mangajack

Just finished this spin rod for a mate. 7’5 graphite blank built for a 5k Stradic loaded with 30lb braid. All Fuji components. Loving how it turned out!
This will be used to chase snapper and trout on plastics up to 1oz, as well as tuna and mackerel on slugs up to 40g. Could even cast small stickbaits at reef edges too - proper Swiss Army knife!

With the big swells on the beach & rocks 3 to 4 meters we headed for somewhere Quiter.
Arrived around sunrise, sunny & cool.
Blackfish & bream were the go.
Caught two nice blackfish straight away. Went quite. Moved to the south side of the bridge.
Waited for a while, then two bream. Puppy was happy.
Moved further up the chanel. Landed two more blackfish.
That was enough. Called it a day.
Cheers.
 

Good topic....leaves me with mixed feelings on todays fishing.
Most notable fish changes I have noticed are the following:
Bream....catching genuine 1kg bream used to be normal....fish in the high 30's were normal in the 70's and 80's....biggest one I caught was 47cm but skinny as anything post spawn. In the past two years I have caught two legit 1kg bream.
Yellowtail kingfish.....in the early 80's there were large schools of simply massive fish in Moreton Bay....1.2 to 1.5m fish. About mid 80's NSW had massive YTK fishtraps being used....almost wiped out the stocks migrating the coast....Have not seen one over 1.2m in decades.
Snapper....numbers have not changed much but average capture sizes are about 1/2 the size of the 70's is most areas I have fished. Interestingly snapper were either bait or trolled hard bodies back then and plastics didn't work well....plastics have taken over, but I have noticed a bit of decline in the past 6 years in two places that hold decent fish....bait is still catching the same amount.
Sharks....seasonal for me and I didn't target them too often but I don't see the numbers of sharks I used to in the 70's and 80's.....I remember seeing them in the hot water outlet of the power station in frightening numbers, dozens visible any time of the day or night.In the Bribie Passage we used to lose decent snapper and jew to sharks fairly regularly back in those days...I have lost fewer than 5 fish in the past decade to sharks. I know lots of guys have real problems with them these days, but I just don't have the issue enough to bother me.
Gold spot cod......they are bloody tiny these days on average. I could manage 80cm cod every run to the port in the 80's....a 50cm cod now is noteworthy.
The biggest changes though are fishermen and women.....numbers are simply massive now and lots of those are decked out with high tech sounders and GPS units....Sure most don't use them well but still quite a lot use them effectively and catch lots of fish.....and this brings forward the next point.
Fish education.....catch and release might be good for fish stocks but it does educate them about the lures or baits we use. The "in" lure to use today gets flogged in the faces of the fish so much they learn to not touch that lure. Now catch and release is essential for all undersized fish and I fish myself also selective of the size of fish I will harvest.....I will not take snapper under 50cm for example....so I am guilty of educating the fish with the lures I use too.
I recently dug out an old lure box from the 80's....I will be giving these lures a run heavily over this winter to see how they go.....will let you know.
Also of note here is the environment.....it has changed massively in a lot of places, some better and some worse. In the 80's Redcliffe tides ran south for the incoming and north for the outgoing all the way up to Scarborough reef and probably beyond....todays water movement is a slow constant southward current and no north movement at all....This occurred with building Fishermans Island at the Port. The reefs off Redcliffe are well silted these days as well.
Water quality of the Brisbane River is far better today than in the 80's up to Breakfast Creek....not much data outside of that though.   We had regular droughts back then as well....salinity levels were higher then than in the past 15 years with the constant flushes happening.....results show in the captures.
In the mid 80's there was a quite severe drought where we saw lots of fish that were normally offshore being caught inshore. Pearl Perch land based around the Tweed and on the sunshine coast headlands....spanish mackerel in Bramble Bay...cobia at Dohles Rocks....YTK at Shorncliffe pier.
 

https://www.manualslib.com/manual/2865878/Brp-Evinrude-E-Tec-115-Hp-2011.html?page=96#manual

https://www.manualslib.com/manual/2865878/Brp-Evinrude-E-Tec-115-Hp-2011.html?page=96#manual

My preference is for white or orange simply for visibility for me.
For the fish it does not matter at all.

