Bob9863

That's why I like presetting my drags, I just set the VANFORD 5000 to 7.5kg, that won't Max the rod and it should pull up any big fish. I'm really looking forward to testing this outfit out soft plastic fishing for arapima. That's, what I bought this rig for. Interesting point, while setting the drag I broke 50lb line with only 9kg of drag, I found that strange. That wasn't break at the knot either that was break at the bail arm.

All my lines are heavier then the drag or the rod, what I don't like is, having more drag then the rod can handle. I've actually got 60lb braid on my Ryoga that's got the 6kg drag, although the line is thinner then the 30lb braid on the Steez. My only worry is the Vanford 5000, it's, got 9kg of drag on an 8kg rod and 165m of 50lb braid. I find drag settings important when you get imbalance like that. At least with less drag on an overhead you can apply a little thumb pressure if you have to, and low stick the rod.

I've been doing something wrong then.

Good day, but how can anyone go fishing in a white shirt let alone keep it clean.

I do the same for my light spin gear for Redfin. It's important when finesse fishing soft plastics to have enough drag to set the hook, so on my 2kg set up I fill a milk jug with 1750ml of water and use that to set the drag. That avoids it damaging the rod but leaves plenty of drag to set the hook on the Redfin or fight a big Yellow belly if you happen to luck into one. I'm actually a fan of bait runner style reels for bait fishing, especially with circle hooks, although currently the only ones I have are a 5600 Abu Garcia Ambassadeur and the Shimano Tekota 300 and they are overheads. I used to only buy bait runners or rear drag spinning reels, I've only recently switched to front drag stuff.

I don't use a medical grade scale, just an engineering one but I think that's pretty damn accurate. You can use fish scales if you want, it might not give you an exact measurement but it's only going to be off by a few percent. Mono will increase the reading due to the stretch adding to the force, but I only use braid these days. I do like to set my drag on my rods, a set of kitchen scales and some empty milk containers works well. Just fill the containers to the desired drag weight, lock the drag, then lift and hold, adjust the drag until it starts to move and your set.

Does anyone else here actually test the drag on their reels against the factory specifications? I've noticed a bit of discrepancy between listed factory specifications and real reel performance. I've had some reels, especially the cheaper ones claim to have say an 11kg drag, but when tested they only had a real world 8kg. Then others like both my Diawa Royga and Steez claim to have a 5kg drag, yet when tested they actually had 6kg each. I think it's worth while to find out exactly how much drag you really have, for instance the steez is on a 6kg rod and I figured when I bought it that it would never over load the rod. But after testing I know know I should be careful not to lock the drag up completely so as not to risk the rod.

My 5000 XG sits on a 6-8kg 7ft Nitro Viper 5 piece travel rod. I definitely wouldn't put it on anything bigger and the 4000 is just a touch smaller. You should be able to put 200m of 20lb braid on the 4000, that would make that a pretty flexible outfit. Especially for boat fishing.

A 5-8kg would be just about perfect.

You would probably be fine with an 8kg rod, I've caught much bigger fish on an 8kg rod but I would not go any bigger as they aren't a very large reel. A good 6kg rod if it's solid with a good backbone and feel would do the job nicely with that reel as long as you don't Crank the drag right up. It would also balance quite well, just avoid one that's too soft, I'd probably go something around 6'6"-7ft.

Oh he loved it, he never thought he would ever catch anything bigger then the regular stuff. He actually bought that boat when I moved south, and a big rod and he's still catching them today. Once you get a monster hooked then your hooked for life. I highly recommend shark fishing as some of the best sports fishing around, but I also highly endorse catch and release as you can't eat the big ones. The little ones around the 1m mark however are brilliant eating, and that's coming from a guy that very very rarely eats fish.

Not saying I've ever done this but hypothetically say I had an 8hp Evinrude on an 11ft tinnie and didn't want to have to register it. A hypothetical fix would be to get a, sign writer to change the 8hp to a 5hp, and that hypothetical boat wouldn't need to be registered. If it was a 2nd hand motor then hypothetically you would have bought it as a 40hp.

I used to buy a massive shopping bag full off the trailers in Darwin for $50 a bag. Them fellas like a bit of cash in hand beer money.

Ah, that's the same stuff I use when sanitising home brew gear.

