duck168

Wow, what a catch! Nice colour on the dolphin fish. Hope you catch more on your next trips. How do you rate Fijian BBQ in a white box?

Sit on - more space, easy to use, easy reentry if get swamped. Sit in - lighter and less exposed to elements. For me, safety first. If I get swamped I want to get back to my yak very quickly, especially in shark infested deep water. So sit on for me.

Sad to hear another piece about low lives. The way you said it makes me think it is very unreasonable for the insurance to reject your claim. Have a look at Financial Services Ombudsman website.

I finally decided to retire my battered Abu TC 1000 reel. What's better way to replace it with another Abu reel? My budget only allows me to go for may be a Cardinal, but as luck would have it, I found a Soron SX10 around my budget range. The parcel came though today, and I took a bad photo of the reel. Just imagine the reel look 1000x better in the flesh than the photo.

That's a cool yak! A Pro Angler?

That is a good whiting. Hope you have better luck for blackfish next. They actually ate or amputate fish tongue, and then they act like fish tongue. They are scary little monsters, scarier than Gremlins.

May be we could identify the cultures / religions that practice this rituals and send the info about how these fish end up, the potential environmental damage and suggest alternatives. The alternative I am thinking is, buy fingerlings and release them in co-ordination with the people who knows, like DPI - if they must have a hand in the release. Well I don't know much about fish stocking, but I guess my point is they can help with fish stocking, which is probably way more meaningful than releasing fish to certain death with potential environmental disaster.

You need an engine hoist to get that monster out of the water! WoW! Great work.

I wish to put my 2 cents on the status of the "No fishing" sign: If the road is privately owned, I don't think the private person (or any other person) has any power to order No Fishing, or power to fine his fellow citizen. If he wants people to stop fishing on his property, he can say "It is a condition of entry into this private property that you do not fish." I doubt a private person is able to fine his fellow citizen because his fellow citizen did something (admittedly within his property) that he does not like. Australia as we know it would be a chaotic place if such citizen fine is allowed. Imagine you come into my restaurant and on your way out, I fine you $5 for "eating behaviour which I find very offensive." Would you pay that fine? You probably would, but only if you could stick it into my bodily part which has no benefit of sunshine. If the road is publicly owned, the only public authority which has the power to order no fishing is probably the fishery (me think). If the water is not within protection or sanctuary zone, I doubt the fishery can find power any where to support its order for no fishing. We must stand up against this tyranny! THIS IS WAR! Sisters and Brothers, armed yourself with quills, ink and papers. We shall tear this injustice with Words and good sense. Civilisation as we know it lies in your hand.

You are so inspirational, I mean like getting up 3am to fish in bad weather and before work. The least I could do is to drop a short line. Well done on the catch by the way.

Just an update. Got a couple of gears from the local distributor. Good service by the way. Compared them with the shattered ones, they looked like better quality. I subjected them to the knock with a pliers test and they held up good. Been using the reel post surgery a handful of times and so far no drama. Then again I didn't catch any fish either. Thanks for the feedback.

Thanks for the greeting. Very much appreciated.

Thanks guys for the comments.

After reading many Slinky's articles on reel servicing and maintenance, I decided that I could do that just as well or better than him. It must be really easy - he took them apart, then put them back and even took photos of them. On Saturday night, I opened up a cheap reel I bought on the internet. It was a spinning reel called Banax Omega 50H. I undid all the bolts on side plate but I could not pull it apart from the reel body. The big round gear's bearing was stuck on the handle hole. I applied a bit of pulling force to pull the side plate apart and it did came apart. I checked the round gear and noticed that the protruding part of the gear with bearing(like the axle)had broken at the base. In other words, I broke the round gear with my bare hand. Anyway, I persisted in disassembling the reel; as all good fishermen would have done. I managed to take the whole reel apart. I held the big round gear (broken) in my hand, admiring this little bit of engineering marvel, you know with teeth and bearing and kind of greasy. I suddenly felt the urge to tap the round gear with the handle of the screw driver that I was holding, and I did. After about 3 gentle taps, the gear broke again. This time it broke at the other protruding part of the gear which also had a bearing on. I would like to know if a "normal" big round gear is usually constructed more rigid than my example. I would also like to know if gentle tap with a hard object on metal could result in breaking the metal. Thanks.

Welldone on the flatties and recatching salmon with your hat. Sound like fun filled afternoon. Did the flatties fall victim to plastic lures?