Just went to a maritime Museum just south of Vancouver.  It is in an old cannery.  They had 25 canneries in this one area (Steveston) and this one cannery would get so many Salmon in a day (this was in the late 1800’s) so using row boats with 2 people and siene net, that the cannery would often throw thousands of dead fish back as unable to be canned in a day.  The older timers said that there were that many fish you could walk across the river ontop of the fish.  Only a 2 month operation but canned some ridiculous number like over 1million cans in that time frame.
The whole industry collapsed due to a partial blockage of the river caused a mass loss of spawning in one year.
I guess my point is that even back then the view of this unlimited resource was being learnt as not being the case.

I rate braids characteristics in the following importance:
1. is it a fused braid line? least desirable
2. is it a coated line? prefer uncoated.
3. is the line truly limp and memory free?
4. is thin for breaking strain....Siglon PEX8 and Tasline All white are my two long term favorite braids.
5. is it white or orange.
6. Does the PE rating on the box also include actual test breaking strain? If not I do not buy it.
For me the PE system for braid is crap you can get the same PE rating across multiple brands and versions and have wildly different breaking strains.
Casting diameters mean bugger all if your bait does not have enough weight or is too much weight for the rod that you are using.

Dohles was ok...Deckie dropped me off at the pontoon, I reversed down without waiting and deckie drove on and we were off the ramp in under a minute.
There were 4 boats being tied down and about 6 boats arrived at the ramp just after I pulled out....it would have been busier then.
Dohles ramp is pretty good being 3 lanes.....trailer parking is limited to about 30 trailers i guess...sorry 25 trailer parks....i just checked on google earth pro.  Best thing about it is there is a cafe that does great coffee at the ramp that opens at 5.30am every day.

Redcliffe was loaded with boats....like a regatta....hundreds of boats everywhere.....pine was the heaviest i have ever seen it too.
2 small snaps, 1 decent flounder, more than 6 tailor up to 60cm.....went into the pine for a look...found a pile of fish near the slabs with two big jew under them.....i pinned 1 jew on 8lb line.....that finished as soon as it found out it was hooked. Raef got done by something decent on the rock shelf.....boated several brassy trevally and small jew.....got about 2 litres of prawns for lunch.
All fish released....

Around 1986 I got to read a fishing journal from a elderly fellow that had recently died then. He lived at Shorncliffe and noted the fish he caught after work several days a week to feed his family from the late 1800's to about 1960ish. He seldom got days off work where he could go fishing for a day.
Snapper bream and mackerel were commonly caught...flathead were mentioned every week or so but not as common as snapper and bream. Mackerel were seasonal and he would exclusively target them when around, ignoring the usual fish. Mackerel were mainly 2 to 3 feet long.
Kingfish were a prized fish, probably because it was land based and handlined being a tough fish to land. Jewfish were known as soapies, he did not mention a large one.
Numbers of fish caught were generally about 4 to 6 fish...enough for the evening meal i guess.
Seldom did this man spend more than about an hour fishing and always land based with cat gut lines.
Baits were generally off cuts from previous captures, although he did use ox heart and liver at times.
Weed beds were thick right to the foreshore.
From memory he encountered sharks only in the summer months.
He seldom mentioned crabs....and if he did it was large numbers....potato sacks full.
Eels were commonly complained about.
Weather from what i gathered and remember reading was not unlike our weather now....droughts and floods / flushes, prolonged winds and hot or cold temps.
He noted captures declining as well.

