PaddyT

Neither of the majors are our friends-Labor has forgotten that the working man wants to fish for a few hours to escape the drudge of every day life and have become obsessed with keeping the far left happy (to which they will never succeed).The LNP think we are the great unwashed and spoil their water views and inconvenience their Wednesday afternoon sailing races on the harbour.

Latest is that Montague Island lockout is very much on the agenda-SFFP and Stop The Lockout are organising a rally in Narooma on the 11th of April I believe.

This is one of the most important elections we will face-the lockups will explode if the Greens get their way

To add to the mix-heard a rumour today that certain parts of the political left think they have a very good chance to shut Montague Island to fishing AND diving. Hopefully a rumour but as i said before -they will never stop.

Go early, find a bridge, structure equals fish

As everyone knows there is an election coming very soon in NSW , as a fishing community we need to be mindful of the various parties views and policies on rec fishing. Certain parties (AJP and Greens ) will use every means they have to restrict and even close down rec fishing. Other parties have strong views on expanding access , providing additional funding and helping our chosen recreation grow. Have a look in a couple of other states and have a look at what is happening (Qld with spanish mackeral and WA with just about everything) and decide are these genuine attempts at fisheries management or driven by a certain ideology (I have my views). Remember who was behind the push to create the Sydney marine park and who was the main driver in preventing it happening (Stop The Lockout and the SFFP). The coalition got the suprise of their lives when we got up and protested. We all need to remember the past , have a look at what may well happen and be very careful with our vote and preference flow. We also need to be mindful of advising our friends and family that love animals that part of the AJP platform is to remove pets from "human ownership" . People with these views wont just stop at banning hunting , they move to fishing, then farming , then pets and they will use every bit of political leverage they can get. Choose carefully everyone.

Nice work young fella-one of my haunts from my youth!! Lots of fun when the bonnies and frigates are on

ive seen bullies up behind the boat shed at Bobbin on a few occasions-as shallow as 1 m of water. I wouldnt get too worrried about sharks-its a great kayak fishing areas-i grew up fishing it over 40 years ago. But as an interesting side story a few years back i was fishing the Noosa River in Qld behind the Sheraton while on a weeks holiday. Every morning before dawn there was a very hot trevally and queenfish bite that went until about 630 in the morning . I hooked over 30 fish over 4 mornings fishing and landed 2-the rest got sharked , best one was a good trevor that got chased round the front of my kayak by a bullie that was about 2 feet across the shoulders, he banged into my yak and i could of given him a pat on the way through-the trevor met a grisly end -and i had a lot of adrenaline going those mornings-lost about 10 lures too. Funny thing was also watching the early morning dog walkers letting their dogs swim about 50 meters from all the action-oblivious.

Bob, plenty of yakkas at the fridge last week, nice bite size ones too-filled the tank in 15 minutes.

Couple of quick reports-got out on Wednesday chasing kings-plenty of rats around , got a dozen or so up at LR-unfortunately all small , livies,softies,lures all working -fish actually a pain on the livies killed them rather than swallowing properly. Discovered i had a fuel contamination issue which i kind of resolved before yesterday. Was a bit cautious yesterday because of the fuel issue but chucked the marlin gear in and pushed out into the slop-didnt make it as wide as i would of liked but dragged plastic and burned dinosaur bone for a few hours in about 100m of water, marked one fish ,couldnt get it to come up, plenty of bait and dolphins, nice blue water between 22-23, bait was mainly small pilchards other than the one sounder mark only saw dolphins. On the way back in got a couple more rats and saw a nice hammerhead just off North Head.

Ahh-here we go-whilst i kind of agree with the idea that using balloons is a bad idea-frankly -as usual fishos are being targetted because we are an easy shot for the loonie greens-i have been 10 miles out to sea on New Years day and seen THOUSANDS of balloons, not to mention all the other days when ive seen shiny helium balloons from weddings,birthdays etc etc-miles out to sea-how often do a see a fishing related balloon-very occasionally-usual response from Govt-lets make another unenforcable regulation

Offset circles are actually not allowed in gamefishing comps because they gut hook just as much as old fashioned j hooks, not sure if that translates to bread and butter fishing but probably does.

