FadKing

Hi All,
I have been doing a bit of location scouting on QLD Globe and was thinking of taking my little fella to Clontarf on the weekend, weather permitting. I have a 14ft One Tree Canoe and the plan was to have a flick along the little reef that runs from near the boat ramp to the bridge.
Just wondering if its worth our time. He is only 3.5 and will be his first fish if we are lucky enough to get one so happy with what ever grabs his bait.
Cheers
Brendan 

Hi All,
I have been doing a bit of location scouting on QLD Globe and was thinking of taking my little fella to Clontarf on the weekend, weather permitting. I have a 14ft One Tree Canoe and the plan was to have a flick along the little reef that runs from near the boat ramp to the bridge.
Just wondering if its worth our time. He is only 3.5 and will be his first fish if we are lucky enough to get one so happy with what ever grabs his bait.
Cheers
Brendan 

fresh water gar are always a great option. i know my brother had great fun with his young kids on the gar. tiny hooks and a small piece of bread

very true

Hi All,
I have been doing a bit of location scouting on QLD Globe and was thinking of taking my little fella to Clontarf on the weekend, weather permitting. I have a 14ft One Tree Canoe and the plan was to have a flick along the little reef that runs from near the boat ramp to the bridge.
Just wondering if its worth our time. He is only 3.5 and will be his first fish if we are lucky enough to get one so happy with what ever grabs his bait.
Cheers
Brendan 

Why not try one of the freshwater dams, that will cover bait collection and I'm sure @rayke1938 will give you some tips and tricks to hook up on some fish in the canoe

i took my 2yo to fish on my kayak in the pine river just near the lawnton boat ramp. was nice and calm and proteced. very minimal traffic too. on the lower tides there are a few sand banks exposed that we could walk on and fish from. we got a few good bream for our trouble. report here
 

Brendan, the best way to catch a fish is to have a line in the water. Don't thank me, I'm happy to help. 
 
Jokes aside. 
Of course it is worth your time. 
Who cares if you catch an eel? It's about that father son time that you'll never get back. 
I say go for it. 

very true

Why not Brendan, as long as the little fella is safe doing it.
That's what it's all about. 
Never know what you'll catch until you try.
Good luck.😊

Hi All,
I have been doing a bit of location scouting on QLD Globe and was thinking of taking my little fella to Clontarf on the weekend, weather permitting. I have a 14ft One Tree Canoe and the plan was to have a flick along the little reef that runs from near the boat ramp to the bridge.
Just wondering if its worth our time. He is only 3.5 and will be his first fish if we are lucky enough to get one so happy with what ever grabs his bait.
Cheers
Brendan 

Get him a Jarvis walker combo from kmart. 
Cheap as chips. 
It will do what you need it to do provided you wash it down and give it a fine coat of lanolin after every use. 
Don't just lob it in the shed and expect it to work next time. They have a tendency to corrode really quickly if salt residue is left on them.

I don't like the combos, but for a 4 year old it's a good place to start. 
I wouldn't get a kids specific one as they are universally rubbish and won't last long, but some of the slightly better starter packages are good value for money. 
Get one that has a good rod as it will last, then upgrade the reel later if he's still interested and it wears out. 
I'd go a Ugly Stik Tackleratz combo from BCF, it's about as good as a kids outfit gets. 

thanks guys
 

i got a shimano sennia combo for 110, it came with a 2-3kg rod and a 2500 reel. it was a few years ago that i got it and it is awesome, ive caught jewfish, thredfin, kingfish, snapper, flathead and even tuna on it, it is hard to grow out of when it is good for everything.  i would suggest it as a good rod for him, and if he ends up not liking fishing, its all yours

What old scaley said.

