Luke Landrunner

Congrats mate..
I will get you to autograph my Gobblers shirt .....
Looking forward to all the lure testing, I can just imagine you saying to Julie " We've got to take these new colours up to 1770."
 

I was hoping to join Tugger and Lance on the last 1770 trip but the Gobblers thing got in the way.
Running out of time at the moment but there is an opportunity to head to Fraser on Sunday and return on Tuesday.  If anyone wants to bring their boats up and join Luke Landrunner and I let us know.
We will be sleeping on the boat Sunday and Monday night. Chasing Tuna and other species. 

I do the same mate.
It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy at night thinking that I am sponsored by ReelTackle 😂😂🤣😂😂

I can sponsored myself now.😂

Congratulations Wayne, I am glad the deal finally worked out for you.
As I mentioned the other week, let me know when you are ready to sell and I will do some promotions for you and try to help you move some products.
Exciting times ahead mate.

After some negotiation with the owner of Gobblers Lures, my wife and I have purchased the small business.
We will be taking it over in early July and manufacturing from home. (Just in time for me to make a few lures for the Kimberly trip coming up in end of July). 🙂
It will take a few months to find our feet and then hopefully we can start making some small changes to improve the Gobbler experience.
Predominantly my Julie will be manufacturing the lures while I be doing marketing, development etc.
I'm sure there will a special for AFO members when we are sorted.😉
This is why I have been quite on the forum for a little while.

Lance and I left Brisbane Sunday morning and headed up the highway rolling in to Agnes Waters just after 2pm. We fueled up and got plenty of ice launching by 3pm we pointed the boat towards our final destination.
 
The boat travelled over some very calm conditions with a forecast of mint weather for our 1st couple of days. We reached the reef we wanted to fish just after sunset but not much biting around dusk surprisingly.
 
We ended up moving over to our overnight anchorage and cooked a hot dinner. The sea was like glass and the stars had a mirror image on the water, going to bed you could not hear the water lapping on the hull.
 
After a perfect night sleep we were greeted to more of the same weather and the fish were hungry. The 1st area we targeted Red Emperor and both Lance and I lost a couple of big Reds blowing us away. I did hook a Red before they all shut down landing a 60cm Red beast.
 
Jumping down to the next spot was easy with the sea state and each new spot gave up some quality fish. Coral trout, Red throat emperor, Venus tuskfish, Hussar, Moari cod and Red Emperor were filling the box. By 3pm the box was nearly full as we got close to our baglimits so we anchored up for a well earned rest so we thought.
 
We cracked a few beers and I set a floating bait for any lurking pelagic. Well it didn't take long for a Spanish mackerel to hit peeling line at blistering speed. The gaff shot was made but this fish new how to fly jumping off the gaff and winning it's freedom.
 
No sooner I had set another floating slimie mackerel out the rod buckled again. Lance battled this Spanish calling it for a beast after a dogged fight even looking at 1 stage to running around the anchor rope it did turn and come back eventually coming into gaff range it hit the deck. This Spanaird was just under 140cm and around 18 to 20kg.

 
We even got coral trout while we were anchored while sinking a few coldies at the end of the day. The wind picked up after dark but we were tucked in on the Lee side of the reef. About 5am the wind swung around as forecast and it got a bit lumpy so we pulled the anchor and moved to the Lee side of the neighboring reef.
 
The next anchorage was perfect for the southerly wind which got up to 20 to 25knots. The sea was still flat where we were tucked in behind this reef and you know what there was fish to catch.
 
Setting another floating slimie mackerel the line was pulled out of my hands so I slammed the reel in gear and held on. The reel screaming another Spanish was to blame soon the Spanaird in the box had company.
 
The wind was strong through to midday but dropped right out giving us our freedom from behind the reef. The next area produced our last couple of fish for our total finfish bag. I got a good Maori cod but Lance landed our 2nd legal Red Emperor and last fish so we pointed the boat for home.

 
Getting to the ramp just after dark we stopped at a local caravan park for a sleep. The next day was a lot easier driving home well rested thanks Lance for a great trip and thanks Robbie with the help cleaning and bagging fish up.

Good luck gentlemen. 

Headed up to Maleny this morning to fish Baroon.First couple of schools I found were mongrel spanglies, they were of good size and fooled me on the sounder as I thought they were bass.Fished a few spots with some producing and some not. Tally was growing on shrimp so I decided to try a few back alleys casting spinnerbaits,While I was doing this I had a couple of baits over the side in case a bass showed up. All of a sudden one of the rods buckled over and I first thought you ripper my first 50 up here for awhile, it was very heavy and I was expecting to see a bass wrapped around a branch surface. Well my eyes opened up when I seen a nice approx 70cm Mary come up.I didnt measure it was in a hurry to get it back in the water, so one pic out of water while removing the hook and a quick one in the water.It was caught on the smallest of shrimp I had.
I kept casting in the back waters until I finally got a bass on spinnerbait. All up 78 bass and one MRC. Last time up there I couldnt see a foot in front of me the fog was that thick, this morning I was greeted by the fog in the middle of the first pic.
Dino

Update: we’ve let the otoliths dry out for three weeks or so, and blocked them (one of each species) in polyester resin. The drying makes the rings more obvious. The reason we block them is so we can cut a section through the centre of the otolith with a low speed saw without crushing the otolith material.