Caught this guy on an Atomic prong a few years ago at Thompsons Creek-trout were in frustrated spawn mode , jiggled it in his face until he couldnt take it anymore-also caught a cracking brown on a Berkley Crawfish Powerbait sightcasting at Jindy-still rate that fish as one of my best (sight ,cast and bite)-i certainly think softies have their place with trout

Dont use heavy gauge jigheads designed for snapper/offshore fish etc-they just wont penetrate , there are a lot of hooks out there with ski jump barbs , file them off they make no difference at all when trying to stay connected to a fish , they just make a decent initial hookup harder to achieve.

Tailor/Salmon-anywhere with a wash, pelagics-the ledges ive caught them at include CAtherine Hill Bay, Snapper Point (killed more people that any ledge in the state), Wybung, Terrigal Haven (good safe spot to start Feb/March ), The Skillion, Winnie, The Coalseam, Copacobana-find a mentor , some cleats and good luck

hop onto the Articles section-i put a summary of my 30 years experience of chucking metal into 4 short articles-have a read

Im pretty ambidextrous (shoot,play pool,kick left side) , can play tennis pretty well with both hands (cant serve for my life left handed)-a fair bit has to do with eye dominance. Anyway the only reel i actually like using with left hand wind is a little Curado100 which i use on the rare occasions i bass fish. I can fish fine with either set up as long as only slow retrieves are needed-for high speed spin i cant wind fast enough -so by default i mainly use right hand wind-i overcome the whole "feel thing" and not having to swap hands during the cast by ccasting left handed when needed. As for sport-i would of quite cheerfully had most left handed batsman strangled at birth!!!

Washers are most likely compressed , either phone Penn and get a complete set sent to you-or even better replace the fibre washers with some carbontex, other issue might be that the metal washers are warped (then you need the replacment set)-mind you if there is evidence of the reel being dunked then a total clean out might be a good idea

Just use whatever gear you've already got-its just a different bait. The gear i use depends on the target species-not the bait.

MHL bouy is out all the time-the Syd close FAD is not. The MHL is usually in about 100m of water off Dee Why-big white thing with an antenna on top try around here; 33 46 26 151 24 42-it does move around a bit

Still curious to know who you rig banana's Bob-nice work!!

Stradics have always been excellent value for money , ive got a Ci4 3000 that gets abused as a bait and squid reel (as well as spinning for small pelagics, flatties etc etc) that i hooked a small black marlin on while jigging for bait a few years ago. Fight went over the 30 minute mark and the reel was fine-i was however going very hard on the drag and the washers cooked off-but thats an easy fix

Dont change your boat-change your thinking-kids up until about 10 years of age dont want to do all day trips and usually dont want to go to sea. Cabins etc on small boats just eat up usable space-get them to wear rashies, good hats (not useless caps), lots of sunscreen and stick an umbrella in a rod holder for shade, i notice you live in Brooklyn so go for runs up to Berowra, the various creeks off Cowan-run the boat up on a beach and let them run around every couple of hours. Set crab pots (kids love it), fish for lots of small fish rather than a few big fish-even just berley up a bunch of yakkas and micro bream and have fun-when your kids are small reserve the serious trips for "adult time". My kids have only ever fished from the center consoles ive owned and we always had a ball.

Dont disagree Noel-i think this is covered in "The Origin of Species" by Charles Darwin

everyone who advocates banning rockfishing, compulsory lifejackets , locking up certain spots needs to be very careful of the laws of unintended consequences-ive covered this many times before but the number of rockfishing drownings is pretty small beer compared to other drownings and certainly compared to accidental deaths in general. There are a lot of folk in councils, NPWS, SUrf Lifesaving , rich waterfront property owners who would happily see fishing removed from all sorts of places-i still go back to my rules of rockfishing safety everytime-if you cant swim-DONT, if you dont understand the weather_DONT, if you dont understand safe footwear-DONT, if you are that uncoordinated that you trip over your own feet-DONT, and trust me on this-most "Aussies" cant swim well enough to save themselves in a high energy environment so dont blame certain parts of the community, education is the key-Lockouts are against every tenant of a free society.