Ojay Samson

Hey Frank, GOOD hearing from you again old buddy. Hope all is well with you, tell Val I said hello Right you are in regards to the net. I've quickly gotten snippets for blue swimmer crab rules in NSW from DPI website to actually be helpful for anyone in the future who reads this. Thanks, I can confirm... they were delicious! Thanks Mrs Swordie, glad the site is still going strong...love ya work. Ps as I stated in the original post, this was a video from a fishing session a while back, 28th March 2019 to be exact haha. Thank You Thank You, Kind words are always appreciated by me.

It's all there chief, don't you worry about me. Thanks for stopping by 👍

Hello fellow Raiders, It is me... Ojay, I know I know... very long time between posts. Life has become very busy and I do not go out as much as I used to unfortunately. Seeing as I'm my biggest fan when it comes to my own YouTube videos, I recently made one to try remember my glory days of having more time and actually being able to take my boat out for a fish. Hope someone out will enjoy the vid, or at least entertain them for a couple of minutes. CLICK HERE -> Crabbing in Port Stephens Thanks, Ojay

Hey Frank, Yeah Im still around, unfortunately I have nothing to contribute... I haven't even gone for a fish or taken the boat out since last year. Work has consumed me and I hate every minute of it haha. I should pop by some time and say hello, its been a while.

Frothing! Nice one boys

Thanks for organising today's meet, I'll have to give this one a miss as the crew and I have opted to stay home and rest for tomorrow.... I'm hoping to head outside if weather permits. Keep us posted if anyone else is going out tomorrow to. Have fun tonight all those meeting up. Ojay

I was told there were bigger versions of this... those models are all I'm having luck with hahaha

Nice to meet y'all in person. See you in the morning!

I'm locked in, will be based at soldiers point. Will meet up with the rest of you at little beach. For those who have a vhf or 27meg radio, should we organise a specific channel that we can all keep in contact with each other on the days were up there? I've only got a VHF and go by my boats name 'DONT PANIC' Cheers Ojay

Yikes! Sorry, I got nothing of value for input... just surprised by that corrosion from 6 months... I assume you take care of your stuff? Freshwater rinse, inox spray etc?

I used to tow my 4.5m formosa (braked trailer) with my 1991 Toyota corolla Seca around...fairly sure my boat is decently heavier than yours so you'll be fine. Don't expect to win any races though. Ramps are fine to as long as they are maintained. Put it in low gear to minimise wheelspin. Here's a vid to put your mind at ease. YOUTUBE VID

Thanks, that has surprisingly reassured me. Feeling confident now the nut & bolt job should be fine Sweet as... I'm fairly sure this is the same path I will be taking. Also just 1 more question to anyone that knows but the new split cross bollard design had a clearly slightly raked back design and 1 side of the cross has these distinct raised edges.... indicating to.me it's supposed to be mounted in a specific way... does anyone know which ways supposed to face forward? For reference on my 3rd picture you can see the tapered edge on the horizontal part of the cross and in the 1st photo the bollard is leaning from right to left. Sorry for the tedious questions, I just don't want to mount it up on the day and turns out someone who actually knows the proper way to mount it later down the track informs me that its the wrong way around haha

Pm sent

Thanks for the info and pics to visualise what i should do to. I want to go down the nut and bolt path and get a SS which can hold chain in between Thank you very much for the offer. After the whole burning paint and repainting after rewelding install, thats to much extra effort for my linking i think and i will try going down the nut and bolt path. I should have looked underneath as you suggested before buying hardware, the original is welded on so i have nothing to unbolt and will need to remount somewhere else or try figure out a way of getting around the cross member which is directly underneath the original bollards base plate. I went and got the split bollard like you as i to want to lock the chain when needed and seems like a nice upgrade to the standard aluminium alloy bollard which i had originally. i get my anchcor stuck quite often and with the amount of pressure i put on the original bollard at times, i am not surprised it finally gave way, so the SS cross bollard seems like a good upgrade, just still not to convinced about the nuts and bolts that will hold this in place... the gauge seems a bit to small however i guess they are more than adequate seeing as that's what the manufacturer intended. Thanks to everyone for their replies and suggestions, it certainly helped me out in deciding what i wanted to do, now comes the hard part of executing it.

Hey Frank, thanks I just saw your messages recently, i just came from the local chandlery and bought some hardware, however i think there are some problems like usual with simple installs when it comes to me haha, when are you free? i tried calling you earlier on your mobile but went to voicemail. Let me know when you're next free and i'll swing the boat around and get your opinion on the matter. ps this is what i ended up getting ... just not sure now on the mounting of it as original location is in a terrible spot underneath with reinforcing cross members directly underneath where i would be drilling the hew holes to mount this bloody thing...

