Neil Stratford

I was suppose to go mackerel /reefy yesterday morning ,but my mate who was taking me in his boat cancelled with a sore shoulder at the last moment . Since I had that all important leave pass organised ,I went and dug a few worms and had a whiting fish last night . Could not find any decent ones , but scratched up a nice feed of whiting. Got a beautiful little juvenile mulloway and a little lizard as by catch , which were tagged and released .Managed to upgrade team south’s whiting slightly. whiting 350 ,345,350mm mulloway 405mm flathead 385mm

Well done Hamish , he would have pulled a bit of drag. regards neil

Great land based fish Max , looks like you suffered a bit of line burn Hope it didn’t nip you when you were removing that slug. regards Neil

Went for a flathead fish this morning ,but my Lowrance side scan told me to forget the flathead and fish for something else. Ended up getting a nice feed of threadies off the sand in 1.2 m of water. Jess those things go on light gear. Hopefully the photos come up ok as they were beautifully conditioned clean fish. team south Flathead 510mm Threadfin 1030mm ,930mm and 965mm Gave all the fish barring 1 Thready away , which I’ll be having with some nice fresh salad tonite. regards Neil

I personally like using slightly larger spinning reels . I recon I get greater distance in my casts with the slightly larger spools , and you don’t have to put as much effort when continuously casting and retrieving lures and plastics .You also often get greater line capacity which sometimes comes in handy if you come across an unexpected larger fish like a big thready or longtail ,they’ll empty those tiny 1000 and 2000 series spinning reels faster than you can blink .So long as the larger reel isn’t too heavy and the rod /reel balance feels good there’s nothing to loose going up 1 or even 2 sizes. I think the Daiwa kix and Shimano sustains are pretty similar on paper. The Sustain 3000 is just over 10 percent lighter than the 3000 kix., but the 4000 models are pretty much both the same weights. regards neil

Very nice !! You’ve done a great job with it using some excellent components. Have a look at a sustain 4000 . Fairly good quality reel that’s nice and light.

Good to see some good numbers again . well done regards Neil

Went down the Pin to hunt down a huge threadfin that I dropped at the boat last week, couldn’t find any bait for a couple of hours and missed the bite period . By the time I found some bait it was way too late and had to contend with stingrays ,cat fish , sharks and bream . I did have an unusual visitor though , a small wallaby out for a morning dip. South side Bream 290mm

A few more for team south . Spanish Mac 1100 and 945mm Spotty Mac 800mm Grassy Sweetlip 480 and 420mm Spangled Emperor 440mm Cattle dog cod 370 and 380mm Wire netting cod 340mm

We got quite a few really good 70 cm plus tailor up at Fraser last September , the best year for big fish I’ve ever had up there , best fish was a 76 cracker , looking forward to using that stick later this year to crack an 80 .

I’ve been wanting to make a custom spin rod for Tailor fishing up at Fraser Island for a while now . About a week ago I got on Facebook and purchased an old trashy looking 13 ft butterworth surf rod, (the number on the blank appears to be ss 51569 )for the princely sum of $50 -hoping I could do something with the blank. First up , I stripped it all back and shorted the blank down till it felt real good at 11 foot 8 inches. I wanted the rod to be powerful ,but as light as possible , so got on line and ordered a set of Alps aluminium oxide High Rise Guides , a Fuji reel seat , some shrink wrap grips, and a butt cap from a local supplier . I had a bit of thread and epoxy in the garage which I used for the project . It took me two nights to bind it all up and epoxy it . My wife even made me up a little decal sticker for it. This morning the epoxy had all gone off rock solid , so I put a Shimano 6000 Saragosa with 20 lb braid on it and loaded it up to give it a test.Jezzz … It feels like a weapon and cannt wait to fire out some 65 and 85 g Raiders later this year. I’ve used a lot of high modulus rods but I recon those old school surf rods are hard to beat when surf fishing , they cop a flogging out there on the beach and a lot still being used 20 to 30 years later . Super glad I gave this old girl of a rod a second lease of life. Neil

Sounds a bit tragic ! Our local freshwater scene slowed considerably after a heap of unrelenting rain .It just showed signs of getting going again and now the rains back . Probably not that good for our stocked dams as the mature fish will be going over the spill ways for the winter sporn. On the bright side ,the creeks and rivers will get a bit of a re stock! Even though the fish are sulking Bob ,they still got to eat , go out and get into them Regard Neil

Did a solo trip down the Pin this morning in search of some Threadfin . Spotted some threadies and baby bullies feeding together in 1.5 m of water right where I expected them at 11.30am . I managed to pull a feed before they wised up . team south - Threadfin 885 and 1100mm Bull Sharks 800, 740 and 765mm Grunter 350mm Regards Neil

A few more for team south bull shark 680 mm and 720mm whiting 375 mm Grunter 390 mm and 420 mm Bass 350mm 335mm and 390 mm Bream 275 mm

