Benzeenees

good idea! why didn't I think of that?

we also bagged out on flathead both days. And on Friday the current was really moving so I wouldn't be surprised if the kingfish were on at Montague.

sorry, no pics. They don't really photograph well after they are bled. All the colour goes. And I only had my phone anyway. Very difficult in bright light.

Vacuum packing is great for fish, but sometimes the heat sealing machines fail to seal because of the fish juice getting in the seal area. At a recent agricultural show I saw a different system that uses re-usable ziplock bags. Each bag has a valve built into it and air can be removed using either a hand pump or an electric pump. I actually prefer the hand pump. There is a demo on this website. www.vacsealit.com.au I am not in any way associated with this product. I believe there are similar systems marketed by other companies including ziploc. The bags are fairly expensive but can be reused many times. On tip though. Don't use the bags for smoked fish unless you are going to reuse them with smoked fish. Its impossible to get all the smoke colour and smell out of the plastic.

Went out to the Batemans Bay FAD (17km from Mossy Point) on Friday and Saturday. The water temperature was 24C on Friday but had dropped to 22C on Saturday. Caught 5 dollies to about 70cm on Friday fishing on my own. The fish were biting aggressively on live yakkas. Took a dollie virgin out on Saturday and he got 2 just-legal fish. Saturday was very quiet and one of the other boats got a big zero! First time ever he said. Had mahi mahi for dinner on Friday - seared on the bbq. We also had one piece from a trip in early March. Frozen in a vacuum pack. Couldn't pick it from the fresh stuff! So much for frozen mahi mahi being only useful for berley!

Sorry no photos worth posting. It was dark when we got back!

Headed to Narooma again 28-30 June and 1 July, with brothers Gerry and Paul. Paul's brother in-law chose not to join us as he likes to sleep late! The bar was perfect all 4 days. Up early for the 1 hour drive on day 1. No kings but bagged out on flathead. Day 2 we collected 2 kings and more flathead. A lot of our yakkas were taken by seals. After noticing a professional boat heading out late we decided to sleep in on day 3 and fish the afternoon. Actually we were on the water by about 10am. Yakkas were hard to come by so we used squid heads and strips of sales bonito and ended up with 5 kingfish to about 82 cm. Plus a few flathead, a couple of small snapper and a longfin perch. This was a new species for us. We motored back to Narooma at dusk and cleaned our fish by the light of a torch. Day 4 was a duplicate of day 3. Yakkas even more scarce, but we had a couple of packets of cuttlefish tentacles. These proved to be dynamite! We ended up with 3 flathead, 3 snapper, a longtime perch and 7 kings to 84cm. Plus a small bonito while trolling out to the island. This time we had head torches to help with fish cleaning and a change of clothes so we could get dinner at a nearby club without panicking the locals. In 2014 the brothers were successful with snapper to 13kg at Whyalla but reckon that kings are a much more exciting proposition.

Well done - certainly a lot bigger than the ones we caught at Montague. How will you cook them?

Tried once recently in beer batter along with some kingfish. Both were great.

My pump sits inside the boat with the inlet thru the back of the transom. The inlet is well under the water even when on the plane. Even though my pumps are only lasting a year or so, they're probably running for 300 - 600 hours before playing up.

The candles are the long tentacles they use to grab their prey. Similar to, but bigger than, the ones on squid. They feel very tender and are probably great to eat. But fish think so too. So they are bait. Ink. You haven't seen ink until you've seen what a giant cuttlefish produces. The first time I caught one and cut it up I released the ink all over the cleaning table. It took heaps and heaps of water and time to clean up the mess! And if you do catch one, make sure you have a sharp knife. The skin on these things is slippery and tough.

We cut off the tentacles and candles for bait and the flesh around the mantle for cooking. From experience the mantle flesh doesn't seem to go that well as bait - maybe it has to be rotten before fish like it. Last year I cut some of the mantle flesh very thin - like the wall of a squid tube - and cooked it with some squid as salt and pepper calamari. Delicious - you couldn't pick the cuttlefish from the squid. Just coated in plain flour with lots of salt and black pepper added. Then into hot canola oil for about 1 minute.

One of the brothers has a photo of the bonito head! But the photos of the kings had a big blob of water in the middle of the pictures. I'll see what I can do.

I'll take the 90 degree bend off. But the pumps do work very well for about 1 - 2 years, so I don't think I have a leak or a problem with the pickup coming out of the water. Towards the end, each pump motor keeps running and like Welst, if I turn it off, then on, it works for a while. But as I'm pretty deaf, I end up with a tank of dead "livies" (or are they deadies?).

The one lying down is the cuttlefish! My hand is just on 15cm long where you see the glove. So the mantle is probably over 50 cm. Total length, excluding the testicles , would be over a metre.

I don't pump anything unusual - I'm usually out in 30-50m of water. I do have a 90 degree bend on the end of the intake. Could that be causing the problem as the well certainly fills up even when the pump isn't on. I'll check the impellers on the old ones - still have them all!

40-45m off Broulee, just north of Broulee reef. 35-40m off Kianga. Broulee has been very consistent at that depth over the last couple of months.