Count me & the 2IC in pending on solid dates, revolves around me being able to get annual leave on the finalised dates... gotta apply long in advance to be in with a chance.

Hi All, so the most random and at the time mildly upsetting thing happened, got to foreshore ramp on good friday for a fish and as we were prepping the boat the 2IC calls me over and tells me to look at something.... the cross bollard for my anchor rope tie down is lying on the bow of the boat perfectly sheared off.... I have no idea what happened to it or why it even broke as i even took a photo of it from the last time we used the boat where i had blue swimmer crabs all lined up perfectly in front of it. I am at a loss a what to do about this now as i have no idea how to fix this... does anyone have any suggestions on what i can do? at the moment we were just tying the anchor rope to the hand rail at the bow.... less than ideal but didn't want to call off a fishing trip when we were practically on the slipway for that. Whats my best course of action for fixing this? Ideally i would like to just by a new alloy cross bollard and weld that on as a direct replacement but i don't have the tools or skills for welding, so would buying a stainless steel cross bollard work and just bolt that on top of the old alloy bollards base plate? angle grinding it down to make a flat surface...or hope to anyway? now that im typing this out, it sure sounds sketchy and potentially frustrating to make something a flat surface for mounting something else... Open to any advice or suggestions Cheers, Ojay

Thanks Crusher, So while i was filleting the fish at the cleaning tables i was helping myself with some prime sashimi slices. got home and mum prepared a simple beer batter and made 'fish & chips' without the chips and to all of our surprise... the meat was delicious absolutely NOTHING like what we were all imagining in our head.. like typical dry textured tuna from a can. All the while mum had the head in the oven cooking as well and after picking out all the meat, which usually gets thrown away from what ive seen in videos with the whole head being discarded she then proceeded to make some sort of tomato paste/sauce thingy with canned tomatoes, garlic, herbs and other stuff which is beyond me and if i were to try compare it to it was like a pasta sauce you would mix in with ones favourite pasta except with tuna for meat... and was eaten the following days for breakfast etc on toast... was delicious. Next day it was tempura batter and that was amazing to. Never got to try grilled tuna steaks at the time, so hoping next time will get a chance. The bulk of the tuna is sitting in the freezer with my mum guarding it with her life, went out fishing the other day and she got nervous we were going to take some of it for bait and told me not to touch it haha (because we used the off cuts of tuna like the bloodline parts and other less desirable sections for bait in our crab traps...which seemed to be amazing bait for them. and to confirm the leftover offcuts were used for bait on good Friday fishing trip to botany and were a massive hit here to). Cheers, Ojay

Thanks for the kind words Chaser, couldn't have asked for a better opening fish

Thanks for the kind words, glad you enjoyed it. Its funny you say that, i was on high alert when i was tea bagging the ocean with the tuna. The thought of 'this seems like a bad idea' went through my mind a few times, i got lucky i guess... using the wash down pump instead never crossed my mind, but now that you mention it... its genius! Will definitely be employing it next time the occasion calls for it. Thanks Berleyguts! I actually showed the mrs this post and she was loving your comment haha! Yeah i was trying to be careful not to gaff the prized eating bits so was trying my hardest to get it in the head area, and thankfully the gaff was sharp enough to get the business done. HAHAHA! this made me laugh IRL, thank you for your concern. its ok now 🤣 Thank you for the kind words, glad you enjoyed the video. Thanks Donna, yeah I do have a pretty good deckie... couldnt ask for anyone better Thanks BN, glad you enjoyed my post & thank you... it most certainly wont be forgotten any time soon.

