Old days

[Blackfish]

Geez if we all met up, had a beer, a chat, bought some old tackle and reminisced about the old days ..... we'd never get home.

Now that would be therapy.

[noelm]

Just thinking about Warrawong, behind where the old Ten Pin Bowl used to be (where Bunnings are) there was a big KMart that sold guns and ammo, you could just walk in, pick up all sorts of rifles off the shelf and "play" with them, pick up a box of suitable ammunition and go through the checkout, no different to buying any other item, pretty weird by today's standards hey? They also had a very good fishing section, almost entirely Jarvis Walker rods only.

 

[Berleyguts]

1 hour ago, wazatherfisherman said:

AFA of NSW was also an ANSA club and affiliated with AFCA ("C" for clubs- Sydney Metro Division) Werner also a Sydney GFC member. Trying to remember the name of one of his lures that came as either 4 or 5 pieces of highly polished, chromed hexagonal rod in diminishing diameters - not attached- just fed on line from largest diameter downwards to small (or any configuration you wanted)- no anchor point just put line through and tied treble on at the end.- Any ideas?

No, I don’t know those lures. I had a bunch of WK bristle lures, too.

[noelm]

I can't remember those, but a local guy that used to have a stand at local markets here (I think his name was Harry Rowe) made the same sort of lure, and his "famous" Rowe anti snag sinkers, they were pointy on one end, so instead of getting stuck, the would just slip over snags (so Harry used to say anyway)

[wazatherfisherman]

15 minutes ago, Blackfish said:

Thats the one, thanks Wazza. 👍

Can't remember the owner's name, but Doug Costain who was then Editor of the old weekly "Fishing News" worked there part time as well. He was also a member of the AFA. 

It was good healthy competition (for tackle buyers!) to have Mick Simmons, Bob Niven's and Fisherman's World all so close to each other- between them, you could buy anything that you needed. Niven's had everything, they just needed to find it!

[noelm]

There's another name, Mick Simmons, went there once with a mate to buy something, can't remember what.

[frankS]

In my younger days I was a keen shooter and gun collector would go into town ( as it was called then ) and spend an hour or two in Smiths gun shop then go down the road to Hobbyco to spend some more time, then onto Mick Simmons and drool over their displays, they had a great variety of bows and equipment and I would walk out of their flat broke.

Frank

[Yowie]

7 hours ago, noelm said:

Yes, the Western one was Searles, the Eastern one was Bruce's bait and tackle, owned by Bruce Darrah, I nearly bought the shop off him a long time ago, he was ill and couldn't work the 7 days and late nights anymore, it included the shop and land as well, a guy named Kel Brookman bought it, and he and his wife and son ran it for years before moving on, the shop is still there in a small way, a "one man band" setup selling bait mainly.

When I was a kid, I visited the one on the eastern side of the road, just south of the bridge, and sold him some sand mullet (yeh, I know, no licence to do so) but every summer I visited the van park, I sold him the mullet for a few shillings. It bought me a few treats in the van park - lollies, cakes, ice cream - he was happy and so was I. That was during the 1960's.

[rickmarlin62]

Werner made the original wk flash arrow   chrome hex bar with red plastic tag on rear split ring

[rickmarlin62]

One of my old solid glass bream rods when i was younger

[Scratchie]

4 hours ago, Blackfish said:

Geez if we all met up, had a beer, a chat, bought some old tackle and reminisced about the old days ..... we'd never get home.

Now that would be therapy.

Well why not organise something? 

[bluefin]

I still have 2 seascapes and my spin rod. Sabre ss220 .  1/2 by 1/4 and hex bars chromed. Iron Coffin and Assasin. Now days it's a Wilson live fibre, 10'6. and a Stradic fk . 15 lb braid in the Surf. With Plastics.  Howard.

 

[noelm]

Post a picture of them, love this stuff!