Good topic....leaves me with mixed feelings on todays fishing.
Most notable fish changes I have noticed are the following:
Bream....catching genuine 1kg bream used to be normal....fish in the high 30's were normal in the 70's and 80's....biggest one I caught was 47cm but skinny as anything post spawn. In the past two years I have caught two legit 1kg bream.
Yellowtail kingfish.....in the early 80's there were large schools of simply massive fish in Moreton Bay....1.2 to 1.5m fish. About mid 80's NSW had massive YTK fishtraps being used....almost wiped out the stocks migrating the coast....Have not seen one over 1.2m in decades.
Snapper....numbers have not changed much but average capture sizes are about 1/2 the size of the 70's is most areas I have fished. Interestingly snapper were either bait or trolled hard bodies back then and plastics didn't work well....plastics have taken over, but I have noticed a bit of decline in the past 6 years in two places that hold decent fish....bait is still catching the same amount.
Sharks....seasonal for me and I didn't target them too often but I don't see the numbers of sharks I used to in the 70's and 80's.....I remember seeing them in the hot water outlet of the power station in frightening numbers, dozens visible any time of the day or night.In the Bribie Passage we used to lose decent snapper and jew to sharks fairly regularly back in those days...I have lost fewer than 5 fish in the past decade to sharks. I know lots of guys have real problems with them these days, but I just don't have the issue enough to bother me.
Gold spot cod......they are bloody tiny these days on average. I could manage 80cm cod every run to the port in the 80's....a 50cm cod now is noteworthy.
The biggest changes though are fishermen and women.....numbers are simply massive now and lots of those are decked out with high tech sounders and GPS units....Sure most don't use them well but still quite a lot use them effectively and catch lots of fish.....and this brings forward the next point.
Fish education.....catch and release might be good for fish stocks but it does educate them about the lures or baits we use. The "in" lure to use today gets flogged in the faces of the fish so much they learn to not touch that lure. Now catch and release is essential for all undersized fish and I fish myself also selective of the size of fish I will harvest.....I will not take snapper under 50cm for example....so I am guilty of educating the fish with the lures I use too.
I recently dug out an old lure box from the 80's....I will be giving these lures a run heavily over this winter to see how they go.....will let you know.
Also of note here is the environment.....it has changed massively in a lot of places, some better and some worse. In the 80's Redcliffe tides ran south for the incoming and north for the outgoing all the way up to Scarborough reef and probably beyond....todays water movement is a slow constant southward current and no north movement at all....This occurred with building Fishermans Island at the Port. The reefs off Redcliffe are well silted these days as well.
Water quality of the Brisbane River is far better today than in the 80's up to Breakfast Creek....not much data outside of that though.   We had regular droughts back then as well....salinity levels were higher then than in the past 15 years with the constant flushes happening.....results show in the captures.
In the mid 80's there was a quite severe drought where we saw lots of fish that were normally offshore being caught inshore. Pearl Perch land based around the Tweed and on the sunshine coast headlands....spanish mackerel in Bramble Bay...cobia at Dohles Rocks....YTK at Shorncliffe pier.
 

Saltwater estuary spin.

Around 1986 I got to read a fishing journal from a elderly fellow that had recently died then. He lived at Shorncliffe and noted the fish he caught after work several days a week to feed his family from the late 1800's to about 1960ish. He seldom got days off work where he could go fishing for a day.
Snapper bream and mackerel were commonly caught...flathead were mentioned every week or so but not as common as snapper and bream. Mackerel were seasonal and he would exclusively target them when around, ignoring the usual fish. Mackerel were mainly 2 to 3 feet long.
Kingfish were a prized fish, probably because it was land based and handlined being a tough fish to land. Jewfish were known as soapies, he did not mention a large one.
Numbers of fish caught were generally about 4 to 6 fish...enough for the evening meal i guess.
Seldom did this man spend more than about an hour fishing and always land based with cat gut lines.
Baits were generally off cuts from previous captures, although he did use ox heart and liver at times.
Weed beds were thick right to the foreshore.
From memory he encountered sharks only in the summer months.
He seldom mentioned crabs....and if he did it was large numbers....potato sacks full.
Eels were commonly complained about.
Weather from what i gathered and remember reading was not unlike our weather now....droughts and floods / flushes, prolonged winds and hot or cold temps.
He noted captures declining as well.

I rate braids characteristics in the following importance:
1. is it a fused braid line? least desirable
2. is it a coated line? prefer uncoated.
3. is the line truly limp and memory free?
4. is thin for breaking strain....Siglon PEX8 and Tasline All white are my two long term favorite braids.
5. is it white or orange.
6. Does the PE rating on the box also include actual test breaking strain? If not I do not buy it.
For me the PE system for braid is crap you can get the same PE rating across multiple brands and versions and have wildly different breaking strains.
Casting diameters mean bugger all if your bait does not have enough weight or is too much weight for the rod that you are using.

I rate braids characteristics in the following importance:
1. is it a fused braid line? least desirable
2. is it a coated line? prefer uncoated.
3. is the line truly limp and memory free?
4. is thin for breaking strain....Siglon PEX8 and Tasline All white are my two long term favorite braids.
5. is it white or orange.
6. Does the PE rating on the box also include actual test breaking strain? If not I do not buy it.
For me the PE system for braid is crap you can get the same PE rating across multiple brands and versions and have wildly different breaking strains.
Casting diameters mean bugger all if your bait does not have enough weight or is too much weight for the rod that you are using.

