tomcat8819

Hey guys heading to Oberon dam this weekend my missus is shooting a wedding nearby so I’m getting in for a flick. Just wondering if it’s worth bringing the kayak or if I’ll be able to just walk the bank and still be in with a chance for Redfin off the bank with hopefully a brown or rainbow making an appearance? Would love some local insight or if any locals feel like having a flick with me? Will provide a few beers at the pub afterwards for your troubles haha cheers guys

Had never caught/eaten bonito and had heard mixed reports. After filleting them it was obvious they would go alright. It's flesh was very pinkish white and ended up tasting amazing sashimi dipped in a Thai style fish sauce.

First time I've had it but can confirm it is delicious! Grilled half in nice sized fillets on bbq after marinating them and beer battered the other half. They are boneless apart from their spinal column so you get a large amount of flesh of them. First gummy I've seen landed. Although I think they are fairly prominent along the east coast, especially the southern parts

Nice feed there

Went out with two mates to do some bottom bouncing. ran into some big bait Balls busting up on way out to check out the inner reefs. I only had a big overhead combo and my little trout set up (gen back 5'6 1-2kg spotted wiggled + gen black 2000 4pd mainline) so threw on a little 10gm slug and casted it out into the boil and immediately began to be smoked. I surprisingly turned its head after a massive deep run and got some line back before being smoked again haha this went on for a while before slowly managing to wear it out, about ten minutes later had a fat 49 cm Mac tuna boat side. The boys pulled in a nice bonito each which both put up a good fight on slightly heavier spinning gear and I got a legal tailor and dropped a big yakka next to the boat. We Followed the bustups around for awhile longer but they started getting spooky and more timid so we went to find a good spot to bottom bash. Not much action for half hour before my mates rod buckles over and strips line. Good fight and plenty of head shakes later he pulls up a 98cm gummy. fun morning sesh with plenty of meat for a bbq and some decent bait (Mac tuna) that will hopefully be converted into a some flathead/jew

looked pretty gloomy but we were out for about 4 hours before it started raining. tis the season for the flatties

myself and a mate got into patonga friday evening after sunset and set up camp ready to be up early for a kayak session. after way too many beers we slept in a bit but still managed to be up, fully rigged up out on the water by about 6:30am. My mate loves using live nippers as bait but i had convinced him to have a lure only session (as much as i love using nippers also haha) as we had both gotten some new topwater lures and were keen to see if we could tempt some whiting on them (id never caught a single fish on topwater) so sleeping in and missing the bottom part of the low tide wasnt a big deal since we didnt need to pump yabbies. the first sand flat was nearly completely underwater when we got there and we started drifting along the deeper channels flicking plastics for flatties amongst the weed beds. after a few drifts and no takers the sand bar was completely submerged and i thought i should put a few casts with my sugapen across the top of it. first cast and im ripping it back towards me and wham im on, wasnt the biggest whiting but was so much fun on my light set up (1-2 kg gen black and 2000 gen black 4lb braid). i thought here we go, gonna get right into some thick whiting action but after several more drifts past the sandbar/flats couldnt tempt another one so we kept heading upstream. we pulled up at a heap of oyster leases and i tried for ages on all of them to pull up some bream on my light rod with a small ecogear live prawn and to snag a flatty on my 2 - 5kg rod flicking 5 inch curly tails on 1/8 jig heads but couldnt find any. my mate looked like he was in no mans land but ended up pulling two flathead out of some sandy/weedy patches one undersized one keeper. paddling to the next likely looking spot i trolled a 4 inch diesel minnow paddletail out the back and got onto a small flatty not 5 m from where i had started drifting! haha then the rain came pounding back and we started heading back upstream to the car. it eventually was coming down pretty hard and i was starting to get cold so i was head down and just paddling like my life depended on it when my mate yelled out, looking up i saw my rod was bent right over. picked it up and felt headshakes immediately. a minute later i had a decent legal flatty (1cm bigger than my mates) in my net...until he kicked out and landed in my yak and started going mental, using my legs i managed to keep him inside for the next minute whilst he thrashed around somehow without getting spiked. good day out on the water

yeh wouldnt eat something dying man, did you eat it or just fillet it? could be nothing but not really worth a few days shitting through the eye of a needle

dont think a jewy would let a whiting go, or fail to track down a "stunned" one after boofing it

already got the watersnake im just not using it as its overkill for estuary and how im using it atm, will throw it on once i actually crack some decent fish and want to push outside to chase pelagics in summer. figured a 9v battery clip and housing unit is 3 dollars, will take me two mins to solder it up and hook it up opposed to spending 50 bucks on a battery im not even going to use for 3 months. know what i mean? im just planning on finding some decent holes and structure in lake macquarie this weekend, wont have time to get a battery etc. will only take me a further ten mins down the track to hook up the big battery when i want to use both.

will do if i end up hooking up my watersnake but its overkill just for my sounder. as in not the power but the extra weight trade off

hey guys, have had a kayak for ages and it came with a sounder i just havent wired it up yet. A mate used to have a basic tinny set up and ran his sounder off a 9v battery pack that was in a waterproof container stored in the boat. can i simply rig up something similar for my yak as my sounder in question runs off 9 volts... he'd get a few trips per battery which would suit me fine atm, am looking to hook up a proper 12 v deep cycle battery to run a watersnake off (which i will then connect the sounder too also) in the future but im not using it enough to warrant the big battery and electric motor. plus am trying to keep the running weight down at the same time. any info would be greatly appreciated

have seen blokes on youtube using longer topwater lures but thought it was a tad longer than preferred. i still havent grabbed anything off topwater might have to put it higher up on the to do list, wouldve probs been ideal that morning was a steady 20kmh breeze from all accounts a bit of wind fires them up. good excuse to go back, great area ended up jagging a couple luderick of the esplanade waiting for hot chips to get cooked at the takeaway

little gibber has everything, caught yakkas, grouper, drummer, luderick, tailor and bream there

yeh my mate who lives up there said they are nearly in plague proportion makes sense with the no size limit just the bag limit. was being lazy and catching them on nippers gonna pull out the sugapen next time, do you think the 90mm would be too big for these little guys or they will just wolf it down still?

nice, its hard to get a pic of fish to represent how big they are

was fishing under the bridge at hawksnest on that exact day, caught a heap of whiting but threw them all back didnt even know about trumpeter whiting until later haha, ah well will keep enough for a feed next time! will have the yak tho aswell will try and upgrade a couple into big flatties

40 mins sounds a bit overkill even for a big thick flatty... great catch though especially on a metal slug!