[noelm]

12 hours ago, Yowie said:

When I was a kid, I visited the one on the eastern side of the road, just south of the bridge, and sold him some sand mullet (yeh, I know, no licence to do so) but every summer I visited the van park, I sold him the mullet for a few shillings. It bought me a few treats in the van park - lollies, cakes, ice cream - he was happy and so was I. That was during the 1960's.

yeah, that was Bruce's shop, I did a similar thing, used to get Green Weed and Nippers for him, great guy, funny thing, when my wife and I were thinking of buying his shop, we got to talk about what stock he kept, and I noticed he had no big price gear, he looked me straight in the eye and said something like "you keep a big game reel in stock for a month worth $300 people shop around and screw you down on price to maybe $325 sale, you made a profit barely and consider time wasted selling it, you lost money, but put $300 worth of cheap Prawns nets in stock in December, they are all gone in a couple of weeks, and you double your money easy, nobody ponders or shops around over a $7 Prawn net" his shop was chocker block full of low end, quick turn over gear.

Edited June 27, 2019 by noelm
Typo

[Blackfish]

22 minutes ago, noelm said:

Post a picture of them, love this stuff!

Planning on digging around in the shed and taking a couple of photos.

[Green Hornet]

23 hours ago, noelm said:

All this dreaming has made me think of the big sports/tackle shops that used to be around, most built great custom rods,  there was a good one in Nowra, I think Mcallums? then a handful of smaller ones around the Illawarra, Ern Webs was probably the biggest, in the later years they more or less went into fishing gear only, they moved location, then closed, in Sydney there was the one in Taren Point and the one in Hurstville, and one in the city, maybe Complete Angler? most have vanished as the big chain stores eat them up, kind of like Bunnings did to hardware stores, anyone know of a good/favourite shop from back in the "olden days"

As someone else has said McCallums, Nowra tackle store in Nowra is still alive and well.

Its now being run by its 3rd generation of McCallum and I was only talking to Gavin last time I was in there about the history of the place.

His grandfather started the business after the war in the late 1940's in a shed behind the local undertakers where they also sold motor bikes. We had a laugh about motor bikes and coffins being sold on the same premises.

I also remember Hewlett's tackle store in Nowra's main street back in the 60's and 70's and as others have said, they had a rack full of guns just hanging on the wall and all the ammo sitting on a shelf beneath them. There was also a barber shop down in the back corner.

[rickmarlin62]

Thats what i call a good shop

[noelm]

5 minutes ago, Green Hornet said:

As someone else has said McCallums, Nowra tackle store in Nowra is still alive and well.

Its now being run by its 3rd generation of McCallum and I was only talking to Gavin last time I was in there about the history of the place.

His grandfather started the business after the war in the late 1940's in a shed behind the local undertakers where they also sold motor bikes. We had a laugh about motor bikes and coffins being sold on the same premises.

I also remember Hewlett's tackle store in Nowra's main street back in the 60's and 70's and as others have said, they had a rack full of guns just hanging on the wall and all the ammo sitting on a shelf beneath them. There was also a barber shop down in the back corner.

Funny thing, I did my apprenticeship at a radio shop in Port Kembla that was also started before the war, and after the war, they sold motor bikes, must have been a common thing to sell bikes, maybe something to do with petrol being scarce? I love family businesses that continue to operate generation after generation, it's pretty rare these days, we are all brainwashed to go to a faceless multinational chain store to buy our "stuff"

[PaddyT]

On 6/26/2019 at 8:52 AM, GoingFishing said:

I love hearing about the good old days. I'm only 32 but I didn't get to do much boat fishing until I bought my own boat. No one else we knew had one.

I wonder what has caused the yellowfin failure to return to inshore.

