fish in the skillet. This fish feed two adults and two kids, with s big fillet still in the fridge. Scratchie, Indeed, water is very warm still. Very clear too. A fair few baitfish. I wonder, is the hairtail season getting longer? I caught my pb in October last year, and a guy caught a massive one I the Harbour in December. Çatchin Jack, nobody out this morning. No big boats, and only a few other fisho's. But I remember one really morning last season when Warratah Bay was like a disco, gin palaces with blue lights and huge stereos. But this morning was like aweekday. Even the kayaks had little competition.

A few weeks back, I hit a spot just outside Jerusalem Bay on the run-out tide where one of my boys caught a nice little jewfish just after dawn. I thought I'd try again today, armed with fresh squid and tailor fillets (caught last week, and vacuum frozen). Hit the spot very early, and burleyed up. The sounder was showing fish everywhere, but no bites at all for more than an hour. Even the pinkies still seemed to be asleep. It was pretty cold, even with a beanie and three layers of winter woolies on. So I was glad when the sun peaked over the horizon, and I was just starting to think about switching spots when the reel zzzz'ed for a moment. It stopped. I waited, nothing else, and when I wound it up, the squid was gone. On goes a big fat slab of tailor, and down she goes, 15m down and 5m above bottom. A minute later, zzzz - nothing - zzzzzz - nothing --- nothing again -- zz! At this point I carefully take the rod out of the holder, and wait to feel the weight come on. But - only a very light tug. So I reel in a bit, and now I can feel a big pull... hard, steady. Then nothing... then on.. then nothing. and so forth, until one very surprised hairtail came over the side of my boat. 149cm, not too bad for an early season catch. Caught on an un-weighted slab of tailor, #6 circle hook. The circle hook caught in the gill-rakers, and the hairy's teeth had nearly sliced through the 80lb trace. No other bites for the rest of the day - but probably because I went to spots with better scenery than fishing.

I also down-rig solo with a tiller steer tinnie - I am considering installing a electric motor to pull up the downrigger for me - it is pretty hectic when a big fish hits. I've tightened up the screw on the leg of my motor to make the steering stiff enough to hold course without my hand on it, and that helps avoid the circling when motoring away from structure and fighting at the same time. (just be aware that this will also mean that the boat will motor off into the distance if you fall out) And solo in a tiller-steer tinnie - I stay inside the heads. I'm thinking of upgrading the boat to accommodate heading outside - but the budget needs some replenishment first.