Ed.

Where is some duct tape when you need it? looks nasty but at least it held up till you got home. Judging by the rust on the belt it seems water has been getting into the tread for a while.

They are a pretty looking fish at that age, but as they get bigger they change...... and become more delicious looking.

Hi Jimmyjack, not too bad considering, even lost 3.5kg of weight, it was a bit of a horror house move but officially moved up to Hervey Bay on Friday 25th March, so far 7 trailer loads, a 4.2m truck and a 6m truck. Boxes and gear everywhere and can't find anything. Had a bit more stuff than I thought, we filled the double shed to the brim and also the single garage in the house, so both cars are parked outside for the moment. We are working through the boxes slowly so getting a bit more floor space as we go, very hard to move from a large house to a small house though. At least the missus is no longer contemplating building and living in a small house, which is a good thing! . She now realises the benefits of having places to put things and room to move. I managed to unpack the rods and reels last night, although I haven't found the tackle boxes yet, weather has been great here since we arrived and have managed a few walks along the Urangun Jetty and the beaches, water isn't that clear yet but is reasonable warm still, and from chatting to the blokes on the jetty, the fishing is a bit sporadic at the moment still, with just a few bait schools hanging around the pier pilings. Bought a couple of shelves for the shed so I can take stuff off the floor and in to them, and reclaim some more floor space in there. Can't relax yet as I have probably about 5-6 trips back to Brisbane and the Gold Coast in the next month or so. My Daughter, Son In Law and grandaughter are moving up to Robina from Melbourne so helping them to settle in there whilst their gear arrives. I also have to drop my car off in Caboolture for a week as it needs some panel beating work done. So at this stage it looks like in mid May I will finally get my life back. The area we are renting is nice and quiet but close enough to all the stores and shops that we need, just takes about 10 minutes by car (actually to everywhere), so I think that we chose well moving up here.

I also prefer a baitcaster but mated to an Ugly Stik for jigging. So much easier than using a spinning reel and the Ugly Stiks are quite flexible.

There's a lot of fillets in those fish assuming you want to risk getting Ciguatera. Nice catch, they would have worked your arms!

I can only speak for myself here, but some of us prefer to use an overhead reel rather than a spinning reel or Alvey type, so if you are fishing from a surf beach, you need the length to keep the line out of the waves as much as possible and get more distance, when fishing off the rocks or ledges the extra length gives you more control when bringing up the fish and keeping the line clear away from the rocks at the base. On my setup I use an Okuma Solterra SLR-10CS reel, which is one of the few Magnetic Cast control lever drag overhead reels. It was also available in a 15 size when they came out, the newest SLX Solterras don't have the magnetic cast control feature but do have thrust bearings. I rarely use this setup but it is nice to have one if I choose to fish the surf beaches or rocks.

I have a 13" Saratoga Predator Surf overhead rod LS1320H 10-15kg 85-225Gm rating, (from E-Bay). Penn have a PENN Prevail II 1002OHXH Overhead Rock Rod. Generally there is not much demand for long overhead rods so you will have a hard time locating one as most stores will not stock them due to that reason, mostly they will carry the spinning or Alvey compatible type rods in that length. You could get a rod builder to custom make you one, but it will be expensive.

Personally I have only ever hooked one large ray, it was in Shute Harbour Qld., from the Jetty, I was using a handline with 100lb line. Fought it for about 20 minutes without getting much line back, got it to the surface once, mostly I was loosing line slowly but continuously, then the line was cut off when a passenger ferry pulled up at the jetty and the line got clipped. During the fight, I put on that much pressure that I was worried about breaking the 100 mono line off. Sting rays have the advantage of having a huge flat body shape which they can turn in the water column to make it almost impossible to pull the fish in towards you and requires very little effort on their part, they also can partially bury themselves to the bottom so in effect they become a very effective anchor, again with very little effort on their part. Had the boat not cut me off, I think that would have still being fighting it a few hours later. If I was going to target large rays with a rod and reel, I would be choosing a large overhead that had a big drag with a shortish rod, and use a good kidney harness and a large rod gimbal, similar gear to what is use for targeting largish game fish. That would give you the best leverage and to minimise the pressure on your back. They can grow to enormous sizes and up to several hundred Kilo's. For me, they are not a fun fight with the fisherman doing most of the work for little gain. Large sharks are much more fun and easier to release when you do haul them in.

