Browns Mountain 13/8/06.

[mako1]

No worries crazedfisherdude happy to help.

Those alvey reef queens arn't cheap but worth

every cent and they are a quality product so will

last you a lifetime.I also use it as a downrigger

when trolling livies,this way I get more use out of it.

Thanks again for all the kind words.

I'm itching to get out there again and

try and get another fin.Hopefully this weekend

if the weather is good.

[Flattieman]

Thanks for all your kind words, guys. Fishing (and fish) are quite obviously some of my passions.

As CFD suggested, reading, watching documentaries etc. etc. always helps in gathering information - I do a lot of that in my spare time (when I'm not fishing!). Many of us can take leaves from the books of well-known fishermen (and biologists) who really know their stuff and store it away for later use.

Also, the most important thing when gathering information is to get out there and do it yourself - go fishing! This also helps in applying the information you've already gathered (hopefully improving your catch rate at the same time! ).

The questions that you Raiders ask help me to apply the information that I've gathered. Honestly, I love my fish ID as much as my fishing - so don't hesitate to ask any questions that spring to mind - that's part of what Fishraider's for! Anything I don't know, I'll endeavour to find out!

I was wondering if maybe they hung vertically in the water at some point kind of similar to what the hairies do when hunting. I guess we will never know till one of those deep diver subs gets down there and does a bit of study on them.

True, mate. It is through observation that many answers can be found. I guess this is just one of those situations. Hairtail are designed much better than gemfish for a vertical swimming attitude, however. Actually, hairtail swim both horizontally and vertically. Robert Adamson (fishing writer) explains this below:

"It’s true that they don’t swim upright when they are searching for a feed or just schooling up for travelling or breeding. They do, however, swim vertically when they are taking a bait. I’ve actually seen them swimming upright. The water is so transparent at times in Smiths Creek at Cowan that when the light’s right, just after dawn when there is absolutely no wind, and if you don’t make any noise at all, you can berley them up around and under your boat. If you throw out a light line with no trace you will be able to watch them as they take a bait.

One morning last winter I had this happening. I threw out one of my usual rigs, a set of five ganged hooks on a wire trace four inches long, and they wouldn’t touch it. They were hovering and latching onto the pieces of pillies. As the little hunks of oily flesh floated down the water column the hairies swam up and gently grabbed the flesh and moved off, but they just wouldn’t take the bait on the line with a wire trace. Then I threw out a light line with no trace with a whole pillie on it and one of the hairies sailed over and held it and then went into this extraordinary vertical position. As soon as I saw this I understood the famous hairtail bite. In every story ever written about hairtail you’ll come across variations on the theme of their strange manner of taking a bait. The first thing you notice is a light weight on the end of the line, very similar to a squid or a small crab. Then you wait. Sometimes I have had a hairie bite go on for five minutes. Just a gentle tug that doesn’t even move off. This bite has been described in many ways, there has been so much written about the “mysterious” and “horrible” hairie bite it can be confusing until you actually experience them when they are really on the chew. It was a revelation to actually see a hairtail acting this way and it explains all those weird “bites” we have felt in the dead of a freezing night. They can just hang there for five minutes without moving, they hover in the water with the bait in their mouth held delicately between their fierce looking teeth."

Flattieman.

Edited August 17, 2006 by Flattieman

[keenas]

Great report mako,

Looks youv'e done your homework on this type of fishing.

To much information is never enough when it comes to

fishing, you covered it very well.Untill the fin move within

a couple of klms off the coast i've got no chance, dont

have the boat or the gear to get to browns but you never know!