Neil Stratford

If you plan to use your VHF radio - Yes you need to do a marine radio course to use a VHF radio. Use channel 16 in an emergency. Use Channel 16 or 73 for Manly Coast Guard Use Channel 16 or 67 or 73 for the Seaway Tower Gold Coast Use 68 or 72 for Rec Boating activity. Regards Neil

Fished the southern bay again . Put the boat in at 2.30pm Beautiful afternoon on the water, the bay was like a mirror.. Probably too good as the water was crystal clear. We need a bit of rain to put some colour back in it. Fished with soft plastics , but had to sort through a lot of underside fish to get a feed ,but finally got there. Pulled the boat out at 5pm . Left the fish on ice , and will fillet them tomorrow,when they harden up a bit. Regards Neil

He was out having a walk , just had to pick him up and convince him to come home with me.

Just getting ready for lunch today. Looks like a another nice day ,plan today is : cappuccino’s and Qld lolly pops by the bay for morning tea , then some nice fresh crusty bread crab sandwiches for lunch . If we feel up to it , we might even follow up with a bit of a walk along the foreshore. Retirement is hard , wish I was back at work - not.

Decided to fish the southern bay this morning . Didn’t put the boat in till about 6.30am and knew with a low tide at about 7am it was going to be a struggle. On top of that conditions were glassy as ,with very clear water ,which always makes fishing in the shallows difficult.Anyway it was better than watching the grass grow. Got about a dozen under sized snapper first up and lost a very good fish that found a snag and broke me off . Ended up getting one snapper that went 54cm , a couple of flathead, a sole and a crab that when added up , put together a nice little feed.

Just had 2 days of arts and crafts with the wife. Whilst I was busy outside making up a new jig head mould ,pouring some molten lead and playing with some paint to produce some coral trout hybrid jigs , the wife was upstairs printing me out a cool polo shirt. See below photos of the finished goods.Just got to get motivated again and make another 20 or 30 more jigs and pour a few more sinkers.

Can’t see anything wrong with it Ray. It’s still roundish! You May have used a bit more fuel towing the boat though Regards Neil

Nice reel , have a look at Wilson’s Blade N Tails 7 ft 1 piece 6 to 12 lb . It’s a light and pretty fast tapered rod with a fair amount of pulling power. regards neil

Very nice fish, good to see your effort paid off! regards neil

Has your reel got a full spool of line on it? You’ll cast a whole lot further if it’s got a full spool. If your leader is too long ,especially if it’s very heavy , that will also reduce your casting distance. regards Neil

Good to see you getting some good numbers out of NPD again. The individual fish icons with accompanying numbers on the smaller hummingbird appears to be depths that they are sitting at. My Furuno comes with a mode called , accufish , this measures the length of individual fish and shows a similar display. Does Hummingbird come with a mode that displays lengths instead of depths? If it does , it might help at Hinze to sort the bass from the barred grunter. Well done . Regards Neil

Yes I put a few barbs in the shank of the hooks with an angle grinder and then set them inside the drilled out club shafts with two part epoxy. I then bound over the top of the hook and club shaft and epoxied over the binding. I’m happy with over all strength of the epoxy Tested it by dragging my 6m boat on trailer over the drive way so it will hold in place.

I found a driver and a matching 4 wood both with graphite shafts at the markets on Sunday.At $4 each , bargain I thought , Took the heads off and converted them into a couple of small gaffs . Used a couple of big old chemically sharpened shark hooks for the hooks.

Well done , healthy looking fish .

I would have had a replica made to. Trophy fish neil

Orrr …… never thought of that ,dangerous ground you thread there! signed anonymously

These are my arts and crafts bait needles. Approx 20c per needle from the charity shops , I get ones sized about 2.5 to 3.5mm , make sure you get the alloy ones ( alloy ones are colder to touch than the plastic ones ) simply flatten the pointy end with a hammer on some concrete , file and shape to a nice sharp thin point and drill a 1.5mm hole towards the point.They’re very cheap and easy to make and don’t rust . I probably just created a rush on the charity shops knitting needles , the price will now most certainly inflate ! I use pieces of thin flexible copper wire pre cut to lengths about 20mm long to tie the mouths shut. If you have this all ready to go baits can be rigged and reset very quickly. Neil

Hi Lachrdr, The Spanish mackerel are now moving north , I find them more difficult to find come the end of May in waters around Brisbane , but if you find a few , chances are they’ll be trophy size fish. Kate , sorry already given nearly all of it away already . Junky , next time I go out I’ll attempt a video on my iPhone of rigging a bait for you , it only takes about 40 Seconds , I use home made bait needles ( old alloy knitting needles) . Common mistake made is failure to tightly wire the baits mouths shut . If the baits mouth is left open- even a little ,they fill with water, spin and become soft and soggy and fall apart very quickly when trolling .With the mouth wired shut , it’s very easy to make a small tuna swim like a live one and can be trolled very easily all day and even refrozen and trolled next time . Sounds like this maybe your problem.?? regards Neil

You should have tried converting the Longtail into sashimi - bit of soy sauce + wasabi = yum ! Well done those bigger Mac tuna and Longtails they certainly go hard. regards, Neil

Still had a dozen or so small Bonito in the freezer , so took my brother out for a late in the season troll for Spanish last Tuesday morning. Conditions were a bit how’s your father with about 15 to 18 knots of south west creating a bit of wind chop, this combined with a chunky 1.5 m swell swayed us to stay in very close to shore.Put the baits out and got a fish in less than 5 minutes , then dropped another one probably less then 30 seconds later. Was hoping for the bigger winter fish but beggars can’t be choosers so we settled for the school size fish . We got a feed very easily and left early , washed the boat and dressed the fish out at the ramps facilities, only to get caught in a traffic jam from hell just north of the Caloundra turn off. Better than watching the grass grow I suppose and a least got to test my new home made gaff out. I tried to post a video but it got rejected , must have been too big , so I’ve just put up a couple of photos.

All Excellent fish , the big one is a cracker. So many people , complain about the lack of fish in our waters , they go out and soak pilchards, a bit of old squid or a frozen prawn and expect to catch quality fish . You’ve just posted a prime example of what can be achieved by doing it right. Excellent fish and well done on capturing the target species. Regards Neil

Well done Hamish, good to see you and your mates catching a few . Shame about the crowd . Regards Neil

Mark looks like he needs a ladder ,dam must have gone down a lot since we were last there . Murphy's law,- we'll get a heap of rain soon and the pots will go under again. Judging by that smile , looks like your feeling better again Ray . Regards Neil

With a two week 1770 trip looming and no end visible to the current SE blow , I thought I’d spend 2 days of arts and crafting. Project 1 . Made myself a 120g jig mould out of plaster of Paris and poured a few jigs.Painted them up , sealed them off with some epoxy , and added a few double assist hooks. Hopefully I they’ll go ok as trout lollies.Better than buying them at about $10 a pop and I won’t care if they get snagged or sharked. Project 2 . My current gaff looked a bit ordinary and is a bit how’s your father , the old mild steel hook’s badly rusted and only held in place with two stainless hose clamps - Feeling it ‘s obviously on its last legs, I sacrificed an old aluminium tarp pole and fashioned up a piece of stainless rod as a hook. Tempered the hook off using a little blow torch and fixed it in place , added an old piece of green plastic heat shrink that i had in the garage as a grip. Just need to pour a few sinkers in the coming week . Then hopefully this wind will have blown self out and I can get out for another fish.

Could of been better NAG- 247 !