Fishlick99

Has anyone fished up at Hawks Nest Beach recently? How's the red weed at the moment?

Great result, what bait, how deep are you fishing? Cheers

Dusk or v early mornng is the go. Try all the other smaller jettys between Hardys Bay and Wagstaffe too - The one near the boat ramp at Pretty sometimes produces as do the others. 1/2 tide rocks is also good on the right tide.

2 is better than one!

Your vote would be appreciated. Really how many of us have even hooked a nurse at Long Reef? Silly thoughtless fisheries and political ideas with no real reason or research. Have your say if you care about our fishing freedom (keeping only what's legal and will be eaten) at LR. Received this email from a friend: "The Manly Daily is conducting their "I want to be relevant and show I have a major readership" daily poll on Page 2 of today's edition. The question posed is "Should fishing be banned at Long Reef to protect grey nurse sharks?" Vote at: www.manlydaily.com.au You will find the poll just under their lead story. Thank you for taking the time. This is important and you can bet the Greenies are mustering even more support to vote Yes in this straw poll." Please pass this along to anyone you think may be appropriate

Hi Raiders, Hoping someone may have some advice for me. My Garmin 450S plotter/sounder started playing up on the water yesterday. It was working fine in sounder mode and then started to tell me the water was 5 degrees then I get a message that my transducer is not connected? I shut down a few times for the same result. Today after cleaning and drying the unit I plugged it in and its acting as though it is only a GPS unit and none of the software icons for the sounder are coming up in the menus. It seems like either a transducer failure or a software problem. I'm going to try and test the unit on my friends boat on Tuesday and try and isolate the issue - with his Garmin transducer which fits to my unit. I'm really hoping I won't be looking at replacement since I've only had this expensive thing for about a year. Does anyone have any similar experiences or sound advice they can offer?

Hi, I use those packet paternoster rigs (*****) with 2 hook droppers. They are all plastic coated wire. I put 2 in a row and then tie an 4-5 m double in the mainline above. If I fish in about 40m (Boultons Reef usually for the jackets) i drift and burley them up towards the boat. When they come up as close as 10-15 M deep I wont get bitten off the main line at all. I will occasionally loose a rig if I'm not concentrating on the drop and drop my rig past them. I always keep an eye on the sounder so I don't drop too far. Hope that helps.....

Hints? Use your sounder and find a variation in the bottom in deeper water over 20m, or bait schools. You'll find likely looking spots around moorings...other than that keep trying till you find a spot. If all else fails fish under Gladesville bride.

Nah - the likes me to cook what I catch?! We are still going after 3 nights of crumbed fillets with about another 3 nights ahead!!!!!! I'll be sick of Jewfish by the end of this week.

Hi Raiders, just a quick post. Pulled a couple of nice school jew in middle harbour (Sydney) Saturday evening . All went to plan after taking the out for an afternoon snorkel and bait catching session. She likes to constantly catch fish so its limited what can be offered. Loves the bait fishing though. Caught a bunch of ones she says look like little torpedoes (yakka) and some that look like tiger spots (slimys). Dropped her off as she doesn't like "sitting there for hours with nothing happening" (Jewfishing!) and headed off B4 sunset to anchor over my mark. As the sun went down livvy No1 is nailed (tiger spot) and no hookup and no bait left.....30 mins later solid hook up on torpedo bait. I fish for jew with my rod in gear and about 1/8th drag set. I have a higher hook up rate on Jew this way than freespooling and allowing them to run with the bait. This one took the Baitrunner set at full bait drag setting and was pretty easy to land....being about 4kg schoolie thats not hard on 10kg. While trying to grab the first jew from the net and prep him from the fish box the other rod went off. This fish fought harder than the first although was a bit smaller.......nothing beats having 2 jew in the bottom of the boat. I stayed for another 4 hours and had another couple of takes.......and a few sharks just taking the livy, hook up and then nothing there. Wind in and the trace is cleanly bitten off......plenty of sharks around. I did stuff one up when I mooved to 4kg gear and when the livy started getting really worried I picked up the rod and felt the take.......and struck too soon in my eagerness and must have pulled the bait out of the jews mouth. Should have just let it take off... ...damn! Hope to get out for another session again this coming weekend. Pics follow:

To be precise it's a male Crimson-banded Wrasse.

