mick2me

I pondered my response to this overnight. I think you should set a budget for yourself and then tell the mrs double that figure. When you find one for your budget you can explain that you got a good deal and saved $X which will impress her.
Now to get to the point where you're given the OK... It's a good idea to get a boat so you can entertain the kids  when they're old enough. In the meantime you will be getting invaluable experience in your area so when you do take them out it will be much safer.
In addition to that -
1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7 and 10
will apply to her benefit.

Had a crack at crabbing down the Pin area with Australia’s Greatest Deckie @Benno123. We needed an early start so we could be at the yabbie banks on the early morning low. Benno got to my place at 4am and we were on the water by 5am. The yabbies were plentiful and we soon had a day’s supply.
We set our 8 pots on the way to the trusty yabbie bank, with the plan to fish for a couple of hours, then check and move the pots if necessary. The weather was perfect, with a light breeze under overcast skies keeping us nice and cool for the morning. The lines went out just around the turn of the tide and I was the first lucky angler very soon after that, with solid hookup. After s short but fun battle on 5lb braid and 6lb leader, a healthy looking silver slabbed torpedo came up beside the boat. This got Benno very excited cos he loves catching grunter, so he grabbed the net and we had our first for the day, a nice 42cm spotted grunter. Not long after that I landed a 35cm whiting and we thought we might crack the elusive 40cm+ on this trip.
 I had a quiet period for a while after that, and Benno started to add fish to the esky. We had a lot of by-catch throughout the day. Lots of good size bream, but we only kept 3 for the esky because they were well over 30 cm and gut hooked. Strangely Benno was the only one to catch stingrays, and he caught a few. There was a lot of by-catch in the pots as well, with lots of Jennie’s and few bucks.  We shifted the pots regularly trying to find where the boys were hiding, but ended up with just 3 keeper muddies and 2 keeper sandies. On the fish front we ended up with 12 good whiting, 6 good spotted grunter, a tarwhine and the 3 bream.
So overall, a pretty rewarding day. We were stopped by Fisheries just before the ramp for a spot check, and they were quite impressed with the quality of our fish. Good to see them out and about - this was about 7pm so they are not just working 9 to 5. 
Oh, and if you are wondering why I called Benno Australia’s Greatest Deckie, I wasn’t being sarcastic. I hardly have to lift a finger when Benno comes out with me. He tows the boat for me, prepares and deploys the pots as I drive the boat, does more than his share of yabbie pumping, ties most of my knots and even baits my line and tosses it out for me if I turn my back for a few seconds. All my other deckies are wonderful too, but Benno sets a new standard.
oh, almost forgot the obligatory dead fish photo. 

Hey mate, do you have specific weedy or rocky patches in mind? Not the beach surf obviously? 
In which case you won't need 9 foot, good egi rods are around 7 foot with a fast action butt and mid section, with a soft tip. You'll lose too much feel and jig action on a 9 foot.
Although not egi specific, I find most 2-4kg  ~7' rods I've used to be good for the job. Soft tip absorption so you dont rip the jig through their candles, but enough butt strength to easily control them in. 
2500 reel with 10lb would be ideal. Remember to run an ultra light drag.
Cheers,
Sam

drift to find them.
anchor if you hit a honey hole or your drift is too fast.

Definitely best during winter Brian but are around all year.
I'm no expert but have a few spots that go on fire at certain times. The seagrass beds from Dunwich heading south seem to always hold each time I've tried but I've only done it a handful of times tbh.

Cheers mate, lucky enough the wind had dropped but the swell was still there. That is my camp light on the tripod, lights up a good area 😁 dingos came through around 1:30am briefly, think they were licking my boat  on low tide 😛 boat looked like a murder scene from the spotties 😂

Gday, 
Thought i would share a few pics of a recent mission to Wathumba in a 12ft tinny. 
Weather was not perfect with a 1.5mtr NW swell making the trip up interesting, lucky the wind was dropping and changing to ESE. After 2 hours of motoring up at a comfortable pace , I was greeted with rollers at the mouth of the creek.  Made my way in to set up camp and stretch the back out lol getting old. The wind had dropped out so i headed out for a few hours out the front of the creek. Did not take long to find bust ups and birds, spotties feeding lead to some crazy fun action. Boated 5 from 11 going flat out on them to get them past the sharks. Feeling exhausted and tired from 1 hour of sleep since the night before, i headed back to camp for some cold ones and sleep. Next morning i headed back while it was a glass out, knowing if i fished i would miss the window to cross back from moon to urangan. Wind was predicted to climb from lunch time. Great fun solo mission that i plan on doing again after the fires. 

Hi guys been a little while between posting but the weather has not been to flash up in Cairns as of late.
I say a result of that I had some time to think about my boat and my setup and decided to advertise my Fisher has an expression of interest to see what it would Fetch
Well unintentionally sold in 4 days so I had to move fast to secure the new boat which I'm extremely happy about
It's a 2050 Stabicraft Frontier with a 150 Yamaha pushing 65 km an hour in 15 knots of wind 
I should be able to bring more Reef reports and photos from up here with this new weapon
Couple of puctures for your viewing pleasure 

Thanks @Andrew_P if I can’t find a local guy soon I’ll give him a call.
cheers

Hey mate he's not in the Redlands but Steve at Independent Metal Fabrications at Moorooka does a great job. https://independentmf.com.au/ 0416 273 351
 

You're welcome @Old Scaley . Yep indeed had to get the bow rail removed. Hopefully you can avoid it if possible 🙂
It is an anderson plug - that's exactly right it allows me to remove the minn kota easily with the quick release bracket. Not too sure on the battery box, but that's prompted me to think about putting the battery in a box myself - seems like a sensible thing to do!
 

