Bob9863

While fishing today I heard the fishing was going really good at the weir, only trouble is the water is so high and fast nothing regular will hold still long enough in the current long enough to get a bite. Fellas have been using lead fish, basicly fish shaped sinker between 1oz and 2oz, you rig it like a tassie devil and jerk it off the bottom as it makes its way down current. Only trouble is only one shop is selling them and they are pretty big, not that well made and cost $4 each. Solution, make my own. I bought some long flat sinkers, 28gn and 57gm so right in the butter zone. I then cut some stainless welding wire, twisted a loop with a treble hook with some red heat shrink on it. Put the sinker on, then made another loop and put a swivel on. Then I squeezed it flat in a vice and bent the base to add a little movement. Everyone uses them plain lead which work but look a little rudimentary. So I made some like that and then powder coated some with hot dip jig paint. I think they look alright, not to see how they work. Traditional style finish New hopefully improved style.

They say sharing is caring, but at lest when someone raided your mad cab pot in the NT, they were decent enough to leave you a 6 pack in it. Nice bass too, seems to be the week for them.

I picked up some little lightweight hard bodies the other day for the trout stream opening but I couldn't resist testing them and the new, waders out today down at the lake. Walked out about 30m in a flooded grass bed area and started flicking, about an hour in I hooked this decent fella.

Nice size bass that one.

Always the way, like the old cod fishing saying goes, if your not getting snagged then your fishing in the wrong spot.

Tried behind the weir today, the waters, running that fast all I got was lots of snags. Lost 6 lures today so I'm trying soft plastics with some heavy heads tomorrow.

Just bloody annoying when you think it will be the only one. I might have to set up my extra long rod, it gets great distance and should put me out deeper where they are holding. Otherwise it's out in the boat.

Tried a little soft plastic fishing yesterday, I got one 1st cast and thought it might be a good day but only caught 1 more in the next two hours. I guess the water is still a bit cold, but both times I clearly hit a, school but unlike with the Tenkara fishing I couldn't get a second bite from either, I guess the casting spooked them.

Nice bass, one thing I do miss about living in qld.

One thing I found out that made it harder for me was that I used too long a tippet. With conventional fly fishing you might have 10ft of leader and 3-4ft of tippet. But with tenkara there's no leader so I was using 6ft of tippet, but I should only use 3-4ft, even 2ft can be fine at times. I'm really looking forward to trout season, ultralight finesse lure and plastics on the spin and this new weapon. That's a, deadly combo I hope.

Both, until I figured out what casting technique works with a fly rod leader. It's a bit different and likes a long drop where as traditionally the cast stops at 45° Landing is the tricky bit, I lost a couple until I got the hang of it. I also started casting better when I switched to left hand. I learnt to cast left handed when I started finesse fishing, and it seems to carry over. But it's, also very accurate casting, very direct. I just cast and sort of point where i want it to go with the rod.

I finally got a chance to try it out today, it took a bit to get the casting right as you have to be fairly gentle about it. Spent over 2 hours working things out without any bites and then found a school in a deep rocky corner near a bridge and pulled out a dozen in about 15-20min. So I'm feeling a bit more optimistic for trout season.

Bugger your right, this year is getting away from me, but brilliant news. The NSW season starts a month later and that's usually what I go off, that's the good thing about living on the border I guess.

The season opens up on the 2nd of September, so still a few months off. It should be perfect for my area as down the bottom where I am near where it joins the lake there aren't too many big fish. There's a 5 fish limit, no minimum size and you can only keep 2 of 35cm. That protects the breeding stock and most fish are only this sort of size anyway.

It's a fly rod, but you don't use a reel. You attach fly line to a rope tip section and then your leader. This rod is 12ft so I use a 12ft fly line and 6ft of tippet. You cast one handed and when you get a fish you high stick it and either lift it by the line or net it. It's great for creeks, or rivers that aren't to wide, it's a very direct form of fishing. Here's a very rough video on it. The Americans don't do it nearly as good as the Japanese, in Japan it's almost a religion.

I went down to a local tackle shop to get some some line to try a bit of tankara fishing out, had flys and the other stuff already. I mentioned it to the bloke and had to explain what it was and he said I think I know what your talking about and reached behind the counter and pulls out two tenkara rods. There was no price on them so he calls the owner up to ask, I figured if they were around $100-$150 I'd grab one. Well apparently the owners son ordered them a few years ago and nobody had a clue what to put on them so he said $50. So I bought both. I have a mate that wants one too and that seemed like a bargain deal, a bit of searching online and the cheapest I found them for was $130. So two for less then the price of one. They had tenkara lines on the shelf to that must have been ordered at the same time as nobody had ever bought one, so I grabbed a couple. I picked up a new little fly box and then noticed a a container with a bunch of mixed flys in it and asked about them. He said they were mixed left over flys and were only $1 each, so I grabbed a dozen of then too. Now I'm all set.

