FishStickSteve

I'm transitioning over to using lures. had my first bit tailor and a group of 50cm squid and now I am... hooked. My misses is still a fan of prawns and pilchards and always catches us dinner.

I've used presalted pilchards a month ago becasue they didn't have the regular ones. I didnt catch a bloody thing in a place I normally leave with sore arms and a full esky. So I won't rush out and buy more.

Closest to woolies, Red spots I go with prawns and is land based. but if I can bring a kayak I'll take a soft plastic and flick around the blue circles for some flatheads. I love Narrabeen, in summer it is not rare for my misses to catch 3 to 5 45+cm flatheads using whole hawkesbury prawns.

Hi Mate, I fish Narrabeen lake heaps. I'm going there next weekend with my misses. A good all year round bait I like to use is hawkesbury prawns. You won't have much luck catching flatheads unless you land your bait really close to them. If you are going for a bit of fun, you can't go wrong around the eastern side near to the parking lot, you will catch heaps of small bream and have a fun time. but if you are looking for a feed. you will want to get a bit closer to the bridge. Try casting as close as you can to the piers as you can. Bream like solid structure. Lure fishing is generally prefered but a well placed hawkesbury prawn won't be unnoticed. I generally use a whole H Prawn and slide it along the hook (Deshelled of course).

Haha, Wasn't too hard to unhook, but it was so damn funny watching it roll off the rock, almost pissed myself laughing.

Oh yeah. I am well aware. I used the longest hook remover I had and resisted the temptation to kick it around like a football.

Today started off as any other day. A mate, my misses and I decided to go to a fishing spot that not many people go to. (It is technically private property, but the owners are cool if we drop off a fish or two.) I had bought a cheapo fishing rod from kmart the night before and thought it would be a great idea to see how it goes. We got to our spot and dropped our lines into the water. My misses as per usual was reeling in fish left right and center while my mate and I exchanged top shelf banter while pulling in snapper the length of a whole avocado... Half an hour into the session I experienced something I very rarely feel. A good solid bite and a bending rod. I fought this sucker for at least a solid 30 seconds, 30 seconds to at least a minute. When It came out from beneath the rock I saw it's head, thinking it was some sort of weird deformed flathead I squealed with excitement, but that feeling was very quickly replaced by sheer terror as it's head broke the surface of the water and I heard an unholy gasp of air. As I pulled it out the water I saw it starting to inflate itself. My mate said that it was the biggest puffer he had seen, so i grabbed my phone and took a photo to post it here. I reckon it has to be at least 35 to maybe at a stretch 40cm. I caught it on basic banana prawn from woolies. Once I unhooked it, it was around the size of a football. I used the butt end of my rod to push it back into the water. It rolled down and bounced off a small rock and plopped back into the water. I almost wet myself laughing at the sound of it rolling along. I don't think it is near to a record on the forums, but it is by far the biggest puffer I have ever seen. The rest of the day saw me catching plenty more snapper, wrasse, a few blackfish, a rock cod and a few flatheads. It was a really good day.

Haha. Already sussing out some surf rods.

I love it. Its not too far from me and I've always had fun. Well, besides 1 trip last year, but I don't speak of that trip.

My budget is flexible in the sense that I can happily drop $800+ on a rod and reel if its worth spending the cash on. But I don't want to spend $800 if a $400 rod will be just as good. If that makes any sense. And as for target fish, I am pretty much after anything besides sharks. I'm happy for the sharks to stay just where they are.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I bring you good news! My Shiny new rod and reel had a brilliant run this last weekend. It was Saturday 17th of March, and after a long morning looking at apartments and becoming more stressed out. My wonderful misses suggested we go to Narrabeen for a quick fishing session before we headed over to the relatives for dinner. I grabbed my lures and my misses swung past our bait shop for some hawkesbury prawns. It was around 32 degrees but there was no wind. It was uncomfortably hot but the fishing was worth it. We got to our usual spot and as we approached our spot I noticed there was a lot of surface activity as there was fish going mad for prawns, So I threw on a small 04 Suicide hook and a little piece of prawn the size of my thumb nail (no sinker) I threw some prawn heads in near a fallen over tree and saw bream absolutely smashing the prawn heads. I flicked my bait in right besides the free and as the bait hit the water I hooked a 30cm bream. I squealed with excitement as my rod bent and reel screamed. I reeled it in and released. I was having so much fun that I did not notice that 2 hours had gone by, In that time my lovely misses caught a good little 40cm flathead and I lost count after my 10th Bream, I was pulling anything between 15cm up to my PB of 38cm (It seemed to be a fan of weight watchers). All Bream were released as my misses already saw to us having dinner for Sunday night. My new shiny rod and reel is awesome! I will include a picture of it once I get home. Peace and Tight Lines FSS

