Maroubra Beach Drone Fishing

[NewToFishing]

29 minutes ago, Volitan said:

Many ways you could rig it. You need a sinker able to hold bottom, the bait and a small float big enough to hold the bait above the bottom. I have used a running sinker on the mainline above a swivel, then a float about a meter below that, and the bait about 300mm below that. The float floats above the sinker and the bait just kind of drifts around at the 600 mm level. 
 

A couple of years ago I dropped a camera out about 200 meters from a local beach to see what was happening. I put the video on YouTube here . You can see the stingrays and banjos try hard but have great difficulty taking anything floating. You will also see there was nothing else out there on the sand, except maybe a few puffer fish.

 

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Yea will definitely try that sort of rig man, makes sense now and good video proof! Good footage also man love it, also that was the exact type of ray I caught lol...

Edited December 17, 2023 by NewToFishing

[Little_Flatty]

1 hour ago, NewToFishing said:

I see mate, yea I was of the assumption that further you cast the bigger the fish...

This would have to be the single biggest fallacy that novice anglers have to unlearn. The location of most fish is correlated with the presence of safety and food, which is in turn correlated with structure (a beach gutter or sand flat dropoff also forms 'structure' by this definition too, as does reef, bridges, wharves, moorings and so on). Sometimes this is deep water, other times it is shallower.

All the same, the drone presents you with some significant advantages and I'm interested to see how you go with it. The main advantage I can see (assuming you have a camera on the drone) is that you can prospect likely territory and drop your bait in likely places that you otherwise wouldn't be able to access from land.

[noelm]

The Ray in that movie was a Banjo, they are kind of round with markings on their back, not so good eating, the Shovelnose is plain brown with a pointy “nose” and are quite good eating (just the tail) I usually don’t keep any of them, but now and then if I get a big one I might keep it for the grandkids.

[jenno64]

Great result and well done on the hook ups!

Ive seen drone fishing  reating amazing results and captures on the flats but I think you’ve had some good advice about beach fishing on this post so far🙏🏻 

[Volitan]

On 12/16/2023 at 10:24 AM, NewToFishing said:

 But there would be no way to keep the bait from floating back to shore without a sinker... So not sure what to do.

Thanks!

usually a distant bait comes back in, sometimes it doesn’t. At our local beach it’s pulled outwards - even with just a very small ball sinker.

anyway, I think we all understand that distant fishing the bottom at a beach isn’t much good, so you could try fishing the surface. Target pelagics. Pelagics are not dependent on structure for safety and most species of baitfish don’t cope well with the surf zone. Try fishing the distant surface with a float and pilchard bait maybe 1 or 2 meters below. Some drone fishers add a very long dropper down to a star sinker to stop the whole rig coming back in - at least as long as the water is deep - just have to fly out a bit higher.

Don’t know what you’ll get, but worth a try every now and then. You’ll often see pelagics busting up on baitfish off the beach and usually well beyond casting distance.

[NewToFishing]

1 hour ago, Volitan said:

usually a distant bait comes back in, sometimes it doesn’t. At our local beach it’s pulled outwards - even with just a very small ball sinker.

anyway, I think we all understand that distant fishing the bottom at a beach isn’t much good, so you could try fishing the surface. Target pelagics. Pelagics are not dependent on structure for safety and most species of baitfish don’t cope well with the surf zone. Try fishing the distant surface with a float and pilchard bait maybe 1 or 2 meters below. Some drone fishers add a very long dropper down to a star sinker to stop the whole rig coming back in - at least as long as the water is deep - just have to fly out a bit higher.

Don’t know what you’ll get, but worth a try every now and then. You’ll often see pelagics busting up on baitfish off the beach and usually well beyond casting distance.

Great idea mate, will try a star sinker at the bottom of the rig and maybe 5 to 6 metres of line that bait connects to, then a float ontop of that, which should sit on the ocean floor and the float will hold the bait up and the sinker should stop the bait coming back in.

Also was thinking might drop a live bait out a fair bit and see what happens... All trial and error lol