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Balls Head 25/6


budzsta

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Hey raiders.

After a lot of deliberation about the weather this weekend, throughout the week, I had already decided to stay in, stay warm. Play with some new toys from the tackle shop.

During work on Saturday an old mate called me up to head to either hen and chicken bay or balls point from the land...

We couldn't decide so we both flipped a coin, heads hen and chicken, tails balls point.

We both sent photos of tails. Finished work at 7:30 near drummoyne, my gear was in my car so stopped by a local tackle shop for some pillies and squid.

My mate met me there and got some prawns.

We were at the water by 9:00...

It was easier to rig up my bream set up: 1-3 kg graphite rod, stradic 3000, 10 lb braid, running ball sinker to swivel to 1 m shock leader 15 lb with a long shank hook, peeled prawn as bait.

As soon as I put it in the rod holder, it starts getting picked at. Nothing big. So I start setting up the bigger outfit

6-10 kg rod, stradic 5000, 20 lb braid (patternoster, double snelled hooks, star sinker) squid.

As soon as I tie up my first rod buckles and I miss the hookup.

This happened about 3 times until finally I'm landing a small 23 cm snapper.

Finally get both lines in the water.

My mate had landed about 3 blue swimmers that constantly grabbed his squid.

2 of the swimmers were keepers but as soon as he pulled them up, the action died. Being superstitious and all, we out them back and the rods started firing again.

No keepers but some good fun.

At about 3 am we start walking back to the car... There were so many baitfish trapped in runout tidal pools it was pretty incredible. Then we saw it. 4 squid sitting at the opening to a baitfish pool feasting on thes baitfish...

I frantically tried to tie up a squid jig, had to do a double uni knot whilst dropping all my packed gear on the ground. My mate calls for the net, after a few attempts, we are now both ankle deep in FREEZING water, shoes wet.

Finally he bags one, then a second. I finally get a squid jig out and on my third retrieve I've got about three squid chasing...

A baby one grabs my jig and my mate bags a third with the net...

Also was surprised to get an almost legal whiting...

PS. What's the accepted method when it comes to swallowed hooks? Both whiting I caught that night had swallowed my long shanks. I cut the line and let them go as I thought it would do the least damage.

Neither of them were bleeding

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Sounds like a fun session. That is the best thing to do with gut hooked fish. Trying to remove the hook from a gut hooked fish can often lead to death and even more so with whiting as i find them to be quite a fragile fish.

Yeah, I upsized the hook in efforts to prevent this but didn't get any more hook ups. Watching the rod bend is fun enough :)

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Good report budzsta! Those squid look like some good size bait there! Cutting the hook is definately the best method but if there are whiting about, holding onto the rod and striking will prevent that on most occasions!

Cheers scratchie!!!

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nice seesion Will some great jewwie bait there!!!

Regards,

Nathan

I remember you telling me to get squid!

I preserved them like you said.

Bit of salt water, in the freezer...

I'm starting to get hungry and feel like squid though haha

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Good session mate,

Its best to cut the line as the hook will rust away in a couple days

Also if you find you are getting a lot of gut hook ups, try using a different hook to the long shanks, maybe try a suicide, octopus or even a circle. These types of hooks are much less likely to gut hook.

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I felt really horrible.

The first time it happened I upped the hook size. The second time, I upped the hook size again but didn't catch anything else that night.

The second whiting didn't swim away as fast as the first. I didn't think about holding the rod and striking or switching hook type....

I had two lines out. One with a squid head on it, the other had small baits for bream/whiting etc.

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