Thanks @Ryannnnnnnn. That is helpful looks like you had the bow rail on that side removed. I think I can avoid that by running the MK at the same angle as the bow rail, but will need to check that when I see the motor. Is that an Anderson plug in the 5th photo? Is that just to make it easier to remove when you use the quick release or are the leads short? I wonder why they didn’t spend another $20 to put the battery in a battery box?  Just thinking about keeping salt water out if you are castnetting, prawning or crabbing?
Looks like your fuel tank is down the stern end of your boat. The configuration of my tinny is 3 separate hatches up under the casting deck at the bow end. The anchor well is at the front, then a hatch that would easily hold the battery, then a bigger hatch that has the fuel tank, lifejackets and safety gear. The hatches have aluminium walls between them  but are open at the bottom. This means the air (and possibly petrol fumes) circulates between them so I am not sure about having a battery and a fuel tank in adjoining hatches?
Thanks for the info and photos. Food for thought.

Hey @Old Scaley no worries happy to answer any questions you have, no expert here but happy to share my own experience of it! I have a horizon easyfisher 435.
So I got quoted between $3500 and $4000 but I ended up getting it supplied and fitted with the battery for $2900 including the quick release bracket from Brisbane quintrex which I thought was very reasonable! The thruster plate, bow rail removal and battery plate got done else where, think I only paid about $90.
Have attached a few photos if it helps at all. The angle of mine goes straight back, I've seen others where it sits on an angle out to the side. 
I was worried putting the battery at the back with the added weight and I'm really glad I put it at the front. Have noticed no impact on the ride using the yammy. 
I have to manually put it on charge after I've used it, unlike my other battery which runs the lights, bilge and sounder. I've never had it run out of battery (even after forgetting to put it on charge! ) 
I've only used the quick release bracket once for a trip from Brisbane to baffle creek, but I'm sure I'll use it more on future trips. 
Let me know if you have any other questions or would like some other photos - sorry they're a bit dark 🙂
 
 

A few more decent fish on the exact same set up as yesterday ..

Third outing with the new arrows 3-8 lb and 1000 nasci I lost a really big flatty and a bream before the rain beat me.
The biggest problem was I couldn’t get the net quick enough. 
I did manage to get a medium sized trevally and this flatty.
Great fun on light gear and all were caught on those Zman yabbies I caught everything on 3 weeks ago.

congrats on purchasing your new misses mate 😉😂 she looks great.

Thanks @ellicat. It was a fun day. Shame there weren’t more keepers but I am looking forward to chowing down on that grassie. @AUS-BNE-FISHO, the bigger one was 40cm and very fat so I got 2 good fillets from it. That Wello spot was insane for the number of bites and how many small fish were willing to commit suicide.

Headed out with @Old Scaley at some ridiculous hour this morning that required us to have the nav lights on. The idea was to beat the traffic to Harries. We semi-succeeded and were able to land on one of the gazetted marks.
I was first on with an unders squire on pillie. That was it for my date at Harries, however Steve managed to get a few little fellas in before getting a whiptail which was quickly dispatched for strip baits. I think he then caught a legal Grassie on it before the rest got pickered. He said he wanted to catch a grinner, hence the title. Fortunately he did get one and turned it into this beauty -


That was it for Harries. We then went to Green but someone was already on the best mark. We decided to give Wello a go. Arrived with plenty showing on the sounder. Steve couldn't get away from the breambos. Things were a little quieter on my side, only landing an unders tuskie, a couple of sweetlip (one was close to the esky) and some bream.
Nothing on the squid jig or plastics today. The fresh grinner proved to be the best bait.
Thanks for the day Steve

Apparently the target market for these units is the yakker community.
At the end of the day it's my fault for being a dumb consumer and making an assumption that was incorrect. I think that's what really irks me.
I'll take it to the secondhand market after I see if anyone on here wants it.
Just plugged the replacement in and it all works as expected. Only issue is that I turned off the transducer whilst I was playing around with it yesterday and now can't remember how to turn it back on. Doh !

I had a 20 ft Mustang a while ago which was ten plus years old. Was driving through a bit of rough stuff and the drivers seat suddenly gave way. Very scary and dangerous. Make sure any seating is well bolted down!

I’ve ordered a pedestal for a 2nd seat. 
this is the back bench set up. Will see how it goes driving the tiller in the seat tomorrow 😀

I'd probably go one step further and create a base plate out of some aluminium. Drill the holes in the base plate for the required positions , bolt the pedestal seat through and fasten the base plate on the underside with nuts and washers.
The metal plate will help spread the load across the plywood. The washers unless they are large diameter washers might still dig through plywood over time.

Picture of the back

I reckon it would work. To make it less likely to pull the screws you could use bolts right through and use a washer on the underside.