Two more weeks for the resin to harden then we will cut the sections. I’ll put some pics up of the rest of the process. 
 

My little boy took his 44ft cat up to the sunny coast, he takes it up there each year for 3 months and goes up whenever he can. Here is some of the catches, hope I can get some of them.
Dino

got to the rock around 7am with a few livies on board ,i couldnt get one to the boat the first 15 hits either mist the mark or got sharked,got 4 nice snapper in the boat and with 2 livies left i sent one out it lasted all of 2mins got sharked,there where so many spanish around with the baits lasting only a few mins before getting hit,i had the last livie out and it got smashed and after a 3-4 min fight i had boated the first spanish,left the rock at 9.30 so was a pretty good morning sesh going out again tomorrow.brad

Certainly are and we have full water tanks for the winter dry spell.

Some of video before the crash

Haha I remember the incident with the old one-
Me with a decent snapper on which ended up being just a decent head after being grey suited and you Sh!tting bricks as the low battery warning was on and having me grab the drone as the boat drifted......🤣🤣

After loosing connection with my drone this afternoon in a deep valley l had my first crash. Basically once l lost connection l panicked and hit the return home button. That didn’t work well with the drone flying into trees and crashing. 
I made my way down the embankment and went to where l last saw it. Using the phone GPS l tried pin pointing it. An hour plus later after walking through a stream and fighting my way through the steep hill of Lantana with showers of rain making all rocks supper slippery. The joy of finding my drowned drone on/in the edge of the creek was amazing. 
Why? Because l took insurance out called DJI refresh, which means as long as l can return the drone body and pay $79 dollars l can get a new replacement drone. 
I tried drying it out with a hair dryer but no go. 
Take 3 drive coming up. 
 

It was a good save. I expect this one will be easier to catch. Could even do it with the landing net in an emergency landing.
 

Haha I remember the incident with the old one-
Me with a decent snapper on which ended up being just a decent head after being grey suited and you Sh!tting bricks as the low battery warning was on and having me grab the drone as the boat drifted......🤣🤣

Haha I remember the incident with the old one-
Me with a decent snapper on which ended up being just a decent head after being grey suited and you Sh!tting bricks as the low battery warning was on and having me grab the drone as the boat drifted......🤣🤣

For a long time now I have been wanting to build my own deep drop electric fishing reel as I am sick and tired of rebuilding the standard off the shelf electric reels.
A few months ago I decided to just get in and do it and so far I am very happy with the results.
There is no roller bearings in this reel as they always seem to rust and seize up and there is no drag washers to burn out or go lumpy.
The drag system is electronic and should just about last forever.
Each part of the reel is modular and runs its own circuitry so in the event of a failure, I can quickly change out any damaged parts, even when out on the boat.
All I need to finish now is the mounting frame to fit it in the boat, get the switch panel face plate made and spool it up with 1000m x 400lb braid.
So far nearly everything has been drawn to CAD so I can make some more once this one has been fully tested to its limits.
If all goes well, I am hoping to take it out to the deep water in about 2-3 weeks time and give it a hard flogging before I make a second one.
 


 
 

Just got back from Evans Head with the caravan what a top spot the van park has. It has the river and surf as 2 borders of the park and on the other borders you have the Rsl, pub, surf club and bowls club. 

As I have never been there before I took this as a challenge to visit everything. So I had a drink in all the establishments and fished both the river and surf.
My brother also brought his van down as well as his roof topper tinnie so both he and our partners went fishing up river. The girls outfished us and got some big whiting and a nice flathead which fed us for dinner.

We fished off the northern wall which was 300m from camp but had no luck.


We went up to razor back lookout for beers and niblies with a spectacular back drop ,  it was good to see the position of everything. Then after we bought some ocean king prawns from the Co op to finish off our bellies. Here is the rainbow touching the lookout I was hoping it would bring me luck

The last day to keep it simple we pumped yabbies off the beach right in front of camp and fished off the bank for more good size summer whiting. The river itself is loaded with these yabbies banks more than I have ever seen in any estuary I have been on and each 1 loaded with yabbies.
It is a destination I will be going back to with plenty of natural beauty and of coarse plenty of fishing options.

You're building your own fleet. 😄
(Correct use of You're/your just for Kel's sake 😉)

I have work commitments on Friday but I'll keep an eye on it incase the good run through to next Monday, Tuesday.
I'll wait on the weather.

Been putting a few hours into the local lately and starting to get a few results. 
Set a mission to get a fredd off surface and finally nailed a 109cm.
 

Drop bearings    🙂