A nice light Ugly Stik is what I use to catch livies and I can use it for other types of fishing when not being used for sabiki jigging, keep a small piece of styrofoam or a cork handy and just wind the jig around it, putting the hooks in it, that way, it keeps the hooks separate and they don't get hooked around everything else, be sure to rinse off the hooks after fishing otherwise they corrode off very easily. The light weight Ugly Stiks are very flexible so shouldn't pull the hook on small and soft mouthed bait.

From what I understand, Mullaway aren't too fussy about clear water conditons however if the bait fish are gone because of dirty water conditions due to all this rain, then the chances are the Mullaway will be gone too. It will still be worth a try to have a setup in the water for them in case one is cruising past. Use that baitrunner of yours for this setup with a set of gang hooks.

No fishing for me yet! Started to pack up the house and doing the first run to new rental house at Hervey Bay tomorrow, rain permitting of course and provided the roads up there are all open to traffic. The rain washed a heap of gravel from the driveway on to the road so will have to put it back during the week, probably about a cubic meter of it so the old back is going to give me heaps of pain afterwards. Not to mention the grass is growing rampant so provided the ground dries out it is another job to do. So far since the rain spell started last week we have had about 750mm of rain.

I do exactly the same, as you get older you tend to feel it more. After 4 hours of work, a shower, something to nibble on and then you just need to put the feet up and recover by having a nice afternoon nap! Works for me.

The block of land we bought has a slope and is almost at the top of a hill and 27-38m above sea level so no chance of that ever flooding, the house we are renting is not as high up but after talking to the neighbours, they haven't been flooded yet, we pick up the keys next Friday and will see what happened in the past few days, if the house is flooded inside then it will not be fit to move in and so will give us cause to break the lease, but that also means we will have to look again. But I feel confidant that it will be fine (touch wood). I will ring the agent on Monday and see if it is still good to move in, so all going good we will start packing and start to move stuff up there over the next few weeks.

That doesn't sound pleasant. Too hot for me.

Hey Angry51, with those sort of temps you must be way up north I am guessing top of W.A., N.T. Where abouts do you live? 30mm rain then 43/45C, you must love the humidity?

Sounds like your lucky to be where you are. This stuff below: A Flood Watch and multiple Flood Warnings are current for parts of Southeast Queensland. For more details, please visit www.bom.gov.au/qld/warnings/. Locations which may be affected include Gold Coast, Toowoomba, Brisbane, Maroochydore, Gympie, Kingaroy, Caboolture, Coolangatta, Ipswich, Jimboomba, Mount Tamborine and Redcliffe. Rainfall to 9am Saturday: 709 mm at Mt Glorious 541mm at Pomona 444.4 mm at Tin Can Bay 427 mm at Upper Doonan 381 mm at Dayboro 301 mm at Gatton 236 mm at Brisbane City 224 mm at Ipswich Here is Gympie, we drove through there yesterday morning and on the way back we beat the highway closure by 30 minutes, here it is now.

Thanks Angry51, Yep, there will be plenty of those items, nothing worse than when you go to do something and you need a gizmo or tool and you know you have one, spend an hour or so looking for it, then give up and go to store to buy another. Over the past few years I seem to have developed a knack for doing that.

I know what you mean, I have 22 years in this one and with 92 square meters of floor space between 2 sheds, you can barely see the floor in either, plus the stuff in the house, so this will force me declutter and down size. Half the stuff I will get rid of, although knowing Murphy Law, the moment I get rid of something, I will then find out that I shouldn't have and will need that item .

Another problem solved, went to Hervey Bay in the morning and drove back home tonight through all the bucketing rain, and managed to get through Gympie 30 minutes before it was flooded in, and the highway was closed. But looking on the bright side we found a house to lease in Hervey Bay with room for all my storage, although it took us about 2 hours to do 23km just before the Toorbul Point/Donnybrook turn-off due to the flooding in that section of the highway near Caboolture, anyway, now we can relax a bit and have 4 weeks to move out.

Thanks Drop Bear, the missus and I are going back to Hervey Bay on Friday to look at a rental house we applied for. We or should I say, I, have too much stuff to put into a small storage facility, so the cost of doing so would be better off being towards a house with a shed on it, that way we get a nicer house, and also I can access whatever gear I need straight away. Why do you need an extra "Donga" if you have a house already on your land, are you expecting more "guests" dropping in to visit/stay? By "guests" I am referring to us blow-ins from this forum? , now that you are in a central location inside Morton Bay! I found a couple of really nice blocks of land on Keswick Island which were very tempting, but had to resist because it would have cost an arm and a leg to build there, as all the materials and the tradies would have to be moved over by ship and then to the build site. Not to mention that for us at our age we really need to be located within a short distance of a Hospital should something happen to us. Whilst the idea of living on an Island next to or very close to the ocean is very, very appealing, I have left it too late in life to do so. That wouldn't have been a cheap exercise to get that Donga over to your island and then moved to your block!

