Neil Stratford

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

I dug some worms yesterday afternoon and took the little boat for a spin down to Jumpinpin this morning . 
Launched at the Alberton ramp at about 5.30 am and enjoyed the cruise down out through the mouth of the Logan River then , down past the power lines  , and ended up down near Golden Bank .The sand flies were bad as usual, till the sun got  properly up and the breeze picked up a little - lucky I took long pants, shoes and a full can of bushman’s.Sorted my way through undersized bream , grunter ,flathead and sting rays and ended up with a bakers dozen of pretty good quality whiting  by 10am  , got one that gave Kats 40cm model a little nudge ,  but fell short by a few mm’s and wasn’t good enough to  make the grade.

Just had some for tea , they’re hard to beat !