I took a drive down to the Tweed river and collected some driftwood for the garden earlier this month. I found a well weathered piece of sleeper that I thought I could make into something interesting. With all this crap weather I found some time and got out the electric soldering iron and etched a Kraken into it to add a bit of character. Next piece I find , might make a Rum tasting paddle with a similar design. regards neil

I do a fair bit of pelagic type fishing and I absolutely understand the usefulness of that extra 50 m or so of line on those smaller 4000 and 5000 spinning reels , larger Spanish and Long Tail Tuna will spool them bare very quickly and that extra 50 m often gives you time to give chase in the boat. I have a solution for you ! Post me the 4 and 5000 Stella’s and buy a 6000 and 8000 .lol. Or fish in dams less than 150 m long lol I use one of these to re spool at home. $7 from Temu. The local tackle shop, where I now always purchase my braid from , actually has a re spooling machine similar to the one you’ve sent the link to. They supply the necessary mono backing so your spools are filled evenly to the brim if you ask .You buy their braid , and the rest is free of charge ! They’ll also sell bulk braid by the meter so you can minimise the amount of thicker mono backing down to just a meter or so to stop slippage ,this means you can maximise the length of the thinner braid on your spools . Still doesn’t address the fact that spool size doesn’t meet spec though , if you need more meters of line , you can only go for a less diameter line. regards neil

Sorry I see you’ve tried the shimano brand , maybe send them a letter asking what the problem is ….? Might have to spool up using the maximum drag ratings on the reels , you’ll definitely get more braid on them then .

Hi Bob , It would be interesting to try spooling up using Shimano’s own Kairiki braid , you’d have to expect that it would match their various reel specifications. These days competition is intense , and I think most company’s do “stretch “ their specs to the absolute limit to gain market advantage. In saying this they still must be truthful in what they claim. Presume your reels are laying the braid evenly across the spools?. Neil

Just for you Kat , and at the risk of creating a huge rush on them at Woolies tomorrow, here’s what the Jam Drops look like.

Ray , Mark and I braved some very inordinate conditions at NPD this morning . With 25 knots of South Easterly wind accompanied with squally showers strongly apparent, the possibly of donuting was high on all our minds as we pushed our way down the dam.The previous ritual of a serving of chocolate donuts each was employed as per my previous trip with Ray , and again the donut was adverted. It was giant fork tailed catfish after fork tailed catfish with the odd bass thrown in just to keep us interested for the first few hours Something special was required to break us out of this ground hog day trip. I opened my lunch box , and low and behold my darling wife had packed us a bag of Jam Drops . These little treats proved to make the day turn from ok to extra special event. Believe it or not we then proceeded to pull 14 really nice yellowbelly plus a few more bass off one snag in a few short minutes . It was carnage till a big squall came through and we called it for the morning.

Good to see you smashing them again. regards neil

Very nice boat , I have a friend that’s had the smaller one for a few years now. They are quite light in weight for their size , what are you towing it with? Ps. - No excuses not to catch a few fish now. ! Regards Neil

The big tides create significantly more run when their flooding and ebbing , this often makes fish expended a whole lot more energy to feed. Big tides also often make the water a lot more turbid in estuary’s. I personally dislike fishing the estuary’s during the big tides.In saying this the fish have still got to eat , so the tide changes and eddies often create the best opportunity for meet and greets with our fishy friends. I find the week before and after the full and new moons good ,particularly if there’s a SE wind blowing , this always seems to get fish biting well where I fish .As for the neap tides , they’re ok depending what your targeting , and where. The run in the tide stirs up the bottom and banks of creeks and rivers this is often feeding time for fish if it’s not too strong, no run no fun is something worth considering , but if there’s too much run I”ll always look for eddies out of the main stream run. Neil

Hi Daryl , long time no see. Gee Eva’s grown up , she no long little Evi . Say hello to both the kids . Looks like there’s been no spearo’s along the wall for a while. Nice fish. Regards Neil

I got an invite from Ray K and Rick to do a bass trip to Hinze dam this morning. Ray and Rick have been on skid row of recent times, finding it difficult to boat any bass at all. Clocking up a few dreaded donut trips in succession - times were grim for the 2 bass kings. Desperate times called for desperate measures , so I decided to turn their worlds upside down and shouted chocolate donuts for breakfast before even contemplating dropping a line in the water . We all took our donut medicine and moved on to break the drought. It was a three step process to get the little blighters biting again. 1. We took our donut medicine at 5.30am , and all agreed to move on from the recent dark times. 2. Rick was assigned the job of clearing the dam of eels , catfish and the barred grunter (vermin) , he did this very well and didn’t complain too much , he just got on with it and achieved an excellent result. 3 . We then proceeded the catch Bass till the bait ran out . Success was achieved and the bass boys can now move on and get back to scoring a whole heap more fish.