All Activity

Decent sized kings and jew it will be fine for...salmon flathead and bream it is way oversized....2-4 or 3-6kg rod for the last 3 fish. You can catch some of the smaller fish on bigger rods but will likely miss most of them. Opt for two setups. Nothing wrong with the rod or reel....sized for larger fish though. The thready below is a 1 metre thready caught on a 2-4kg rod with a 1000 stradic and 8lb braid - 14lb leader....caught 2 that afternoon on that setup, lost none. Pine River 3 years ago. Even small gear can comfortably land large fish if you don't get excited.

Australian Salmon, Kings, Jews, Flats, Bream.

Mate. Have a look at the Penn Prevail 2 range. Great rods for the rocks. I have a 10ft rod. Penn slammer 4500hs. Top reel. I use both off the rocks. Good luck.

heaps of tailor, found 85mm stickbaits worked well for longies and removed mack tuna as bicatch as a whole, still got a few. Purple, blue seems to be the colours that worked didnt really try any other.

what would your likely target species be? It is a lot or rod and reel.

Just looking to get some opinions on a custom combo as the title says: Shimano Vanford 5000 Compact XG + SAMAKI ZING XTREME V2 SPINNING ROD 15 - 30LB. Would this be a good combo or would a lighter rod like a 12-25lbs be more suitable? I mainly fish land based off piers and rocks etc, with the occasional boating.

Cheeky bugger!! Yes sounds like there’s plenty of both in the bay ATM. Yes planning on taking the boys. Going to have to buy some spear fishing gear .

A bit embarrassing that your old mate’s last battle was with a grinner, but sad nonetheless. Sounds like you have plenty of fallback options.

this time of the year the bait is 1/2 grown whitebait about 35 to 40mm long....lots of 18cm gar about....hoards of hardiheads.

My rod was the first prototype GatorTail graphite weave/fibreglass weave blend rod Snyder made...remarkably good rods for their time....long way surpassed now. The advantage is the rod had the all out toughness of glass, the sensitivity of glass and 1/2 the weight of glass....with about double the bottom end power in the rod. I used it for decades busting GT's and macks off the rocks, making tuna submit in the bay, a lot of snapper were tamed and a few barra were mastered with the rod.....originally built overhead...ten years ago it started sporting stradics as fishing techniques changed. I am pretty sure that Snyders GT's were dropped from production when Wilsons Live Fibre hit the market.....always thought there was a connection there. Snyder continued either full glass or full carbon after that. I still have maybe 8 snyders in the shed.

Should be a great trip, Kelvin. Taking the boys? I have seen a few YT videos of the barge they use. Great idea. When you said the island is closed for pest eradication I immediately thought they might be getting rid of grinners, in which case they could have waited for you to take care of that for them. I can’t talk, though. All my recent fishing trips have been dominated by grinners and sharks! Enjoy the planning!

Haven't worked any details out yet - first job is for one of us to call the ferry company and get an idea of cost and ferry timetable so we can work out how long we should stay. I'd guess 7-10 days to make it worthwhile, both from a cost (I don't think the ferry will be 'cheap') and effort perspective. That will also determine our plan as far as keeping things cold/frozen - I think it will be a combination of eskies, probably with dry ice (none of us have used it before) and 12v fridges, batteries and solar. They load the boats and trailers onto the ferry using a forklift - looks like they can fit about 5 boats from the videos I've seen, possibly more. Then when you arrive they lower the ramp, secure the towball of the trailer to some sort of hook point and you launch your boat from the ramp (ie. off the trailer). The've got large storage 'boxes' (from the videos, I'd guess maybe 2m high, 2-3m long and 1m deep, something like that) that you can load other gear into for travel on the ferry, plus you can have some stuff in your boat. On top of that they have drums of fuel and water and I think can provide ice - there seems to be large 'fridge trolleys' that you can use on the island to pull them up above the shoreline. Lots of logistics to work out - I think once we do one we'll do it a few times. One of my brothers noticed the island is closed this June for a while (til Sep from memory) for pest eradication - seems there's alot of mice on the island so hopefully they get rid of plenty ..... .