Cheers mate, As far as my target fish, I don't know, haha, I was going to throw a pilchard onto the hook and see what I reeled in. If I can avoid it I wont be targeting sharks, Had a run in with one when I was still in South Africa. So I am very happy for them to stay in the ocean. I'll look up that rod and reel. Cheers Mate.

Raiders! I require your wise counsel. I'm wanting to break into the beach fishing scene, but being poor I require a good bang for the buck rod, but I have no clue where to begin. For instance if I wanted to go off roading I wouldn't go buy a gold plated jeep cherokee when a cheaper toyota hilux would be far cheaper and just as good, if not better. So I have 2 questions, What would I need to spend for a solid rod AND reel for beach fishing in NSW (Around Sydney area) and which combo would you buy if you had a strict budget set out by your better half. Peace and Tight Lines FSS.

It's not a heaps fancy set up. More budget orientated but I love it. Now that I've had a good trip with it I'll type up a little report about my recent trip.

Just inland of the Pitwater road bridge. Walked along the shore and found some good large tree branches and fished around there. Found a spot and went nuts.

CHeers mate, Today was my day with my shiny new set. Pulling out a 25 - 35cm bream every second cast became a bit of a hassle. Spent more time unhooking fish than I did fishing.

Today was the day my new outfit got a solid workout. Went back to narrabeen and chased some bream about. Every second cast was bringing up a 25 to 35 cm bream. I stopped counting once i got to 10. I spent more time unhooking than i was fishing.

Cheers mate, We went to narrabeen again today. Saw some prawns jumping along the surface being chased by really big bream, A few tactical placements of my lure saw to me bringing nothing by 25 to 30cm and even a cheeky pb 38cm.All Bream went back to the water so I can catch them later. my new shiney rod got a workout today. hearing line screaming brought in some girlish squeals of excitement.

Hahaha. Oh she gives me unsolicited tips every 10 minutes. But hey, I fish for the fun, and bring her along to make sure we have dinner, which is perfectly fine with me.

Cheers Mate. As a rule I only take flatties between 40 to 50cm as I want the girls to go out and make sure that my kid's kids will have the same enjoyment as me. But I've had a big 80cm girl swallow a lure which ripper her up inside and when she came to the surface she was followed by a trail of blood. With a tear and a bottle of beer i took her home and she fed my misses and myself. (My misses' had a left over fillet which mysteriously disappeared ) Took the new outfit for a flick today. I was having a blast pulling out 25+ cm bream with every second cast. I stopped counting at 10 solid bream. in a 45 minuter span.

Just saw your post. Going to swing past Narrabeen tomorrow arvo.