Hi all,
My little fella turns 4 soon and he has shown a little bit of interest in fishing so we were thinking of getting him a setup for his birthday.
Just wondering if the small, cheap kids set ups are worth getting or not. Will he quickly out grow it and am I better off with a cheap reel like a Sienna and a cheap rod that will last a bit longer?
Obviously don't want to be invested for heaps for him to lose interest.
Cheers
Brendan

thanks guys
 

I would be going as cheap as possible for a 4yo. Takes a while for them to realise that you shouldn’t drop the combo in the sand or water. Glass rod is best as he won’t break it easily. If you want better stuff, look for second hand gear. Once he has mastered the art, and if he is still interested, you could upgrade.  Good luck, it is a special time.

Hi Brendan
I think those kids combos last decently long, provided they are taken care of. But I have used the line on them before and it is garbage, so maybe buy some OK quality mono instead. 🙂 
Cheers Hamish

Hi All, here's my first proper report!
This report will be about a weekend Noosa trip I went on with @AUS-BNE-FISHO , primarily fishing with lures and doing some live bait fishing. 
DAY 1:
Hamish and I arrived at our Noosaville waterfront Airbnb at around 4pm. We both got straight to fishing. Hamish and I brought our lighter lure rods, live bait rods, and a cast net down to a jetty directly in front of our property.
After a few throws of the cast net, Hamish caught about 10 bait size herring and a couple silver biddies. We quickly cast out our baits with light leaders and circle hooks.
While waiting for the fish to bite the bait, Hamish and I casted our lures around. I used a little grub, which got followed up to the surface by a little trevally, but unfortunately didn't hook up. From memory, Hamish casted around little bassday sugapen or some other surface hardbody, with no luck.
Regardless of the copious amounts of bait busting up all around us, our livies didn't get a touch. We continued to fish the jetty until dinner (around 9 pm), with no other action. However, we did notice an artificially lit bridge within walking distance that looked promising. There were lots of pylons, little rocks, and ok water depth. It seemed fishy. 
After dinner, we walked down with our lures (no bait), and fished in and around the pylons. We saw a big ray cruising down in the shallows which freaked both of us out. Lol. I didn't have any luck fishing the same 2.5 inch grub as I did on the jetty, but Hamish caught a tiny 25cm ish flatty almost right below him. I don't remember what he caught it on, but it was some sort of a little Zman or Baitjunkie plastic. After about half an hour of fishing under the bridge, we headed home and went to bed. 
 
 
DAY 2
Hamish and I had an early start today, waking up at about 5:15 AM. We walked a couple kilometres and fished a few Noosa River beachside spots that a mate had recommended to Hamish. We were both using some plastics casting in and around boats, and the flats. However, we didn't have much luck. After about 40 minutes of fishing the spots, we headed back home.
On the way home, we fished some boat hire marinas directly on the Noosa River. Casting out about 20 metres near some boats, I caught 3 30cm ish flatties on my 2.5 inch mudblood minnow baitjunkie on a 1/8th #2 jighead. This was my highlight of the trip, because although they were small, they were my first 3 proper fish on lures! I was as happy as could be, and it was obvious Hamish now had a bit of motivation too. He casted around the same sort of area and hooked up to a 27cm bream on his Zman lure in "houdini" colour from memory. We had both caught fish on lures by now, and were pretty happy.

My Flatties

We headed home for breakfast at around 9:30am. 
After lunch and a rest, Hamish and I got curious and explored for new nearby spots. Walking down a path we came across this very sketchy, but promising looking bridge. Along the way we also noticed a sort of mini dam, that regulated the water in the main body where our property and jetty was. There was also a traffic stop type thing for boats passing through from the noosa river into the canals. 
No wonder the canals were so calm, and shallow: We both realised that the canals weren't tidal and were instead just human-regulated bodies of water. Hence why our livies weren't bit on day 1: it wasn't likely any decent fish were actually swimming about in there. 
Back to the promising bridge, and Hamish casted right under and just slow rolled his baitjunkie. I was a few metres away when I heard a yell from Hamish and the scream of his reel. Hamish had hooked up to something big! I walked over, to see it was a huge flatty that had smacked the lure from the deep. Hamish had fought it to shore, but we didn't bring a net, as we were just sussing out the spot. So I had to use Hamish's shirt and stick my hand down the flatties big gob to land it. I was super happy for Hamish. I had taken him on a trip and he caught a great fish. We both felt like we had personally succeeded now!