Around 1986 I got to read a fishing journal from a elderly fellow that had recently died then. He lived at Shorncliffe and noted the fish he caught after work several days a week to feed his family from the late 1800's to about 1960ish. He seldom got days off work where he could go fishing for a day.
Snapper bream and mackerel were commonly caught...flathead were mentioned every week or so but not as common as snapper and bream. Mackerel were seasonal and he would exclusively target them when around, ignoring the usual fish. Mackerel were mainly 2 to 3 feet long.
Kingfish were a prized fish, probably because it was land based and handlined being a tough fish to land. Jewfish were known as soapies, he did not mention a large one.
Numbers of fish caught were generally about 4 to 6 fish...enough for the evening meal i guess.
Seldom did this man spend more than about an hour fishing and always land based with cat gut lines.
Baits were generally off cuts from previous captures, although he did use ox heart and liver at times.
Weed beds were thick right to the foreshore.
From memory he encountered sharks only in the summer months.
He seldom mentioned crabs....and if he did it was large numbers....potato sacks full.
Eels were commonly complained about.
Weather from what i gathered and remember reading was not unlike our weather now....droughts and floods / flushes, prolonged winds and hot or cold temps.
He noted captures declining as well.

Good topic....leaves me with mixed feelings on todays fishing.
Most notable fish changes I have noticed are the following:
Bream....catching genuine 1kg bream used to be normal....fish in the high 30's were normal in the 70's and 80's....biggest one I caught was 47cm but skinny as anything post spawn. In the past two years I have caught two legit 1kg bream.
Yellowtail kingfish.....in the early 80's there were large schools of simply massive fish in Moreton Bay....1.2 to 1.5m fish. About mid 80's NSW had massive YTK fishtraps being used....almost wiped out the stocks migrating the coast....Have not seen one over 1.2m in decades.
Snapper....numbers have not changed much but average capture sizes are about 1/2 the size of the 70's is most areas I have fished. Interestingly snapper were either bait or trolled hard bodies back then and plastics didn't work well....plastics have taken over, but I have noticed a bit of decline in the past 6 years in two places that hold decent fish....bait is still catching the same amount.
Sharks....seasonal for me and I didn't target them too often but I don't see the numbers of sharks I used to in the 70's and 80's.....I remember seeing them in the hot water outlet of the power station in frightening numbers, dozens visible any time of the day or night.In the Bribie Passage we used to lose decent snapper and jew to sharks fairly regularly back in those days...I have lost fewer than 5 fish in the past decade to sharks. I know lots of guys have real problems with them these days, but I just don't have the issue enough to bother me.
Gold spot cod......they are bloody tiny these days on average. I could manage 80cm cod every run to the port in the 80's....a 50cm cod now is noteworthy.
The biggest changes though are fishermen and women.....numbers are simply massive now and lots of those are decked out with high tech sounders and GPS units....Sure most don't use them well but still quite a lot use them effectively and catch lots of fish.....and this brings forward the next point.
Fish education.....catch and release might be good for fish stocks but it does educate them about the lures or baits we use. The "in" lure to use today gets flogged in the faces of the fish so much they learn to not touch that lure. Now catch and release is essential for all undersized fish and I fish myself also selective of the size of fish I will harvest.....I will not take snapper under 50cm for example....so I am guilty of educating the fish with the lures I use too.
I recently dug out an old lure box from the 80's....I will be giving these lures a run heavily over this winter to see how they go.....will let you know.
Also of note here is the environment.....it has changed massively in a lot of places, some better and some worse. In the 80's Redcliffe tides ran south for the incoming and north for the outgoing all the way up to Scarborough reef and probably beyond....todays water movement is a slow constant southward current and no north movement at all....This occurred with building Fishermans Island at the Port. The reefs off Redcliffe are well silted these days as well.
Water quality of the Brisbane River is far better today than in the 80's up to Breakfast Creek....not much data outside of that though.   We had regular droughts back then as well....salinity levels were higher then than in the past 15 years with the constant flushes happening.....results show in the captures.
In the mid 80's there was a quite severe drought where we saw lots of fish that were normally offshore being caught inshore. Pearl Perch land based around the Tweed and on the sunshine coast headlands....spanish mackerel in Bramble Bay...cobia at Dohles Rocks....YTK at Shorncliffe pier.
 

My preference is for white or orange simply for visibility for me.
For the fish it does not matter at all.