Story Time Hi Raiders… here’s my report. Applied for leave and it was approved. Decided to take my boat out of Sydney for the first time and tow it up to Port Stephens for a small break, took the partner and my mum up as we all needed a little break from the hustle and bustle of the big smoke. Shopped around for accommodation for 4 nights and found a place that would accommodate a small trailerboat for a comfortable price….it was about a 12-minute drive to the boat ramp I was planning on launching from, Soldiers Point which was acceptable enough for me to endure for the money saved compared to places closer to the boat ramps. Arrived at the accommodation place that boasted being in the ‘trees as an escape’ only to find that when the 2IC and I came to the reception desk, turns out they had been trying to contact us all morning to inform us that they wanted to move us somewhere else, as on the Sunday night of the weekend before there was a short but massive storm which took out their tv antennas and pool filter system and blew up a tree with splinters hitting the reception building a good 80 meters away apparently. So, they informed us they want to move us to their other location in soldiers point… I politely accepted the offer and off we went. Turns out this new accommodation is about a 30 second drive from the boat ramp… was cheering! NEW ACCOMMODATION Day 1 Arrived at around 1pm, got settled in and squared away. Wanted to make the most of the first day so launched the boat at 3pm to try for crabs with newly bought crab traps…. Left them to soak from 3pm-530pm. Only caught 1 undersized blue swimmer, so back it went and headed home. ITS GO TIME Day 2 This ended up being the pick of the days as it turned out, as the next few days after was wind warnings a plenty by the BOM and unpleasant 40 knot gale winds forecast with heavy rain. Launched the boat and was on the water by 8AM… a later start than I had planned for but whatever. Motored up to cabbage tree island and did a few drifts to catch some live bait. Spoke to a local who was doing the same to get any info on how Broughton was fishing, they did not know the current conditions as he had been targeting jewies inside the heads and was just there picking up some livies. Stayed for about an hour to load up on livies, then motored on to Broughton island to do drive-bys on a few marks previously put into fish finder unit back at Sydney before heading to the final destination of the island. To my surprise there were no more kingfish pens for me to sus out (well none that I saw anyways). Anchored up in 20 + meters of water and once I was confident we were holding bottom, gave the first slimy a nose piercing with a 7/0 octopus circle hook and let out some line, judging by the colour changes I think I let it out about 30 meters before closing the bail. Checked the drag to make sure it wasn't too loose that it may case an overrun. Was trying to put the safety lanyard on the neck of the reel seat of my new fishing outfit (shimano saragosa SW10000/ shimano terez) when suddenly something was trying to rip the rod out of my hand. Mind you this was the first time I have ever taken this new outfit out for a fish having had it since Christmas last year and was definitely not expecting to see action on it so quickly… it was out according to the footage for only about 2 minutes before it got bent in half. Fish went for a couple of screaming runs initially where in my panic I was tightening the drag as I did not know the country I was fishing in and didn’t want to get bricked on a reef. Luckily the fishing gods were smiling on me and eventually managed to get the fish boat-side, and after a few tense attempts of handing over the rod to the 2IC while I try to jockey for position to Gaff the fish (something ive never needed to do before...the most action my gaff has ever seen is to pull up mooring buoys), I eventually get a beautiful shot on the side gill plate which seemed to hit something pretty important as it started bleeding out pretty quickly. Was definitely taking this baby home for a feed so it was going to meet its maker one way or another. Gave it its last rites and introduced the priest to it to put it out of its misery, cut the gills to introduce some more bleeding, hung it out upside down boat side to aid in the bleed out and then onto ice for the ride home. THE MONEY SHOT GAFF SHOT IN YELLOW CIRCLE FOR GIRTHS SAKE... NO GUESSTIMATES, JUST TRUTH ON THE LIE DETECTOR... 103CM TOTAL LENGTH Was my first ever longtail/northern bluefin tuna so it’s an automatic PB for me @ 103cm . Tried again for another 20 minutes then called it quits as my crew were starting to feel a bit seasick, pulled up stumps and motored on home, Back at the ramp by 12pm. With most of my reports, here is an accompanying video for anyone interested. >>>>>> CLICK ME FOR YOUTUBE VIDEO <<<<<< Day 3 This day was a washout where it was near gale winds and heavy rain all through the night till midday, went to the ramp ready to brave the elements at around 930am, but after seeing and speaking to another local who changed his mind on launching at the slipway, we were inclined to agree and follow suit in that it was not a good idea to go out just then, so we turned around and went home. The winds settled down near the arvo, so we tried again and got on the water around 3pm till sunset for zilch. Day 4 This was much of the same except for the rain, threw the crab traps out in the morning when it was calmer and let them soak. Explored around inside for zeros rod and reel wise, however this day proved to be pretty good in that the total tally for the crab traps at the end of the day were 9 blue swimmer crab keepers, so day wasn’t a total loss, however I wanted to go outside again to Broughton island and try and catch that elusive big red, with to date my PB snapper being only 1cm over legal @ 31cm :/… oh well, next time I guess. They were delicious Overall a good fishing trip away from Sydney to mix things up a bit. Thanks for reading. Ojay Ps thankyou to berleyguts for sussing out wash down taps at soldiers point the week before when i was doing the homework, which ultimately led me to chose soldiers as my base of operations.

Thoroughly enjoyed that read, thanks for posting.

Awesome post! I'd be lying if I said I wasn't excited for my trip up in a weeks time... hope I can get on the dollies to while I'm up there to. Pictures tell a thousand words as they say... brilliant pics.

Pm sent

Thanks for the advice and confirmation about the taps. Just download the app now, pretty neat!