shipwrecked

All good. No offence meant.

Doh. Rubbing it in!

There are also often big bream swimming under thr pylons of frothy coffee looking for crumbs falling through the floor or off the deck. At least they use to be there.

That's a cracker of a flatty. Well done! You might just be rubbing it thou.

Oops just realised you said brooklyn. Oh well.

Portugese Beach for pelagic swim bye. Red channel marker on eastern side near coreal bay has a reef yoy can try. Mouth of Pittwater drifting for flounder and flathead. Careel bay moorings for king but I've never really succeded with this. Scottland island for wrecks and smaller kings. Commercial fishos (in my opinion) have reduced the productivity of hawksberry but still a great day out. Have a squid jig out too.

My memory is vague as I prawned with my old man there about 30 years ago. There was a car park and a beach on the nothern side of the outlet just inside the bridge. Shallow wading and easy capture (or at least it was). Was a popular spot so I can't imagine it's too hard to find.1 tip I have is about pelican lice. I remember on many occasions returning home with bites all over my legs. Maybe some waders on wetsuit pants are a good idea.

I caught my first king in pittwater by hiring a run about from one of the boathouses around there. Great day on the water, relatively inexpensive and gives you access to many parts of beauiful Pittwater and a chance at a Kingie. Worth considering.

Another reference. www.ikijime.com

I have the exact setup you descrie above. Starter batt (1) and all other electronics run off a second batt (2). Isolator switch as you describe. Typical switched to 1 for normal operation. Could be switched to 2 if 1 dies. Or switched to 1+2 for fast charging of either. Wjen 1 is chosen charging current is supplied back to batt 1. Connected to batt 1 is also a Voltage Sensative Relay which in turn is connected to batt 2. The vsr works on the principal if batt 1 is at 12 volts (or thereabouts), it will connect up batt 2 to charge it. This connection is timed and then disconnected (making sure batt1 stays charged abd doesn't give all its power to batt2). Great system works well and provides lots of assurances. Very happy with outcome. Things to note. If you dont do much motoring the VSR may not provide enough power to refill your batt2 because of the timed charging. I negate this by using a small solar charger to trickle charge whist on land and alwats have a full batt to start with. Lastly, voltage drops are something you need to account for. If your batts are clise to the motor/alternator all good. You may find that if you batt is on a long cable it may never charge correctly. This is where dc-dc convertors come into play ..........

Thanks all for the reply/confirmation. Both pike caught were returned back to their fishy home.

Winter Hawkesbury – 15th July Managed a fish yesterday (Saturday), Westhead at 6am for some live baits then out to Box head, Sea was quite flat and the wind started off quite low. The morning started off a bit cold but the sea was mostly flat and there weren’t too many people about. Beautiful Sunrise. There was, I must admit more fish around than I had expected (due to winter slowdown) lots of action of the sounder once we arrived and I managed a hook up before the first live bait hit the bottom. Nothing special - a Sea Pike I think, I would like some confirmation with the picture attached. Bait being used was Prawns, Pilchards, and Yellowtail. We managed a few of these and a couple of near legal Snapper and some other rubbish which were all thrown back. We decided to move for a drift in front of Palm Beach only to pull our lines in to find we had no tackle left – damn Leather Jackets! As the wind increased we headed inside to Flint and Steel – no action here even on the tide change. Whilst the day had produced, we still didn’t have a feed so we decided to do the ‘drift of shame’ for flatties which got us onto some Squid which we managed to get 4 of into the boat. Now, there’s a family feed – very happy. We did also mange a good size flounder, and a smaller version which were both returned to the depths. All in all what a great day, the sun eventually came out, and we had a magnificent winter’s fish. The fish bites inside were quite few and far between and we didn’t see any action on the surface or any birds working. The water was something like 17.5 out at Box head, however there still there seems to be still quite a bit (more than I expected) going on. Tight lines everybody.

Don't think they were Cowanyoung. Definitely a yellow strip down their lateral line. Maybe Southern Mackrel scad? I'll get a photo next time. Kingies had my attention at the time.

Went fishing last Sunday, nearly at the boat ramp to realize the life jackets didn't make it into the boat packing last night: Turn around and have to return back to Ryde to pick them up - Doh! Hopefully this isn't a reflection on how the day will turn out? Put the boat in at Akuna bay around 6am - late start really. Quite trip out to West head for some yellow tails. Interestingly there were some reasonable big fish hanging around here and I managed to get one on a live bait rig which very quickly bent the hooks - not sure what these were but they were keen to eat bread and would dart in between the schools as the bread burley would sink. The yellow tail seemed a bit hard to catch, but with 5 in the tank we decided that was enough to get serious about a feed. Moved around looking for something on the sounder and eventually found a place with lots of activity of bait fish holding up I one place. As it turns out these were the biggest yellow tail I have ever seen (30-35cms?) - proven by the fact that we managed a few on board. We put down two live baits and a couple of prawn and squid baits - prawn baits got a few small snapper that all went back. Action was a bit slow, but we can't complain as sure enough off goes the reel peeling line at a rate of knots. After a nice honest fight, into the boat comes out first 2017 Kingfish - Yahoo! This first King was then followed by 3 more. End result was 2 Kings each - 4 in total, going 67cms, 63cms, 60cm and 55cm. Only the 67cms fish was kept. Seems to me the summer kings have hit town with the warm currents you can see on the BOM site. Can't wait to get out there again.

Went out last night with two mates in our Quinny 5M to fish Pittwater which is an old haunt of ours. The air temperature was nice if you kept out of the wind, lots of wind. Water temp 23.4 on the Lowrance. Was bottom bashing, drifting unweighted Gar and squid and floating similar. Got various small pinkies. Then all of a sudden the float of Gar takes off with a scream. My mate picks up the rod to see the spool quickly emptying so he turns up the drag a bit. Then bang he drops it. He's been bitten off at the hook. Its speed could have been a king but it was likely a shark. Exciting moment that left us shattered with disappointment but renewed enthusiasm to fight the wind and continue. We ended up in the channel near the red marker on the eastern side of Pittwater with a float this time loaded wirh a large squid bell on a dual snelled hook set-up. Then suddely the float takes off and I'm onto something BIG. Panic onsues as we need to pull in the other lines (did i nention we aren't really setup well with lights and tangles were left for later to undo). Finding torches and getting the net ready, when we look over the side to see a nice 2-3 bull or bronze whaler shark and quickly all agree it wasn't coming aboard. Trying to find a camera to prove the claim and the shark bites through my 40lbs leader. Awesome trip out even with the wind but i wouldn't be swimming in Pittwater at night.