Around 1986 I got to read a fishing journal from a elderly fellow that had recently died then. He lived at Shorncliffe and noted the fish he caught after work several days a week to feed his family from the late 1800's to about 1960ish. He seldom got days off work where he could go fishing for a day.
Snapper bream and mackerel were commonly caught...flathead were mentioned every week or so but not as common as snapper and bream. Mackerel were seasonal and he would exclusively target them when around, ignoring the usual fish. Mackerel were mainly 2 to 3 feet long.
Kingfish were a prized fish, probably because it was land based and handlined being a tough fish to land. Jewfish were known as soapies, he did not mention a large one.
Numbers of fish caught were generally about 4 to 6 fish...enough for the evening meal i guess.
Seldom did this man spend more than about an hour fishing and always land based with cat gut lines.
Baits were generally off cuts from previous captures, although he did use ox heart and liver at times.
Weed beds were thick right to the foreshore.
From memory he encountered sharks only in the summer months.
He seldom mentioned crabs....and if he did it was large numbers....potato sacks full.
Eels were commonly complained about.
Weather from what i gathered and remember reading was not unlike our weather now....droughts and floods / flushes, prolonged winds and hot or cold temps.
He noted captures declining as well.

Good topic....leaves me with mixed feelings on todays fishing.
Most notable fish changes I have noticed are the following:
Bream....catching genuine 1kg bream used to be normal....fish in the high 30's were normal in the 70's and 80's....biggest one I caught was 47cm but skinny as anything post spawn. In the past two years I have caught two legit 1kg bream.
Yellowtail kingfish.....in the early 80's there were large schools of simply massive fish in Moreton Bay....1.2 to 1.5m fish. About mid 80's NSW had massive YTK fishtraps being used....almost wiped out the stocks migrating the coast....Have not seen one over 1.2m in decades.
Snapper....numbers have not changed much but average capture sizes are about 1/2 the size of the 70's is most areas I have fished. Interestingly snapper were either bait or trolled hard bodies back then and plastics didn't work well....plastics have taken over, but I have noticed a bit of decline in the past 6 years in two places that hold decent fish....bait is still catching the same amount.
Sharks....seasonal for me and I didn't target them too often but I don't see the numbers of sharks I used to in the 70's and 80's.....I remember seeing them in the hot water outlet of the power station in frightening numbers, dozens visible any time of the day or night.In the Bribie Passage we used to lose decent snapper and jew to sharks fairly regularly back in those days...I have lost fewer than 5 fish in the past decade to sharks. I know lots of guys have real problems with them these days, but I just don't have the issue enough to bother me.
Gold spot cod......they are bloody tiny these days on average. I could manage 80cm cod every run to the port in the 80's....a 50cm cod now is noteworthy.
The biggest changes though are fishermen and women.....numbers are simply massive now and lots of those are decked out with high tech sounders and GPS units....Sure most don't use them well but still quite a lot use them effectively and catch lots of fish.....and this brings forward the next point.
Fish education.....catch and release might be good for fish stocks but it does educate them about the lures or baits we use. The "in" lure to use today gets flogged in the faces of the fish so much they learn to not touch that lure. Now catch and release is essential for all undersized fish and I fish myself also selective of the size of fish I will harvest.....I will not take snapper under 50cm for example....so I am guilty of educating the fish with the lures I use too.
I recently dug out an old lure box from the 80's....I will be giving these lures a run heavily over this winter to see how they go.....will let you know.
Also of note here is the environment.....it has changed massively in a lot of places, some better and some worse. In the 80's Redcliffe tides ran south for the incoming and north for the outgoing all the way up to Scarborough reef and probably beyond....todays water movement is a slow constant southward current and no north movement at all....This occurred with building Fishermans Island at the Port. The reefs off Redcliffe are well silted these days as well.
Water quality of the Brisbane River is far better today than in the 80's up to Breakfast Creek....not much data outside of that though.   We had regular droughts back then as well....salinity levels were higher then than in the past 15 years with the constant flushes happening.....results show in the captures.
In the mid 80's there was a quite severe drought where we saw lots of fish that were normally offshore being caught inshore. Pearl Perch land based around the Tweed and on the sunshine coast headlands....spanish mackerel in Bramble Bay...cobia at Dohles Rocks....YTK at Shorncliffe pier.
 