My boat is about 8 years old and I've just installed my 5th Rule live bait pump. Three of the old ones still run, but they don't pump. One has a lot of wear near where the impeller sits in the body of the pump. The others look perfect. If I turn them off, then on, they pump for a few minutes before ceasing to pump. You can then hear the motor running, but there's no water coming thru. All behaved the same way at the end, so I've just assumed they have a limited life. I run them pretty much constantly as I nearly always have live bait on board. My outboard does over 100 hrs per year, so the pumps are probably doing at least twice that. Is it normal to have to replace the pump regularly?

We had heard that the kings were finally on at Montague. So the brothers and I headed down to Narooma from near Batemans Bay. The word was that the fish came on the bite at the tide change and in the afternoon. And it was low tide around 12 o'clock - perfect. We were able to collect about 10-15 yakkas before heading to the island and arriving around 9 am in close to perfect conditions. We counted over 30 boats at the north eastern end. That got the blood flowing. We parked just off the edge of the ruck to see which way we would drift. There were lots of individual fish symbols showing on the Lowrance - not the usual solid mass of colour. Neither of the brothers had ever caught a legal king or used live bait. I helped them rig up and as soon as Paul dropped in it was "bang" - I'm on! And soon a nice 80cm king was in the net. Then we had another hit - but this time it was a big bonito. And then several more. Gerry had fought a nice bonito up to the boat and Paul was about to net it when a huge grey mass came rocketing out of the depths. Whack! A big seal hit the bonito. After a short run the seal had the bonito and Gerry had a very nice bonito head! I caught a couple of 70 cm kings before we ran out of livies and switched to some nice squid heads we had collected in Whyalla in April. Eventually Gerry ceased to be a kingfish virgin and I collected a few more 70cm kings. The final tally was 8 kingfish and about 10 bonito. That night we had beer battered kingfish and bonito. While you could tell the difference in taste and colour, both were excellent to eat with some nice home fries. The kings and bonito were at the NE end, but were out quite a way in between 85m and 100m about 1km from the island. When we left at about 3pm there were still about 20 boats looking for fish. Everyone was well behaved and there were no problems despite boats being very close together. Sadly the next day was too windy for us to go to the island, so we tried for flathead off Broulee and bagged out. And further south Gerry picked up a huge giant cuttlefish. In a large bucket, with a bit of water and lots of ink, it weighed in at 18 kg. So the cuttlefish itself must have been around 15 kg. Gerry claims its an unofficial world record! When we got up on day three the wind was blowing a gale at Montague so we slept in and played golf later in the day. When we checked the weather later we found the wind had dropped to around 12 knots around 7 am! So on day 4, despite a forecast of wind and rain we headed for Narooma. Conditions were good at the bar and soon after we had a heap of livies in the tank. But Marine Rescue advised us the wind was 20 knots at the island. Being optimists we headed out hoping the wind would drop. But about 3 km out we decided it would be too rough for a 5m side console boat. So we tried for some more flathead and bagged out once again off Kianga. The best was a monster of over 55 cm.

For boat fishing, launch at Kioloa, not Bawley. Kioloa ramp is reasonable for small - medium boats, but Bawley ramp is very rough. You will be in the Marine Park so check for sanctuary zones. There are some close to Kioloa. There is good flathead fishing in 40 - 50 m just south of Kioloa and some nice reefs a bit closer in watch out for the VERY shallow reef heading south. The water is shallow enough for waves to break at low tide with a moderate swell.

I have a Quintrex 490 topender with a 60 HP yamaha 4 stroke. So probably pretty similar to yours. Fuel tank is 90 litres. I typically use 15 - 20 litres in a days fishing. That's travelling around 40 - 50 km. I'd be cautious about going further than 10 km offshore with only 38 litres on board. In fact, I always like to have at nearly that much as a reserve! I rarely put more than 50 litres in when I fill up. I get nervous because the fuel gauge reads empty when there's still 30 litres left.

I'm heading over to Whyalla in late March for a week of snapper fishing. There will be 4 of us - myself, my two brothers and a recently retired friend. Last year the brothers went over and had a great time with lots of big fish - several over 10 kg! And they caught heaps of squid which they used for bait. This year salt and pepper squid will be on the menu if there are plenty around. I'd be interested in any Raiders experiences fishing near Whyalla. The brothers caught most of their fish off Point Lowly. We will have 2 boats - one 4.6m and one 4.9m.

The water doesn't really get cold until about the end of June, or even early July. There are usually plenty of flathead off Moruya Heads and down to the sanctuary south of Congo. Snapper start to come on in the cooler months and we have caught kingies as late as May in past years - but not last year. There are morwong all year round, but mainly in the cooler months. It gets a bit quiet in August/September but even then there are a few flathead. At that time the best option is snapper fishing or trolling for salmon off the headlands. I usually fish out of Mossy Point and head south - there's a lot of structure between Moruya Heads and Congo in between 30m and 60m. Sometimes we launch at Preddy's wharf in the Moruya River, especially if we're planning a run down to Tuross.

I've done a soft reset, but it didn't help. Next time I'm at the coast I'll try a hard reset. But I need to save my data first. I tried turning the unit on outside the garage, but now I can only get the navionics low resolution chart (or the even lower resolution lowrance chart). I'll give Lowrance a ring tomorrow. Maybe they've come across this before.