Don't worry, we have all been there and not just once!

Nah, sold the boat a few months back as we were intending to get a caravan and do the "Grey Nomad" thing, unfortunately we had to pay much more for the block than I would have liked and the house build is also going to cost way more as well, I guess I got used to a large house on 2 acres so hard to downsize, we ended up with just over 1/2 acre but deciding on a smaller size house will take some getting used to. At least now we won't have a mortgage which was the main purpose, so the boat and caravan will have to take a back seat for a few years. In the meantime I will have to just fish the jetty and the beaches as well as an occasional charter boat trip. We are fairly close to the heads (Burrum and River) so can send out a balloon on an outgoing tide and see what is floating around. I did build a small fishing cart years ago for that jetty but got rid of it due to lack of use, so might be time to build another! Or else find a cheap tinny which would be my preferred option. Still got 12 months to get established up there so plenty of time to consider what I would like vs what I need.

Thanks guys, yep, we ended up doing probably just under 1800km checking all the places. You would not believe how much development is going on in that area. Unfortunately most of the available remaining block sizes have shrunk down to 400-600Sq/m and the prices are now way up there, so after looking for established houses with 1000sq/m at a minimum we gave up as they have suddenly all jumped up by a few 100 thousand to the normal purchase price in the last 4 months. The Elliot Head area was nice but the available blocks are too small for me. Anyway, hopefully it all goes through by the end of March. Now have to find a rental, looking forward to fishing up there as it has been a long while since I touched my rods and caught any fish. Our block is about 5 minutes from the beach, and we are up a bit on a hill so hopefully the sandflies won't be too bad. Having said that there are a couple of them walking on my monitor as I type here at home. Went for a quick walk on the jetty at Urangan in between the rain and strong winds and not much was being caught at the time, but the fishing there comes and goes so if I put in the time I might be able to get some for dinner!

Well things are looking up, the house sold... again (contract signed) and now we have till almost the end of March to get out and nowhere to go organized. The missus and I went up to Bundaberg, Marybourough, Elliot and Burnett heads etc., looking for houses/land without anything suitable. The following week we went to Hervey Bay and after viewing countless of Real Estate agents windows in all these areas with nearly 100% Sold stickers over all the listings, finally snagged a block of land with just over 1/2 acre which had just come back on the market over in Craignish. It will most likely be about 12mths before a house can be finished being built, so nearly all our stuff will go into storage (except fishing gear) whilst we try to find a house/unit to rent near there for that period. So if we find a rental up there, the Urangan jetty might get be my next fishing spot.

Personally I don't think so. I had a prop hub go faulty on a 225 Evinrude about 2 boats back and if I remember correctly, when it happened the boat slowed down and the revs increased due to the reduced load on the prop as it was spinning on the hub. It would slip at a certain rev due to the pressure of the water on the propeller blades and so the prop would stop spinning but the shaft would keep turning inside the rubber hub. As soon as I felt the motor revving higher I would back off the throttle straight away and then the prop would grab again on the hub due to reduced pressure on the prop. It was like driving a car and slipping the gearbox into neutral but not taking the foot off the accelerator which results in the motor over revving. Only way to fix a faulty rubber hub is by replacing it, but as you are not slowing down it doesn't appear to be your issue. There are numerous causes that can make you reduce your fuel economy, ranging from an ignition coil/ spark plug/lead breaking down at speed, down to clogged fuel filters, injectors, etc. I had replaced all my filters before I found out what my actual problem was, on my motor there were 2 filters under the cowl and another inline fuel filter just above the fuel tank. Forgot to mention earlier that with my motor problem, I occasionally had revs but little power, so revs were high but no actual power, so instead of doing 27 knots at about 4000RPM I would only be doing about 15 knots. That didn't make sense to me as the gear box is fixed to if I got the revs I should have being going a lot faster, maybe my prop was also slipping at the time. But in any case once I fixed the fuel line blockage issue I didn't have any more drama, so who knows!