GORRRN

most likely poddy mullet swimming near the jetty, chuck some bread out to get them into a feeding frenzy and then use a small hook with a bit of bread on it. I have adapted my mullet technique slightly so that I get them into a feeding frenzy and i have a small hook with some cotton on it, throw it near the bread and they grab it without knowing the difference. This is still a new technique for me but seems to work well and gets rid of the annoying having to re bait all the time when they manage to pull the bread off and not get hooked. The poddy mullet definitely flash silver.

I must be lucky, my missus comes to BCF with me and picks out soft plastics and the like, and is always saying what about this and this etc. She wants to come out on the boat pretty bad but cant atm coz of a work injury which she just had surgery for.

The chomp in half is normally something like Tailor. And agreed i hope those where released, just wish people would realise those monsters need to go back as they are the breeding fish. We saw the head of an absolute monster flattie near the boat ramp we launch at, going by the size of the head this fish would have easily cracked the metre mark and it wasn't released, very sad.

Yeah my brother pulled one in while I was up there fishing with them last year. Big bastard to, have a photo of it somewhere.

Caught a 60cm salmon at Dee Why beach. My brother and his mate fish there regularly, and have been spooled twice by something pretty big.

Not sure if this is old, but just heard on the radio that 2 men where caught with 114 tailor in lake illawarra where found guilty and have to pay fines of $4000 each. The legal limit is of course 20 per person. Seriously $4000 isn't enough, they knew damn well what they where doing.

Yeah it can be heart breaking but that's fishing. And dont worry we always have 2 bait runners in the water while we are drifting and flicking soft plastics, my brother had a big hit on his and he had left his drag on to tight after getting snagged the previous drift, fish still managed to pull line before it spat the hook. The up side is we managed to mind a few new drifts that really produced some fish and a lot of hits. Which was very nice after the last few disappointing trips, constantly learning where to fish and what seems to work so yeah.

Nice flattie, you out did us as well best we managed was 51.5cm but had a frustrating day as we hooked up on some heavy fish that managed to spit the hook close to the boat. One thing though, i wasn't overly impressed with the mat as they say you HAVE to line the fish up with the '0' mark on the mat. There was no 0 mark, and i cant really tell from your photo if your mat was the same, but the black lines started slightly in from the end of the mat and that is where 0 was, not the edge of the mat (i even used a ruler to check it lol) so my photo has the fish lined up with that first black line and not the edge of the mat. I think its pretty badly setup since they say there is no tolerance for incorrect photos and 0 isn't even clearly marked. Also how do you know you missed out on the money?

Interesting and frustrating day on the water, brother and I both landed 3 flatties each, and both hooked up another 3 or 4 each and had them spit the hook close to the boat, a couple of them were heavy fish to, anyway thats fishing though. Best fish for me was a 51.5cm flattie which is also my PB flattie lol so cant complain to much about that. Saw a few people out there with the Pirtek hats, and also saw a few of them with keeper nets with fish in, which isn't really in the spirit of the comp. And we saw one of those boats back at the boat ramp cleaning 3 flatties, and to make things even worse 1 of them would have been lucky if it hit the 30cm mark.

Was hoping bream would be in there, but oh well. Give it a crack and hopefully catch a few fish, doubtful we will get anything close to top 3 worthy but should be fun.

Pretty pathetic if you ask me, but i guess its the same as cops. It all depends on who catches you, what mood they are in, if they have met there quota yet and how you speak to them. Im not saying these old fellas would have been rude or nasty etc to warrant the lines being taken. But get a fisheries officer after he has had a fight with his missus etc and chances are he will be a dick to deal with. Its sad and it shouldn't even come into the equation but it does. Some serious common sense needs to be used when enforcing these laws. Was a while ago but i heard about a couple of guys that gone done for going through a marine park area with rods rigged up. They where crossing the marine park to get to another fishing spot and where going flat out, they got pulled up and booked because there rods where rigged up (shows intention to fish) so basically they would have had to un rig everything to cross the park then re rig on the other side. Its absolutely pathetic and just shows how out of touch the authorities are.

Awesome catch mate, congrats. And yeah you never know what weird and wonderful baits they will go for, i had a super poddy on my hook on sunday, had him on there for at least an hour with no touches and he was still fighting me when i would bring him up lol. To the point where i am starting to believe he was fending off all the fish. As for the tailor never look past a good tailor fillet, my brother caught one up at Stockton beach filleted it and sent a piece out, was onto a jewie within a 5 minutes. And we had been fishing that spot with pillies for well over 1.5 hours.

You must have been near the mouth, we fished further up river. I think we will try closer to the mouth next time as the dirty water at the start was horrible.

Great report and awesome fish mate, well done.

Headed down to the Shoalhaven on Sunday for an early morning low tide on a 96% full moon and ended with a very frustating session. My brother had 2 flatties spit the hooks about a metre from the boat I had 2 poddies bitten off just behind the head so missed the hooks, we both had 2 pulled clean off the hooks, as well as a few live prawns taken with no hook ups. VERY FRUSTRATING. It was also slow on the outgoing tide as the water was still very dirty, starting to wonder if its ever going to clean up lol. When the tide turned though the water immediately looked a lot cleaner and the missed hook ups became more frequent. I did manage to land this little fella before we headed back to the ramp, not the biggest fish but a pleasant suprise for the river and he bought up a nice fight, including a jump clean out of the water where i watched him spit the poddie out.