Let us know how you get on.

thanks for the help, i ordered some smaller metals so hopefully that works

Top story. You can't beat Snyder rods.

Looks amazing. A great adventure. How do they get your boat on and off the ferry or do they just tow it under a bridle? Be an awesome 4 or 5 days I bet - but how the heck do you camp with eskies and ice these days - I am so stuck on 12v and a fridge its not funny.

I’m intrigued…..what is the blank and why so different? I have an Edge 704 spin for soft plastics which is pretty nice but also use a much softer tipped Shimano Tcurve Premium 732 which I also don’t mind.

Aaaannnndddd my brothers and I have decided to look into going next June/July or Sept/Oct holidays . 30 years later I'm hopefully going to get there .

Top 7 after this round -

Thanks Mate, I have bought a few rods from Chris over the years. My current snapper plastics rod blank he brought in for me from the states....I might get another blank the same for when i break this one... helluva nice plastics rod even though it is entirely unconventional here to use this type of rod.

Chris Britton is getting some Snyder blanks still I believe….he is on the web and down at Redland Bay. Nice bloke too, did a Swains trip with him. But if you want something more current its hard to go past the Wilson Venom’s for a composite blank.

A few fish and gastro…epic trip. I think everyone is sick to death of the BOM and their very rough guesses on what the weather is. Mate and I have decided that instead of taking the kit out for say reef vs fishing lighter around the shallow areas we will just take everything - head out of the river and make a decision based on what is actually happening rather than relying on the BOM’s - 5knots, .5m forecast being 15knots and 1.5m observations.

Good report @mangajack, sorry to hear about the loss of your favorite rod, at least you still got a few bites.

Fun read, but such a frustrating day. Plenty of time to reflect in the traffic. Those grinners seem to be in big numbers all around the bay lately.

It is with a heavy heart that I tell the tale of a long lasting friendship that ended on Friday. It was about 1982 I was introduced to GT270 and we became inseparable for nearly 43 years. I dressed it up with all the nicest of accompaniments over those years and it served me well with many fine encounters of being triumphant. Sadly on Friday it threw a tanty with the grinners around Mud...what a terrible way to go....topped itself about shoulder height is a most unexpected way...what a disgraceful way to go after being such a champion for so many decades. Now standing in the corner with all the other dis-used, abused and broken, like a naughty child told to stand in the corner facing the wall....not a whimper at all. Thank you Mr SnyderGlas for creating my prototype friend, he was an outstanding comrade for so very long. My initial thoughts were disbelief and a hollow sense that grows within....thoughts of finding a suitable replacement to fill the void and then the realisation that nothing else could fulfill the spot in the rack. To be honest, i don't think I could develop that amount of trust into something I could buy today...pure graphite just does not have the personality or the toughness of glass and graphite blends. Anyway, enough of the dwelling on loss and time to regale the stories from Friday....6am launch....live baits by 6.15am....Mud at 6.25am.....Bloody bastard grinners within seconds ad they didn't stop. So After several spot changes I found ourselves well east of Mud on a rubble patch i had not previously encountered in 12m of water. 1st cast was a small squire, then a few grinners....retie the leader and cast out again only to feel another grinner on the bait....ripped the bait away from it harshly and BANG...huge hit and peeled 30 odd metres from the reel then all became slack...reeled it in to find a lot of grinner teeth marks on the last 40mm of leader...dirty little shytes. Oh well....came back to the rock wall and the water was filthy so went to the tripods for a quick look..not much there but in crossing the channel i spotted a school of jew so spent the next 30 minutes trying to coax some interest out of them....I left them sleeping and quietly motored away, defeated once more. Into the river!!!! I don't know why i got excited then, the high light was the biggest flounder I have caught in 30 years, and a couple of jumbo bream in the kilo class....snapper flathead and jew we encountered were all wearing nappies.... I ended the day with a leisurely drive from Pinkenba to Petrie that took 1.45 hours in the Friday afternoon Gateway traffic....so relaxing indeed.