Botany Squid Are Back

[Nicnat]

Just a quick report for today. Rodhogger and I hit the water early this morning after a successful weekend fishing the Bay. RH was keen on some Kingies so we hit our regular squid spot near Captain Cook's landing site. It's been a real struggle getting squid there the past month so we started our drift with fingers crossed.

First cast and a squid grabs it but lets go at the boat A few more casts and we are on again and in the next half hour about 10 end up in the live bait tank. Unfortunately other than about 3 or 4, they were of a smaller size. Not normally a problem, however checked the tank a little later and only 4 left!!! Where the hell did they go???? After catching another little one we carefully watched them and found the little buggers escaped through the over flow. So a quick plumbing job redirecting the overflow into the burley bucket and off we go again.

We were having so much fun with the squid we forgot all about the Kings and ended up taking 20 of them home for dinner and would have lost that many again through the great escape trick, coming off the hook and by dropping a couple over the edge of the boat handling them (yes, I am guilty).

[jewgaffer]

Hi Nicnat. I had the problem of losing nippers, small poddies and pilchard fry etc out thru the overflow, especially with overweight fishos sitting up front lowering the bow and raising the water level in the bait tank.....

I bought a small size tapered funnel, cut off the tip at the base and glued s/s wire guaze over the base i.e narrow part of the funnel........ I trimmed off the protruding part of the funnel neatly using a pair of tin snips, having pre-measured the funnel for a flush fit prior to using marine silicone as the glue.....

It fixed the problem cheaply and permantly.......

I found using a funnel is easiest and the best way to do it but can be hard to bring out of the back of the mind.

Cheers

jewgaffer

[Nicnat]

Hi Jewgaffer

Thanks for the tip. Just in the process of trying to find some gutter guard or similar and glueing it on top of the overflow. I only recently increased the size of the overflow as I found that underway the old overflow couldn't cope with the incoming volume of water.

I have however discovered now that the burley bucket makes a great secondary live bait tank and will fit 4-5 smaller squid quite comfortably

Rob

[dogtooth]

Hi Rob ,

I have had squid do the old great escape trick to . A quick fix is to push a piece of that gutter guard stuff or similar into the overflow on your bait tank . Just pull it out every couple of trips and give it a quick clean as the squid slime blocks it up and reduces flow over time . ...

Cheers....... Dogtooth.. ...John...