Burger

Pretty sure no-one here will be bored with fishing history! Please do share if you have time amongst you move Noel!

Most excellent offer on your part @XD351!

Hiya Birdy, The magbream is apparently extended about 6”, it’s not superlight and has the reel seat very towards the butt like old school Alvey set up. No way I could hold it all day, but I’m also an unfit old bastard. I think moving the reel seat forward would balance the rod better and have it feel lighter as a result. Cheers, stu.

Hiya @Birdy, Welcome to the forum and there is some good advice above for you already! One of the guys I fish with uses a spinning reel and does as well as, and often better, than the rest of us using centrepins. It's definitely easier to cast longer distances (if needed) with a spin reel. I reckon a centrepin does however have an advantage when rockfishing, allowing better line control in the surge. I'm pretty old school though. The main advantage in a long soft rod over a short spin rod is picking up line in the strike on longer drifts and, if rock fishing, in being stand back further from the edge and keep your line out the wash and off the rocks. A soft rod will do a lot of the work for you absorbing lunging fighting style of Luderick. One of the VERY best tips is to balance your float so it is close to neutral buoyancy, my estuary float only has 1cm of the tip of the float exposed and definitely none of the float body. My set up's are Rock fishing: 12' Magbream with the Okuma shown above. it's a bloody good reel that I bought as a divorce present for myself. 16lb float mainline, 8lb FC trace with a heavy fixed float that has lead on the stem to hold it more upright in the surge and reduce the lead needed on the line. I believe this allows the bait to move more naturally. Estuary: 10' Wilson blackfish rod and an Alvey 475CP. 12lb mainline and 6lb FC trace matched with a much lighter running float compared to my rockfloats. I use Daiichi 2171B hooks mainly in a size 8, going up or down a size as needed. This is just the way I do it and you will find the way Luderick fishing is 'done' varies all along the NSW seaboard. Best of luck on your journey, float watching for a hardfighting fish on light gear is pretty addictive.

WHAT HE SAID!

Took my sons away to Forster when they were young and hired a boat for an arvo, back at the cleaning table I asked my eldest son to take the scraps and throw them in the river . . . knowing full well he had to run the gauntlet of pelicans .. . . . Much screaming and running later he got there and back through them 😅 Jeez I'm a bugger 😆🤣

My mates say that string has been pretty hard to come by recently, so good luck!

Shame about your Avon Stevo! As GH says, the Alveys are selling at pretty good (for the seller) prices especially if pretty new in the box. Life's too short to use a reel your not happy with, I love my Okuma Aventa but would grab a Tempo in a heartbeat. I'm a floatline fan and use flouro leaders, but am not convinced over the value of them over plain fine mono leader and admit to being grabbed by the marketing of flouro.

Luds are primarily vegetarian, so string or cabbage will usually be the best bait for them. As GH says they do take worms, prawns etc after spawning. I think I read somewhere they are after quick protein to recover after spawning.

Ta Pickles

New account name LF …. Big Breambo! 😁

I got lucky with the string weed as the local council haven’t cleaned a local ocean pool for a while. Love my luds fishing, pretty much all I go for.

Thanks Larkin, they’re from inside as I’m not fit enough for the rocks at the moment.

Last minute decision to fish with a mate. Grabbed some bait from local rocks. Great to catch up with my mate and while not a fast bite, dinner got sorted. Perfect eating size, 30-35cm’s.

@NewToFishing can you swim at all? Swimming in a pool is very different to if you go in off the rocks while fishing . . . . that environment is usually pretty high energy and MUCH more difficult place to be in. Recently there have been more than a few people who have drowned while wearing life jackets. They are not a guarantee of safety. Sorry to be a negative nancy, but in my opinion if someone is not a VERY competent swimmer, they have no place fishing off the rocks.

They're definitely in there . . .this is one we found reasonably recently dead in 2015

Thanks for sharing your fishing report and the fabulous photos, I especially like the dawn (?) shot with your tinny lit internally. cheers, stu.

Use the brightest green you can find, the cabbage with white edges has been burnt by the sun. Also, spread around where you take it from as this helps it to grow back more quickly. Don't just grab everything from one small area. Cabbage doesn't 'keep' as well as string, so best to only take what you can use in a day or so.

Got my pb flatty at the very mouth of Patong Creek…. Tossed a mullet strip upstream and let it drift down with the current. Bam, 75cm flatty.

This is what I used to do with my tennis shoes and have started my son with it on his work shoes! I too have dedicated fishing clothes.

Dad taught me 1 oh, so that’s what I go with…. bloody yanks messing things up AGAIN!😂 Got their own ‘gallons’, drivin on the wrong side of the road…. How the heck did they become a superpower 🫣😏😉🤣

How about the bend in that rod!!! Looks like it’s bending ALL the way down to the butt! I have a light estuary blackfish rod that does that, but it’s not the same thing at all! 😂

What cracking fish!!! Congrats!

Good on you for saving it BD! What a great project!

Aren't aussie mates just the best 😂