Ed.

If at night and you want to have some fun whilst your relaxing, put out a burley slick, and some largish hooks with a big bait on a balloon connected to a largish reel and wait, as the current sweeps past there it should carry the slick for miles. You just never know what will pick up the scent. Just don't go swimming!

Generally around the top of Morton Island you can anchor just around the next corner from the point, that is usually where some trawlers anchor overnight, or further down closer to the west end of Yellow Patch, depending on the sea , I usually anchored around the middle just above the E153.26.6 which is shown on the image map. As for the swell /waves you will know when you get there whether or not you want to stay overnight, it will either be nice and flat or not! If the wind is Northerly or the swell is North something or rather, you may want to consider the Bulwar area. I used to anchor reasonably close to the shore (5-7mt depth) as there is an area slightly further out that can get quite sloppy large waves at times. As I said that area is marked on the marine charts. By the way nice rig you have there, all the comforts of home. I used to have a 26ft Scarab but since I traded it on an 18.5ft boat I don't stay out overnight anymore as mine is now an open runabout style boat so no sleeping facilities.

I used to carry a small 3kg gas cylinder and a 3 burner camp stove, nothing like a hot meal and coffee after a day out on the water and a hot coffee in the morning to give you a kick start to the day ahead.

I used to stay overnight at either Bulwar or near Yellow Patch on Morton, depending on which way the wind was blowing and the waves/swell. The Yellow Patch area has a couple of gotchas though, there is a section near the shore which has some hard flat rock with a light sand covering over it, so your anchor may not dig in too well and you will just drag if the wind picks up, so if you look around you should find a suitable section of good sand, and if you anchor too far away from the shore there is an area which is prone to largish waves ( it is listed on the maps), so just be aware of them. I have never anchored off shore though as the ocean conditions can change too rapidly for my liking in this part of the ocean, and I like so sleep comfortably without the boat rocking side to side and up and down, but that is just me. The Bulwar area is quite good provided the wind doesn't change in the middle of the night and make the water too sloppy, I use large anchors and a reasonable amount of 3/8th chain so have never dragged there and not too worried about doing so. The bottom is pretty good there and I just use Danforth style anchors.

The bracket keeps the motor leg raised off the ground and is not reliant on the hydraulic ram to keep the leg up, on my particular trailer, if I travel with my motor down, my skeg would be about 50mm off the ground, so if I travel at speed on a highway and hit a deep pothole then you can imagine what damage it would sustain. If I rely solely on the hydraulics to keep my leg above the ground, the same result would happen if the hydraulics lost pressure, the leg would drop down and being in the drivers seat I wouldn't know about it till I hit that pothole. This bracket keeps the leg at a set height so if the hydraulics fail for what ever reason, the leg would still be supported at that set height by the bracket.

When I used 12V winches on my trailers I made a lockable 2 piece ally box, the top part came off quickly and protected the winch. Once the top part was unlocked I could get to the cables quite easily. There was a cutout that allowed the cable to be attached to the boat whilst going down and up the ramp, then I would just chain up the boat to the winch post, remove the winch cable and just lock up the winch away till next time. With the manual winch I haven't bothered so it just sits there exposed.

I also have the identical bracket pictured above, mounted on my Merc 150.

It looks like I may have sold it today, a guy got in touch with me and said that he's happy to buy it so just have to see the money come in. I am almost tempted to buy a Makaira 15 reel with some of the proceeds, but the little voice in my head keeps telling me that I have way too much gear and it will just sit there collecting dust like this one did. Decisions, decisions.

No problem, thought I would offer it to you seeing as you were looking. Cheers Ed.