@AUS-BNE-FISHO's high 60's flatty!
It was now early afternoon, and Hamish, my dad and brother, and my myself decided to go fishing at popular bridge. We had no luck on lures, but we caught some moses perch, bream, and butter bream on prawn and worm. We then headed to the noosa spit for a late arvo flick. My dad and brother fished for whiting off the beach while Hamish and I casted lures all around the joint. I didn't have any luck but Hamish caught a nice first cast bream on the sand flats. 

Bream
DAY 3
Today was the day to leave. We had caught fish, and had plenty of fun. Hamish and I didn't go fishing in the morning, instead we walked to a nearby Tackle World and picked up some Zman plastics and jigheads. Other than that, the morning was uneventful and we headed back down to Brisbane. 
CONCLUSION
Thanks to everyone who read the report. Hope you enjoyed the read!
 

After a few successful moments of taking my 2yo out in the kayak for very short paddles, decided its time to try and have a fishing session with him on board. Only paddled about 200m from the launch point incase it all went sour. It all started with tears as he wanted to play with the car instead...but after a fire truck going screaming over the bridge some clever distracting by dad, we were off! My game plan was simple, servo prawns and one rod. catch anything at all to show him and go home happy. Turned out the bream loved the servo prawns. Caught a few legal fish and a few under sized. Not bad for a 1.5 hour session, 200m from a boat ramp and using servo prawns. Little bloke had a few nerves and was happier to see the fish released "bye bye fish, BYE BYE FISH!!!), but he loves to keep looking back at the photos of the trip so ill take that as a success. On the plus side, it means i can get more fishing in as ill just take him with me now.
any tips on how to get kids not to hate wearing their pfd?
 

It's been awhile since i've had time to enjoy a fishing session because of work commitments. 
Had a great night last night with my son going back to basics targeting some whiting in the shallows at a place we used to fish 20 years ago. Was good to keep it simple. Pumped some yabbies at dusk and fished the run in tide till abut 9pm.
 

Got up at 5am with my ten year old son Liam and had our first baits in the water at 5:30am. Walked further from the headland at Hastings Point than yesterday morning in the hope of coming across some big whiting again, but didn’t find any. 
Liam proceeded to keep me very busy casting his line out (I was wrong yesterday, his rod is only 6ft 6inches (not 7ft) but with a 5 ball sinker (compared to a 4 ball we’d used the previous two sessions I was getting good distal for him and the extra weight was keeping the bait out in the gutter much better which also negated the sweep a fair bit. 
Most times by the time I went back to grab my rod I would turn around to see he was hooked up. His first fish was a nice bream and he proceeded to catch two more, along with four dart for a total of 7 keepers. Me on the other hand caught a bream (the smallest of the four) and three dart (one small one was thrown back, our only small fish of the morning.
At about 7:30am I started pondering Liam had dropped a fish or lost a bait and he couldn’t recall it happening which means for two hours each bait produced a fish. Sure enough, I cursed him with him being baited on his next bait.
I dropped a couple including one nice suspected bream that pulled the hooks due to the pressure on the line as the tide sucked back out.
Another magic morning with my young fella and then nice fish for the table. The bucket was a bit heavier on the walk back, particularly the sand track up through the dunes. Hopefully heading back out this arvo with my 7yr old son George as well, plus my two nieces. George and the older niece are both keen to come tomorrow morning but I think the 5am start will put them off ….

All fish again caught on pippies, which were in plague proportions once the tide had started going out.

 
 

It will be the mechanical bail arm closer. It is normal. Just use your hand to rotate it a little and cast away.