tentonner

I would be very surprised if a 4000 size stradic put out 10kgs of smooth drag, I've got the ci4 which I love and is a really nice reel but doubt it could genuinely put out 10kgs of drag. The freams look to be very good value for money atm. Can't really comment on the rods as I havent used either.

+1 for a sea anchor, we often use one to slow us right down, just got to make sure you get it right out of the way when you hook up!

I use an okuma catalina 15 for this and it works great, also have an old tld5 but I dont think they make them that small anymore. Also used an abu garcia overhead, they will all serve the purpose, trout trolling is pretty easy on the reels as they never see salt and as such I think you can get away with using pretty low end gear.

Wilson live fibre 7' 15-24kg awesome live bait rod for kings around the harbour, can take a lot of punishment as well and being a glass rod is almost impossible to break, paid around 220 for mine. can't speak highly enough of it

Great stuff mate, did you use yakkas because you couldn't find any squid or do you prefer yakkas for trolling? Also do you know what stage of the tide it was when they came on? Cheers

I would only be buying a egi rod if I was only ever going to use it for squidding. Any light spin rod will do the job for squid

Gday, just thought I'd share my experience with an australian tackle company. About a year ago I bought a TuffTackle diablo 9000 to fish for kings around sydney harbour, It has been fished very hard for a year now landing a lot of kings up to 90cm and I've been very happy with it. A couple of outings ago I was using it when the clicker on the drag knob suddenly stopped working. A quick ring to the tackle company and without any questions asked they asked for my address and I received a replacement a week later. I just assumed it would a be a sh&^ fight to fix as this as in the past any faulty parts problems I've had with other companies has seen them immediately blame me for the fault and make me pay for it to be fixed. So anyway I'm a very pleased customer at the moment and it was good to see an Australian company looking after their customers.

put the fillets in some water with plenty of salt in it (you can add different spices and stuff its up to you) let is soak for at least an hour then take the fish out and completely dry out with a paper towel or tea towel. Spread the chips evenly and thinly and light the burner, chuck your fish on the rack and shut the lid and come back 15 min later and it should be right. Then its up to you what you do with it

from an abrasion resistance point of view ande is the best by far imo

Hey raiders, just quick report from the harbour today, was out at the crack this morning and first cast of the day resulted in a medium sized squid, with hopes high proceeded to not catch another squid for 2 hrs, eventually gave up and went to north head to see if there were any salmon around, sounded a couple of schools down deep but didnt try to catch any if they weren't on the surface. So went back to middle harbour, anchored up and the first hour of the run out we landed two kings and had another spit the hook at the boat. First was one was around 60 cm and the other 65cm, have heard about people getting fined for having fish 1cm under so chucked him back because I didnt really trust my measuring of it. All in all not a bad morning, good to see a few kings having not really targeted them through the winter.

Thanks a lot guys, gotta love fishraider!

Hey slink, thanks for the reply Sorry but do you mind going in to a bit more detail? Im not quite sure what you mean by look in the setup? Cheers

Hi raiders, recently got a new Raymarine sounder/gps for the boat from Huett Marine. Very happy with it overall but having studied the manual can not find out how to change the sea temperature reading from fahrenheit to celsius? If anyone out there knows the answer to this I would love to hear Cheers

Its pretty good stuff, casts pretty well but I had a slight problem with 10lb while squidding, its a little stiff out of the box and when winding line under basically no tension it didnt wind properly onto my sol but i think I had overloaded the spool and so trimmed a bit off and rewound the rest of the line on under tension and it seems to have fixed it. Wouldn't rate it any higher in castability than nitlon PE which is around the same price. But overall pretty good, just not as good perhaps as Berkley make out

these trips just look like too much fun, i reckon the hard work getting in and out would make the times u spend fishing that much more worthwhile

The fishing down there for kings seems to depend on the current, if its really pushing then they will come on. Jigging the north western corner of the island seems to the most popular method and spot for kings. While everyone's advice about the bar is correct, don't let it preclude you from going down there, you should be fine but always give it a good look first, you can easily drive up to it in your car before you put the boat in to have a look but we can get out in a 5.5m tinny more often than not. But definitely take the necessary precautions before taking it on because it is notorious

Nice report mate, 24th out of 78 is a pretty good result i reckon, well done

unfortunately probably not, all you could do is put a new tip on it but shaving 30cm off the rod will hurt the action too much for it to be still be anything like it used to be

A 4000 stradic will be too big for the rack raider (or any of the other rods you mentioned), get a 2500 or 3000 size would be far better

Thanks for the replies everyone, went in to two tackle shops yesterday and after picking up the saragosa was disappointed with the feel of it. Also was told independently by both shops that they get a lot more saragosa's back than they do sol's despite selling a lot more sols. I realise this could be due to the fact gosa's are generally bought with an aim to pretty demanding fishing but nonetheless I think I will go a sol as Caldia's dont come in a 4000. Cheers everyone

Cheers maniac will go check them out tomorrow.

Thanks guys, yeh I thought the saragosa would be the most heavy duty, I've never picked one up though, how would it compare in smoothness to a sol?

Hey raiders, thought I would tap in to the wealth of knowledge here on fishraider. I've got a 7' sakana 10-17lb through which I want to run some 30lb tufline to be used in the summer for chucking 9' sluggos and poppers for kings in the harbour. I need to find the reel to match it with though. Looking for something around 3000-4000 size for no more than $300. At the moment on the list is a TD Sol, Daiwa Caldia, Shimano Saragosa. If anyone has any suggestions it would be much appreciated, I have a sol 2000 which I love so am leaning towards a sol atm. However would love to hear any raiders opinions on what would be best for this job?

Hi all, got a plate boat thats about 3 years old now and has copped a lot of use in that 3 years. There are a heaps of spots where the paint has been chipped off and was wondering whether any raiders know the best stuff to use just to touch these scratches up? Thanks

Thats an awesome report man, would love to do something like that one day