Complete Noob To Fishing, A Few Questions (and Praise!)

[sebastian]

EDIT: Sorry in advance for the long post, the questions are at the bottom if u want to skip to them, lol

Hello all!

im a complete beginner to fishing (almost), got bitten by the bug but only a couple of weeks ago. this is my first post on this awesome forum!

FIrst off, i'd just like to say i found this site only tonight and i have learnt SO much already! thanks to all for sharing your knowledge, and hopefully i can share as i learn too! Everything from tackle, to techniques, spots, the works. its awesome.

ok, Ive been on a couple of local fishing adventures so far, mainly with the GF. We started out with our "Junior Combo" rod/reel combo's from big double you. $8.73, couldnt go wrong! did the job for our purposes, no doubt will snap any day now, hehe. now ive moved onto a shimano 7' ET thing, its great fun, havnt caught anything the junior combo wouldnt handle tho, boooo.

Evidently, we're getting much better. First time or two we didnt catch anything (casting a floater with a hook 40cm below out into deep water... didnt know any better, silly us, lol). Then after that, decided to use sinkers and no floater, and to our success, we caught our first fish! a bream! hooray, what a day it was. then caught a tiny baitfish. And from then on, i realised about picking a fish, targeting it with rod movements etc, times of day/tide, looking for visual signs of fish etc.

One night i was fishing down at my local (kurraba wharf, neutral bay) and a guy came and had a chat, told us we were better off fishing around the high tide, couple of hours before and after. So, took the advice on board. Went back at that time a few nights later. What do you know, in the one night caught 2 bream and a tailor! bream were about 15cm long each, and a pic of me and my tailor below!

Now, i have a few questions, and some of these i know are complete amateur questions... but thats me so far, a complete amateur. lol.

1. Is it always best to fish around the tide as i described above? Cause i would love to go (and i see ppl) fishing during the middle of the day, i just wonder if people catch much at this time, bec ause from when i've tried this ive never even really had bites.

2) how to catch bait fish? i was hoping i could set up the crappy rods to catch bait fish, while i targeted something larger with the larger rod

3) is there a way to catch bigger fish? (i know this has probably been asked about a billion times, sorry again) but i mean, if im going for a larger bream, should i perhaps be hooking a whole prawn up, as opposed to cutting it in half? (which is the current trend) and also the same for hooks aswell, should i be looking at using a larger hook.

4) if theres smaller fish around, does that mean there will be bigger fish? This afternoon as i was walking through Anderson Park, neutral bay also, i stopped and had a look, and saw atleast 4/5 small bream, a largish (what appeared to be) tailor, a school of smaller tailor, and then a school of about 70metres length of those tiny itty bitty fish (i think they are baitfish?) that were right up againts the whole length of the shore/wall thing. this leads me to believe, smaller fish generally = bigger fish

5) soft plastic lures. i normally put half of one of these, and some prawn on my hook, and it works a treat, many bites, but generally no bites with just the lure by itself. they are like this, except dont have the sparkly bits in them

6) using berley, do i just crush up bits of bread (for example, or bits of bait) and throw them all around where i am fishing...? its just to attract the general poulation of fish isnt it...?

7) Killing fish, im thinking that putting them in iced water and then beheading them is probably the best way/most humane way to do it? if i were to be doing this, it wouldnt be to eat them, as i dont enjoy eating fish, but merely using them for bait for other fish. So far all those fish have been released.

8) Floaters. When are these to be used? we used one when catching the tailor, as all the tailor were coming right to the top of the water and jumping out, so dropped the floater right in the middle, next thing you know, ive caught my tailor! i found the floater very effective here, but thats when i could clearly see my target fish, and it was a fixed floater. When would i use a runing floater, and how would it be used? (how is it set up also, might i add)

sorry about the long winded first post! ummmm thats all i can think of for now! comments/advice/answers for any of the above would be much appreciated!!

thanks in advance,

Seb

Edited January 16, 2007 by sebastian

[mrsswordfisherman]

Hi and welcome to FR sebastian.

That is a great first post. I am sure members will answer your questions.

Don't forget the SEARCH button up top of page where you will find 1000's of posts that will be of interest.

Come down on Sunday and meet up with all the raiders at our social event ( see under kingy social )

Cheers mrsswordfisherman

[Davy]

welcome to the site seb!

good to hear that your getting into fishing, its addictive!

as for your questons:

1 - tides change at different times even during the day so you can always check tide times that best suit you, either high tide or low depends on what species you are targeting

2 - catching baitfish with the little rods would be fine with a bit of bait at the end of the line, mix some old bread, bait scraps and tuna oil etc and throwing it out as berley to get baitfish on the bite; yellowtail for example. you can also try little bait jigs avail at fishing stores

3 - it depends, for bream you can always fend off the pickers by using hard baits like little soldier crabs, or try casting into little nooks and crannies like bridge pylons and other structure

4 - lots of fishy activity for eg ; bait fish breaking surface does attract larger fish

5 - SPs take ALOT of patience if your up for it, diff colours vary with weather , species etc some of th biggest flathead ive caught have been on SPs

6 - yep. try other stuff as well, tuna oil, wheat, heck even old cheese, cat food and grated potatoes

7 - to use a fish for bait you shud check what species it is before you kill it as it may have a legal limit, endagered etc to catch the bigger fish you shud use it as live bait otherwise a hard smack between the eyes with a knife handle should do it rather than beheading it

8 - i hardly use floats so i couldnt answer this Q really

Hopefully other raiders can answer the Qs better than i could but yea!

Cheers

[sebastian]

aweesome! thanks for the help!

sorry, i forgot to mention, im a long term user of other inetner forums, i spent about 2 hours searching thru posts before i made this post! as i said, site has been VERY helpful!

great answers davy, thanks for the help! im off tomorrow morning to try just down syd harbour, see how i go. Cant wait to get out properly and try some spots ive read about etc, just havnt got the time at the moment. Only tonight i purchased some snorkelling gear, so im off to give that a go for tomorrow!

any further comments from others, particularly regarding floats and how they're normally used, would be loved.

thanks

seb

[sifisho]

Mate if you want to come down to Clifton Gardens on Sunday I will be more than happy to share what little I know and I'm sure the other LB gents will also be happy to give you some pointers!