Around 1986 I got to read a fishing journal from a elderly fellow that had recently died then. He lived at Shorncliffe and noted the fish he caught after work several days a week to feed his family from the late 1800's to about 1960ish. He seldom got days off work where he could go fishing for a day.
Snapper bream and mackerel were commonly caught...flathead were mentioned every week or so but not as common as snapper and bream. Mackerel were seasonal and he would exclusively target them when around, ignoring the usual fish. Mackerel were mainly 2 to 3 feet long.
Kingfish were a prized fish, probably because it was land based and handlined being a tough fish to land. Jewfish were known as soapies, he did not mention a large one.
Numbers of fish caught were generally about 4 to 6 fish...enough for the evening meal i guess.
Seldom did this man spend more than about an hour fishing and always land based with cat gut lines.
Baits were generally off cuts from previous captures, although he did use ox heart and liver at times.
Weed beds were thick right to the foreshore.
From memory he encountered sharks only in the summer months.
He seldom mentioned crabs....and if he did it was large numbers....potato sacks full.
Eels were commonly complained about.
Weather from what i gathered and remember reading was not unlike our weather now....droughts and floods / flushes, prolonged winds and hot or cold temps.
He noted captures declining as well.

My preference in rods is outdated now....fibreglass...specifically a Snyderglass JS1029W extended about 14 inches, paired with a Abu 10,000ca reel with 30lb mono. Can deadlift 50lbs with the rod so swinging big snapper and average jew up onto the ledge is doable.
The spin setup was a Sabre Grafast blank about 9 feet and rated to 12kg....ran 10kg on a TSS4 to spin up the macks and tuna from the stones.
The rods might be super heavy compared to todays graphite rods, but they take the abuse and knocks very well and ask for more.
These days I would upgrade the reels but still use the same rods.....probably opt for braid backing, 5m of hollow braid and 20m of mono leader finger trapped in the hollow.
There is a tradeoff in the reels too.....high gearing is good for getting the speedsters on the line, but less so when you need to winch them in at times....overhead I would probably not exceed 6:1, spin 7:1.

Around 1986 I got to read a fishing journal from a elderly fellow that had recently died then. He lived at Shorncliffe and noted the fish he caught after work several days a week to feed his family from the late 1800's to about 1960ish. He seldom got days off work where he could go fishing for a day.
Snapper bream and mackerel were commonly caught...flathead were mentioned every week or so but not as common as snapper and bream. Mackerel were seasonal and he would exclusively target them when around, ignoring the usual fish. Mackerel were mainly 2 to 3 feet long.
Kingfish were a prized fish, probably because it was land based and handlined being a tough fish to land. Jewfish were known as soapies, he did not mention a large one.
Numbers of fish caught were generally about 4 to 6 fish...enough for the evening meal i guess.
Seldom did this man spend more than about an hour fishing and always land based with cat gut lines.
Baits were generally off cuts from previous captures, although he did use ox heart and liver at times.
Weed beds were thick right to the foreshore.
From memory he encountered sharks only in the summer months.
He seldom mentioned crabs....and if he did it was large numbers....potato sacks full.
Eels were commonly complained about.
Weather from what i gathered and remember reading was not unlike our weather now....droughts and floods / flushes, prolonged winds and hot or cold temps.
He noted captures declining as well.

Around 1986 I got to read a fishing journal from a elderly fellow that had recently died then. He lived at Shorncliffe and noted the fish he caught after work several days a week to feed his family from the late 1800's to about 1960ish. He seldom got days off work where he could go fishing for a day.
Snapper bream and mackerel were commonly caught...flathead were mentioned every week or so but not as common as snapper and bream. Mackerel were seasonal and he would exclusively target them when around, ignoring the usual fish. Mackerel were mainly 2 to 3 feet long.
Kingfish were a prized fish, probably because it was land based and handlined being a tough fish to land. Jewfish were known as soapies, he did not mention a large one.
Numbers of fish caught were generally about 4 to 6 fish...enough for the evening meal i guess.
Seldom did this man spend more than about an hour fishing and always land based with cat gut lines.
Baits were generally off cuts from previous captures, although he did use ox heart and liver at times.
Weed beds were thick right to the foreshore.
From memory he encountered sharks only in the summer months.
He seldom mentioned crabs....and if he did it was large numbers....potato sacks full.
Eels were commonly complained about.
Weather from what i gathered and remember reading was not unlike our weather now....droughts and floods / flushes, prolonged winds and hot or cold temps.
He noted captures declining as well.