Man when I lived in Darwin I had some brilliant mud crab spots. Used to bring in a haul of em and eat 2-3 each for a meal. Big big buggers too, take a finger or toe off if your not careful tying the claws.

A funny thing about Basa, that's, another name for Mekong giant catfish. In their home countries they are treated as a sport fish and nobody really eats them any more. As to depression, it's a hard thing to deal with, I've started to get that lure fishing. When every time you go out and every cast there's no expectation of a bight and your just going through the motions, it can get really disheartening. After the fires and the resulting fish kills in the rivers and lake I didn't fish for two years waiting to hear they bounced back. That's one reason I try different techniques and styles of fishing. Atm there are no fish biting around my local spots, too cold and the fish are too deep. So I'm swapping over gear for my long cast stuff and targeting different areas where I can hit the deep water but it's a struggle. Hopefully you find something that works for you as fishing is, suppose to recharge your batteries, not deplete them. Good luck.

That's one thing that has made me buy and sell about 7 or 8 boats over the last 6 or so years. I've had everything from modified kayaks to 5m cabin cruisers. The big boats are big effort to take out and expensive to run and the little ones are still effort and more specialised in how you use them. Now I prefer shore based fishing again just for the simplicity of being able to throw the rods in the car and go. As I enjoy the act of fishing I have moved away from bait, especially as I don't eat them. Lures are a more enjoyable way for me to fish, soft plastics especially. I used to just power fish hard bodies trying to maximise my water coverage but have learnt that fishing slower and maximising how I work the water then the amount of water I cover has produced more fish and more enjoyment from my fishing. Seeing how other people fish in other parts of the world has opened my eyes to a lot of new ways to fish both with bait and with lures.

Funny thing is I don't eat fish, so fishing for me is a catch and release way to enjoy being out for the day or an afternoon. I like the challenge of catching them using different techniques and styles and I like mastering a new skill or technique. Most of this year and last has been trying out different finesse fishing techniques. But now I think I might give tenkara fishing a try in preparation for the next trout season. It's a very interesting method that to me is a natural extension from finesse fishing techniques. And that's why I do it, I like the challenge, I like to mix it up and like activity of actually getting out and mastering a new skill.

Nice boat there, good for around the bay or freshwater impoundments and rivers. Good size deck too, plenty of room for storage or casting.

It doesn't quite work like that unfortunately. Especially when the wife out of the blue says "why don't we get a new couch" and your forced to reply "I wish you said that before I spent $2500 on a couple of new fishing rods" But at least that conversion happened in summer so it wasn't cold spending a couple of nights sleeping on the old couch. Although quickly back on topic, I've always found it's better to spend the bulk of your budget buying the best reel you can and spending less on the rod. Especially when fishing in salt water, you want a reel that will avoid corroding, if you look after it then it will serve you well for many years to come. You can always upgrade the rod latter if you want.

Better fishing gear then a lot of other things. If it's your passion then why not spend a bit more on some better gear? I used to use a lot of budget stuff when I was young until the 1st time I used someones better gear and then I was hooked on best stuff I could afford. The only downside is as you get older you start liking more and more much better and much more expensive gear. I might not catch any more fish with it but I enjoy using the gear more, or perhaps appreciate the feel of using it more. I think $300 is the butter zone for a decent fishing outfit, but that's me. The only person you have to justify spending any amount of money irrespective of your age is yourself, well until you get older and have to either justify or hide how much you spend to the wife.

I use a couple of Nitro rods for that, a 6kg Undertaker classic barra for lures to 1oz although it's 6'6" and a Gangster 007 10kg for the heavier stuff, it's only 5'11" and really stiff. It's a 4 piece travel rod which is great for transport and performs like a one piece. But there are some great other options like a 6" Daiwa Tatula 601HB that's a 6-12kg with a nice fast action. The other option if you want something short and stiff is to get a jigging rod.

I've used them on redfin and carp with good success, better then J hooks but I got onto them fishing for shark, Spanish mackerel and GT's when I lived in Darwin and started using them on smaller fish as I liked them so much. But for smaller fish you need to use a smaller hook then you would for a J style hook. They were particularly good for bream, I'd fish a whole pealed prawn with no sinker and a 1m fluorocarbon leader, just let it drift with the drag on and when a bream picked it up it would dart away with it from the other fish and hook itself. For redfin I fish a single worm with the hook in the top and the rest left to trail. It works well like that, just don't crowd the hook with bait.