Headed out Sat night with hopes of snapper - and a need to catch with my visitor from another state. Spent the night catching ghs$$#%$#ing eels and zip.....am picked up 1 squid and decided to head in closer to see if we could entice some kings....well after the sun came up. Caught 1 throw back king in close off northern beaches spot on the new 1500 Daiwa...fun on light gear. Also picked up and cut off big wobbygong promtly followed by another which looked like the other one? As we are giving up and leaving after staying on the water all night passed over what looked like a big bait school and then saw bait leaping out the water..so circled back and dropped in another squid strip. Sure enough the bait is taken and a few very nice bream are taken. The action really starts then when the bream bait is nailed by a king on the drop. Mayhem as I have 2 rods out which both go off...and one king hooked in each hand....I pass 1 rod to my mate and land the other king while the one he has swims in tight circles around his other line.....he's squealing like a stuck pig and when we landed that one it picked up another line hanging over the side!!! Lots of fun and swearing and carry on at the bow end. He then tips over his tackle box spilling the contents everywhere!!!!! Both these fish were just under so went back. While old salty is tidying up his mess I'm back in the water and onto yet another king...he's getting upset now....We both ended up with a bunch of kings each (8 caught in total with 3 keepers to 93cm) 5 bream 2 trevally. Caught some of the bream and the trevally on 3" Gulp minnows on tiny jig heads casting towards the wash. Heaps of fun all round and thank fully made up for spending the whole night out. We are getting a bit old for all nights these days....some pics follow.

After a nil result on Saturday except for a few trevally on the bait ground at West Head took the day off today (cough cough) and planned to fish the mid-day high tide. Couldn't catch a live bait and didn't see a spec of them on the sounder at West Head either. Lucky had managed a decent squid back in Pittwater on the way. Fished well known spot on the top of the tide and after 20 minutes past 12 nailed a 95cm Jew - bout 8kg or so. Very happy with that. Used the squids head as I wanted to make the bait last longer. Tried back up in Pittwater with squid strip on the downrigger for nil on the way back. Beats working! Sorry no pics.

Dont forget new kingfish size limit has changed from 60 to 65cm!

Hi Raiders, Looks like it was a bit slow all round today. I headed out to west reef to catch the high tide tonight. Burlyed like crazy, slow south current, perfect conditions - but where were the snapper? Took home 2 fish, 1 trevally and one snapper 46cm. No pics - couldnt be bothered for that.... Looks like great weather to have another look tomorrow. I might have a look in closer off Avalon instead. Also - quick mention, I had a look at the boat ramp at Narrabeen/Collaroy this-morning. No reds coming in but saw one good catch of pretty big trevally, around the 3kg mark and about 8 caught. Fishlick99

Salmon are not bad eating I rekkon. I have eaten them skinned and filleted and cook them on the BBQ and just let that extra oiliness they seem to have drip through onto the coals. Extra nice sevred over chopped tomato, galic, basil, corriander and a big squeeze of lemon with plenty of rock salt and pepper.. Salmon are also the king for making fishcakes.

Hi Raiders, I am new to Fishraider and have been enjoying reading reports for the last few months. It time to start to put in some of my own now. to me. Sorry no pics taken this time. Had been hearing about plently of decent pan snapper at Long Reef so decided must get out there. 5am at the ramp in the cold and dark. I really don't like Long Reef ramp on a good day since having my boat swamped there last December. With a 1ft surge on the ramp launching my (soon to be retired) Bermuda 390 is hairy business. Dropped it in with my mate on board to start the motor and get out of the shore line ASAP. No mishaps and we are heading offshore in pretty good conditions. When I fish at Long Reef I will usually start in close out the front in about 13m and drop the anchor and burley like crazy. I couldn't see anything on the sounder out front so went a little way off the Long Reef wall where it drops from 13m to 19m where I had a good reading on the sounder. 1st fish was a nice 2kg tailor on a floated unweighted pilly followed by the first snapper of the morning. Cutting all my old pillys and stuff for the burley at home the day before payed dividends. Off the same spot we caught over 20 good solid trevally (1.5kg ea), 5 snapper to 2kg and the usual rubbish fish. I switched to soft plastics from bait (squid and pilly) as I was getting sick of trying to avoid the sweep on the way down. 5" gulps in nuculear chicken and a pink/white worked well. I caught one nice snapper and a heap of the trevally on the plastics. Fished on the anchor till near tide change on the low at 10am when it started to get really quiet. Had to cut my anchor off when trying to retrive it. Normally it pulls out as I use an anchor retriever ball but the chain must have wrapped up a bit. I prefer to ditch an anchor than pull my bow under....maybee next time I will use less chain with my reef pick? Tried a drift fish after the anchor loss for zip except wrasse.......Had some fun getting the boat back out the water at the ramp (again). I have watched most of the local guys down there just belt their boats up the shoreline and cut the motor as they hit the bank. I have allways thought this method would damage the transom. They then dry winch the boat onto the trailer. My attempt yesterday at beaching my boat was a bit crappy and I didn't make it to dry ground. As a result when geting the trailer we took a bit of slop over the stern. We had the bilge on an wrestled the boat behind the trailer and reefed her out then dry winched onto the trailer. I am curious about why I keep going back to that ramp? Maybee its the promise of big reds somewhere out there? Hope to have many more postings in the future however will have to wait till I finish my new hull fitout over the next few weekends. I am mooving to a Stacer 429 and am scrapping everything off the old hull which I'll sell cheap somewhere. Tight lines, Fishlick99