Seems like a lot of stuffing around, no offence austral but ive done the whole bucket thing and the live bait bag is seriously the easiest way to keep poddies, a battery powered airator is sufficient. The bag on its own is $20 and they also have a bag and airator combo for $30. We catch the day before we go out and we leave the live bait bag in the boat overnight, we just swap the water when we get to the boat ramp as the poddies have generally made it quite messy lol. If you do use buckets then you would need buckets with lids as we have had poddies jump clean out of the live bait bag when we have both lids unzipped. I catch the poddies, turn the pump on zip the lids closed chuck the bag in the car and there is no concern about water going everywhere. As for the size mack attack i will grab some measurements later, but its a decent size and at half full would probably hold about 20L of water.

Go to BCF (i know they sell them) or you can try any other tackle shop and get a surecatch live bait bag. Its strong it folds flat when there is no water in it and it has a pocket on the side for the aerator to sit in, it also has a hole just under the lid for the aerator tube to go through. Has a mesh zip up lid so you can change/add/remove water with out any of the little critters escaping and also has a plastic zip up lid to prevent leaking when travelling. If i remember correctly they are only $20 or $30 and seriously was the best investment we made. Always just take a scoop of the water you catch them in (we generally only have it 1/4 full, had 12 poddies and about 10 or 12 live prawns all the bait bag with no problems. Best thing is when you get to the boat ramp or wherever you are fishing you just unzip the plastic lid leave the mesh zipped up pour out old water and fill with clean. Highly recommended as this is such a hassle free way of handling poddies. Oh it also had a decent carry strap.

Read that a few times and i dont quite get what you mean about her suggesting the motor is to big, if you mean the weight... i was asking so that we can work out what prop to get. And also she wasn't from maritime she was from a boat store. I think its more like she didnt actually know what she was talking about. Anyway have to retract some info from my previous post, i thought it was the 2 cyl 40HP but its actually the 3cyl 40hp. My brother rang a couple of other marine places in Sydney and he is picking up another prop tomorrow.

Thanks for the info Huey, the boat does have a tacho and reaches the max rpm of 5500 at WOT pretty easily, feels as though the last 500-1000rpm doesn't make much difference in terms of performance and speed. Which is why we are looking into all of this (motor height and prop) as we would like to get the best performance and avoid doing any possible harm to the motor. As for the Merc i am pretty sure its the 2cyl, it would be nice to have the 3 lol, but at the end of the day it doesn't really bother us to much as he got the whole lot second hand at a bloody good price. On the plane the AV is just out of the water but the duck fins are slightly curved and the edges may be dipping into the water ever so slightly, it was hard to tell. Still confused as to why the marine place says the motor is to big for the boat, seems strange. The boat is coming off the trailer on friday anyway as we need to do some work on the trailer so we are going to have a good look at everything then.

Just chasing some info as i cant seem to find anything online. Currently we go fishing in my brothers Easy Rider 156. It has a 2002 40HP mercury on it (with duck fins installed), and i did some research on propping and motor height etc and we put it to the test and the motor seems to go to the top of its max rev range and a touch over, which obviously isn't good. Trying to work out what prop we should go for so i am trying to find out the weight of the Easy Rider 156, there is no build plate, there is an Easy Rider sticker which has max HP written on part of it but the sticker hasn't fared so well over time so none of the info can be seen. Any help would be much appreciated. The lady from one of the Marine places told my brother that the 2002 Mercury 40HP is probably to big for the boat, which i am having a hard time believing.

Are you guys picking up these flattie in the lake? Near the windang rd bridge (windang side) or somewhere special?

I honestly dont get this, making it compulsory is going to do nothing except piss people off as they will think its about making more money from fines. And there is simply not enough fisheries officers out there to enforce it, so its just going to be another law that isn't followed. Like wearing like jackets while crossing a bar. Making new laws does not solve the problem. It's simply an easy out for the authorities so they can say "look we made it compulsory", and making it compulsory simply does not equate to saving lives.

It definitely is sad and a waste, and i certainly wouldn't wish it upon anyone. However i do get a bit sick of the government having to step in and make things mandatory, or suggestions that the government is to blame for not making it safer. At some stage people need to take responsibility for themselves. If they don't think they need safety gear and something happens then no one is to blame but themselves. I don't do rock fishing yet but when i start i will definitely be getting some proper safety gear, and people really need to have a good look at themselves when there excuse is the safety gear is to expensive. Its pretty bloody cheap when it ends up saving your life, buy a cheaper rod and reel, or don't get that extra reel and buy a decent life jacket instead. And instead of trying to force more laws on people why don't the government step up and subsidise some of the safety gear, send everyone with a fishing licence a voucher or set up a purchase system on the fisheries site where they can purchase one of the quality jackets for a reduced price. Where every licence holder can purchase 1 jacket at a much cheaper price. I honestly don't think making things mandatory and issuing fines is ever going to be a solution, its simply going to make more fisho's think they do it for revenue raising. Edit: And there simply aren't enough fisheries officers as it is, give them an extra thing to enforce isn't going to make a difference.

Not really sure how far it actually extends but according to that map yeah. They say this So basically thats your fresh water covered.

https://pirtekfishingchallenge.com.au/murray-darling-basin/ As i mentioned in my previous post, it is done via state, then they have a seperate area which is the murray darling basin (this would cover bathurst / dubbo etc) and this area has its own species. Catch is you cant enter a fish for both your state prize and the murray-darling basin prize. So i don't know if there would be a huge need to pick a fresh water species in the state species list. I hope that makes sense.