I have a slightly used Ticateam ST-458 reel for sale if you are interested asking $170 plus $12 for postage to Cairns, spooled with 80lb? braid and a mono leader. Cheers Ed

BCF is having a bit of a clearance sale at the moment, maybe something like this may interest you: https://www.bcf.com.au/p/shimano-terez-spinning-rod/M299617.html?cgid=BCF10 https://www.bcf.com.au/p/shimano-terez-spinning-rod/M299617.html or if you are after a more flexible tip then https://www.bcf.com.au/p/ugly-stik-bluewater-spinning-rod/M567390.html

That is a very good idea, but it isn't just the bars you also need to learn about, the seas as well as the weather, anyone can get a boat license and most of the time boating is pretty safe provided you know the basic rules, however when the smelly stuff hits the proverbial fan, you need experience and that is invaluable if caught out in a storm, and do not rely purely on weather forecasts as they are frequently wrong. So having an experienced person teach you what to do and when is the best way to minimize your risk. I was fortunate in having been a deckhand on a cray boat in W.A for several years so picked up a lot of skills from my skipper and some of the seas we worked in were truly horrible but you put your trust in the skipper who has a lot of experience, if he said we work, then we went out, if he said we are staying home then you know you really don't want to be out there. At the end of the day experience is worth its weight in gold and it is not worth risking your life for a couple of fish. Having said that the more you go out in a boat the more experience and knowledge you accumulate, as GregOug said above, if you go out often enough it is not if you get caught out, but when!

The same thing happened to me about 3-4 years ago in the same area, the missus and I went and stayed out overnight at Bulwar on our 26ft boat and intended to head back to Bribie Island next morning about 10:00AM after breckie as the forecast was for a southerly change about 2:00PM. Well I woke up at about 5:30am due to the boat rocking, so stuck my head out of the cabin and looked around, yelled out to my wife to get organized and to put on a life jacket as we were leaving in 10 minutes. There were massive storm clouds approaching fast from the south and the wind was picking up. By the time I pulled the anchor, the wind had reached about 20 knots, and so I hammered it back as best we could, after another 10 minutes driving we we drenched to the bone, the wind by then was at a stupid speed and we being pounded left right and center as the seas whipped up and the waves were side on for a lot of the time. We outran the worst of the storm and we made it back, cold and wet but if I had have been in a smaller boat I would have done the same thing and beached it. We got back home to Spinnerker Marina a lit bit worse for wear, but we would have been stuck at Bulwar for about 3-4 days otherwise. It was also the first time I had told my wife to put the life jackets on on that boat, now that I have a smaller boat we wear the inflatables ones all the time. Just goes to show that the weather forecasts are just that and you still need to be aware that the weather is unpredictable. Similar story about 15 years ago, had a smaller Scarab, a 23ft, took the 3 kids and missus out from Jacobs Well marina, down through the Broadwater and out the Southport Seaway for some fishing, We went a few miles out and constantly watched the the horizon to the south as there was a southerly change due in the afternoon, there were huge storm clouds in the distance but they were just stationary. Finished fishing and went back in so the kids could have a swim in the Broadwater before heading back to the marina. It was a clear sky, flat seas and the clouds on the southerly horizon had not moved all morning till about 20 minutes after the girls went swimming. The clouds then started to move fast, way too fast for my liking so it was all aboard and I hammered it, I did 40 knots all the way back and the front was still gaining on us. Managed to get to the marina and moored up just as it was getting nasty, by the time I finished mooring to the pier it was a white out due to the torrential rain and winds, visibility was down to about 25 meters and wind easily 50 knots. Funny thing is that just before we got to the marina we passed a 12ft tinny with a couple of guys heading out, they were oblivious to the impending front and they would have got a nasty surprise. I mean by that stage it was pretty obvious even to a blind man that a major storm was about to hit. Some people have no self preservation in mind!

Bribie Island canals

Went up there once before I was married, hired a small tinny and went trolling up the inlet, there was a section there that every time I went passed it my lures got absolutely mangled, off the top of my memory it probably was in the Chinaman Creek area, obviously something with very large teeth. I decided to move on to another area as anything that powerful was something I did not want to catch and it may not have been a fish! I had to call it quits early as I got a real bad dose of sunburn. Important lesson learned... don't forget the Sunblock!