On the 23rd of Feb my misses surprised me with a brand new rod and reel for my birthday. Nothing mind blowing but its the first decent little rod I've ever owned and I love it. Little 2-4kg lightweight outfit with 10 pound braided line and carbon fluoro leader. So the plan was to wake up nice and early on Saturday the 24th of Feb to head down to barrenjoey to hire a boat. But unfortunately I really should have called a few days before to book a boat, But now I know for next time. No worries I though, I know about the rocks down by the light house has had a lot of praise from members on this forum, we can spend the day fishing there. My Misses, Best mate, Sister, her partner and I all grabbed our rods, our bait and walked along the beach to the rocks. We became mountain goats and hopped along the rocks and found an amazing semi sheltered spot, huge amounts of small fry swimming along the rocks which looked very promising. We soaked our lines for an hour with not as much as a nibble. Feeling guilty for potentially wasting everyone's time I figured that we could go to Narrabeen Lake and try our luck there. At the very least it would be a pleasant spot to relax and chill if the lines remained quiet. We unpacked our rods, popped on our chosen baits and lures and we began to fish, within 10 minutes my misses says that she has a bite, but she didn't think its very big at all, so I continued flicking my lure out with my brand new shiny rod and next minute I hear what I thought was a kid jumping into the water. I hear a very excited squeal and look over and see her carrying over a +/-50cm Flathead. We carry the fish over between the esky and the tackle box so I wouldn't scar any near by kids. As I am grabbing the knife an older gentleman comes paddling over and from the safety of his kayak he tells me that its quiet a nice little lizard. To which i replied, "yeah, it's a pretty good size". He then told me that it also looked like a female with eggs and that I should throw it back in. I held it up and said that it didn't look like it had eggs at all. He muttered something under his breath as he paddled away and that was that. We continued fishing and the bites kept coming in thick and fast. Not for me and my shiny new rod unfortunately. But my misses was pulling in pretty much every fish in the lake. but we were only after Flathead for that day. A little later she shouts "Fish On Fish On!!!" and she reels in another good size Flathead, slightly smaller than the first one, but still around 40ish cm. It was getting close to 7pm and the sun started going down, and not wanting to gut fish at home I decided I was not going to catch anything that would find itself on my plate and that my time would be best spent preparing the fish for the frying pan that night. I finished gutting both fish (Neither of which had any eggs to speak of), I cleaned my knife and gloves and not a minute later my sister's partner pulls out a beautiful Flathead around the 45cm mark. He was grinning like a man holding a winning lotto ticket. I begrudgingly pulled out my knife and freshly washed out gloves to gut his fish. We got back to my place and i seared the fillets in garlic butter and fried up some chips, the 3 Flatheads was a great feed for 5 of us and I had a left over fillet for lunch the next day. We used frozen hawksbury prawns from my local fish shop and servo pillies which my mate brought along. All in all it was a really good day of fishing, Hopefully this weekend I'll be able to use my new shiny reel and rod to bring home a Flathead for the pan. Peace and tight lines. FSS

I started my set at K-Mart a year or so ago. In Total i spent about 250 bucks, but that included 2 medium sized rods for me and my misses, A basic tackle box set that included the basics, and a few extra hooks and sinkers. The rods and reels are still running just fine. But the plan is to replace broken rods and damaged reels with more quality equipment down the road.

Oh no, Wasn't a Snoek, we get those in South Africa, Excellent tasting fish. but na, the fish had a long body, super black, tiny scales. extremely slimy, very small head compared to the rest of its body. And the one i caught was about 45 to 50cm I haven't been able to find a picture of it on any of the fishing charts or google images.

Hi Raiders, Long time lurker first time poster. I've had years experience fishing for Carp and Catfish in South Africa, and after living in Sydney for 7 years I decided to get back into fishing. I've explored Narrabeen, Bobin head, a couple spots along hawksbury and Bundeena. I haven't been able to catch anything substantial, (My misses caught a nice flathead in Narrabeen that was a feed and a half) I love the hawksbury/ Bobin Head because its super close but I've noticed that Land based fishing is dry compared to boat fishing. Narrabeen is good but if it wasn't for the little bait stealers it can be pretty boring. But Bundeena, oh my, it is my favorite spot, I went with a few friends and between the 6 of us we all went home with 2 great sized parrotfish, some Cod and Leatherjackets. I got some weird fish that was super slimy, smelt extremely fishy and tasted as terrible as it smelt. The only downside to Bundeena is that its a solid 2 to 2 and a half hour trip one way. I'm looking for some information on some spots around the Hornsby area, preferably land based locations as I don't have access to a boat. I'm keen to get into beach fishing, but I still need to buy some beach fishing gear. I also need some direction to which baits and rigs i should use. I currently use raw prawns and chicken from woolies. This weekend I'm going to have a walk around West Head Beach and see what's going on there.