The purse seiners up in the Solomons and PNG smash the juvenile stock so thats part of it, some people think the run died with the advent of the deep water sewage outfalls but that doesnt really explain why the run stopped in the Newcastle bight (maybe changes to the deep sea trawl fishery killed that- the 'fin used to follow the trawlers- i only heard about that fishery-never experienced it) and down south at Narooma/Bermi. There are cyclical factors involved- if you read some books from the 50's , 60's and 70's tuna were very common and marlin were very rare- even listened to a recent podcast with Bill Billson  and he talked about marlin being rare creatures in the 70's, ive caught a lot more marlin that i have  yellowfin tuna over 20kgs (not that the anecdote of one person is a statistically valid scientific report!) but further back there are stories of tuna being absent for 20+ years in the 30's and 40's off Sydney. Its also a theory that certain stocks of fish (like salmon and the fact that they return to the same river to spawn that they were hatched in ) return to the same patch of water year after year- the inshore yellowfin might well have been a small isolated stock that got smashed to the point of no return. The other factor was the devestation of the nannygai stocks off NSW- anyone remember "redfish" fillets from the 70's- it was the nicest, cheapest fish in the fish shop- and i certainly on my few offshore trips as a teenager most guys i went with used them as a fishbox filler if the snapper werent biting- they were prolific- I hardly see them these days and they are a insignificant commercial catch. The yellowfin used to love nannygai- maybe when the nannys declined the yellowfin had no reason to come inshore. Its a complicated story but its also a bit sad.

[Green Hornet]

4 hours ago, PaddyT said:

The purse seiners up in the Solomons and PNG smash the juvenile stock so thats part of it, some people think the run died with the advent of the deep water sewage outfalls but that doesnt really explain why the run stopped in the Newcastle bight (maybe changes to the deep sea trawl fishery killed that- the 'fin used to follow the trawlers- i only heard about that fishery-never experienced it) and down south at Narooma/Bermi. There are cyclical factors involved- if you read some books from the 50's , 60's and 70's tuna were very common and marlin were very rare- even listened to a recent podcast with Bill Billson  and he talked about marlin being rare creatures in the 70's, ive caught a lot more marlin that i have  yellowfin tuna over 20kgs (not that the anecdote of one person is a statistically valid scientific report!) but further back there are stories of tuna being absent for 20+ years in the 30's and 40's off Sydney. Its also a theory that certain stocks of fish (like salmon and the fact that they return to the same river to spawn that they were hatched in ) return to the same patch of water year after year- the inshore yellowfin might well have been a small isolated stock that got smashed to the point of no return. The other factor was the devestation of the nannygai stocks off NSW- anyone remember "redfish" fillets from the 70's- it was the nicest, cheapest fish in the fish shop- and i certainly on my few offshore trips as a teenager most guys i went with used them as a fishbox filler if the snapper werent biting- they were prolific- I hardly see them these days and they are a insignificant commercial catch. The yellowfin used to love nannygai- maybe when the nannys declined the yellowfin had no reason to come inshore. Its a complicated story but its also a bit sad.

To add to this, back in the early 80's we were catching stacks of yellowfin at the banks and nowra hill from small boats, I owned a Seafarer V-sea. Now our marine radios back then didn't have a real long range but all the time we could hear radio chatter in foreign languages, mainly Asian and what sounded like Russian. Obviously these guys were taking huge amounts of fish.

I also remember as a kid, my father taking me out to Beecroft and watching him spin up southern bluefin one after the other. There was no constant casting, he would just sit and wait for the schools of fish to come past, probably about every 10 to 15 minutes. These school fish on average weighed around 10kg.

I worked with a guy who used to fish on a tuna pole boat out of Eden. He told me while everyone was poling things were going great and everyone was making a good living. That was until the purse seiners moved in and decimated the stocks. When a boat purse seines a school of tuna that entire school is gone, never to breed again. Whereas the pole boats would only take a small percentage from a school before the tuna woke up and moved on and at least they had a chance to regenerate. 

Like your nannygai, we used to have masses of garfish in Jervis Bay and around May - June every year and it was never uncommon to see large yellowfin chasing them on the west side of the bay only 20m from the shore. A mob of pros absolutely hammered the gars for a couple of years and they have never recovered from 20 years ago. Like you say, no bait no big fish.

Edited June 28, 2019 by Green Hornet

[noelm]

Just wandering way of track, and don't want to get into a "war", but,  I guess when it is all said and done, fishing pressure from all sectors are taking their toll on fish stocks, it's easy to point fingers at pros, but if you look at it without bias, let's say 30 years ago, 50 boats  caught 10 Snapper each, equaling 500 fish, now in the present day, they is probably 50 times more boats out at any given time, if only half of those boats caught 1 Snapper each, the number of fish caught is way more than 30 years ago, on the professional front, licences have been bought out, most bottom Trawlers are gone, lake netters are fewer, so, one would think their impact might be less now than decades ago. The whole less fish now compared to the olden days is a never ending debate, let's look at it this way for a second, if back in the "old days" that is the topic of this thread, we (us keen oldies) had GPS units, good sounders 23' boats with twin 4 strokes, 400l fuel tanks and so on, would the fish stocks that us rec fishers look for have been diminished decades earlier??

[PaddyT]

1 minute ago, noelm said:

Just wandering way of track, and don't want to get into a "war", but,  I guess when it is all said and done, fishing pressure from all sectors are taking their toll on fish stocks, it's easy to point fingers at pros, but if you look at it without bias, let's say 30 years ago, 50 boats  caught 10 Snapper each, equaling 500 fish, now in the present day, they is probably 50 times more boats out at any given time, if only half of those boats caught 1 Snapper each, the number of fish caught is way more than 30 years ago, on the professional front, licences have been bought out, most bottom Trawlers are gone, lake netters are fewer, so, one would think their impact might be less now than decades ago. The whole less fish now compared to the olden days is a never ending debate, let's look at it this way for a second, if back in the "old days" that is the topic of this thread, we (us keen oldies) had GPS units, good sounders 23' boats with twin 4 strokes, 400l fuel tanks and so on, would the fish stocks that us rec fishers look for have been diminished decades earlier??

I hear you Noel, im not trying to play the rec sector vs the pro- I was certainly gulity of "bloodlust" in my younger days , the pros in Australia are very tightly regulated - I still think some activities need to go- estuarine netting mainly - and recs are more responsible and regulated than in the past-PNG and the Solomons are rife with corruption and its esentially a free for all up there and in other parts of the pacific- i dont and wont eat canned tuna or feed it to my cat. 

[noelm]

Another old time memory, my father used to troll anytime he was motoring around, remember we are talking displacement boats, capable of about 8-9 knots max, we would be going "somewhere" with the troll lines out, cord lines with a feather jig on one side, and a Smiths jig on the other, if he saw a school of Kingfish, he would be yelling at us to get the lines in, because he didn't want those rubbish things! how times have changed! I remember hooking a giant one once, and he had the cord fed around his bum to make like a drag, and the line still running out over his shorts, burning his hands in the process, didn't we get a serve for not getting the line in quick enough!

[wazatherfisherman]

3 minutes ago, noelm said:

Another old time memory, my father used to troll anytime he was motoring around, remember we are talking displacement boats, capable of about 8-9 knots max, we would be going "somewhere" with the troll lines out, cord lines with a feather jig on one side, and a Smiths jig on the other, if he saw a school of Kingfish, he would be yelling at us to get the lines in, because he didn't want those rubbish things! how times have changed! I remember hooking a giant one once, and he had the cord fed around his bum to make like a drag, and the line still running out over his shorts, burning his hands in the process, didn't we get a serve for not getting the line in quick enough!

Smith's Jig- there's another great old lure- wonder what a younger fisher would think if you handed them one and said "tie this on, it catches everything"

 

[Green Hornet]

Noelm, I agree with you 100% and its always easy to blame someone else for our problems.

Now these days I no longer fish offshore but for a long time have fished St Georges Basin, long before it became a recreational fishing haven. While the pros were netting the place the fishing was average to say the least but since the buy out of their licenses its no secret the fishing has improved immensely.

I would say the number of rec boats has increased at least 20 fold in the last 10 years but the fishery continues to improve. Like you I look at all the boats and think if every one catches and keeps only 1 fish that's still a hell of a lot coming out of a relatively small "lake". It bedazzles me not only how the place copes with all that pressure but how it flourishes.