It makes little sense, if the farmed prawns sold to people have white spot, then the ones in the water definitely do too. I'd say it has more to do with shops selling imported prawns as Australian prawns, but as dodgy as the big two are when it comes to price fixing they are usually pretty good with local produce. But what could they do to bait prawns that would make them any less likely to have white spot then the fit for human consumption ones?

One trick I learnt early on is not to buy bait prawns, I buy Aussie caught prawns from Coles or woolworths as they are much better bait and actually cost less then bait prawns. A bloke I used to see fishing one of my favourite spots up in Darwin used to do that, he would fish a leader, no sinker and a whole pealed prawn and used to catch some big bream like that. It made me a convert, although the downside is when fishing light gear you can hook some much bigger fish like that. You can buy big Australian prawns for around $26kg or buy many little bait prawns for $12 a 400gm packet. ($30kg) I know what I'd rather eat and the fish do too. But getting the kid out fishing with dad is a win no matter how good the fishing is.

I've got the Shimano Vanford 5000 on an 8kg rod, the advantage I found in it over the 4000 was the bigger Handel and the oversized knob. But it's main ability is its brilliant casting, I spool mine with ultra thin 50lb braid for shore based fishing for very large fish but its way over kill for most boat based fishing. You would probably be well served with something like the Penn Fierce III 600 for much more line capacity and the live liner feature makes it brilliant for more fishing situations. I simply can't fault an ugly stick either, I'd avoid a longer one unless your casting as short rods give you better power and control. If it's going to involve a lot of casting for kingfish ect I'd go a Vanford 5000, 30lb braid and 7ft ball park in an 8kg ugly stick. I find the longer rods are more forgiving when you sacrifice stiff power for the ability to play the fish. If it's going to involve more bottom bouncing and jigging I'd go the Penn fierce either 4000 or 6000 depending on how much line you think you will need and a 5-6ft ugly stick in the 8-10kg range to give you more stiff control when fighting the fish.

I find if you take a few photos then the lot keeping undersized fish soon leave. If everyone did that there might be a lot less people keeping them. Around here it's a different story, it's actually a good thing to clean out all the undersized redfin. But with no bag or size limit its not a problem, you get so many schools of the small fish that due to biomass constraints very few few get to grow up to be decent fish let alone big ones. As, weird as it is to say, we actually need more people to keep more of the little ones here, I never thought I would say that.

I used to pull them in on a little 10ft tinnie, that can be a little tricky, I'd hate to try a big one in a kayak. This was a bloke from work that I took out, it was his 1st ever big fish let anyone a shark.

When land based I found I had to gear up a bit, mostly because you needed about 300-350m of line and you needed heavier gear to turn their heads. Anything 1.5m and under wasn't a problem but for anything in the 1.8m-3.5m size you really had to put your back into it to keep them from spooling you. The underwater topography changes things too, rocky or coral bottoms posed a big problem or bringing them into a jetty. If you bought them into a jetty when they still had fight in them then they would wrap you up and snap you off. But if you tired them out and brought them in near the surface then you could hold them there to get a good look before cutting them free.

That's a pretty good guide, I do things a little different but I mostly only small differences and I tend to fish land based and that changes things quite a bit. But we have pulled up 3m tiger sharks on 15lb mono from a boat. Do you ever target them from the land?

Do you only ever live bait? When I lived at Brisbane we would go out and clean up on the bass with lures. Although judging by the weather conditions you would have to be pretty keen to go out at all, that looks a fairly unpleasant day to be out on a boat in.

No that's the great thing about it, absolutely zero effect on the plastics action or performance. It also works, great if your fishing big long plastics in heavier situations, as it let's you use a short jig head so the action actually improves in that situation if any.

That's when it works the best, it's, not usually needed but for weak bites and nips it's the bomb.

Here's a little tip I've been trying out on finicky fish. The lake is down and the shore fishing is slowing right down, the colder temperatures aren't helping either as it's making the redfin a bit lazy. When the fishing gets like that and you start getting a lot of tail nips and short strikes this is what I do. I slow the retrieve right down and use the shortest jig heads I've got, then you tie a treble as a trailer from the eye of the jig so you can put one hook in right at the base of the tail. That tends to pick you up fish that are nipping but not fully going after the plastic, especially when using curly tails. It also works if you have a damaged jig or just cut the hook part mostly off. I like to leave the hook on as it makes, sure the plastic stays on, but if the fish are really picky the cutting the hook and just using a treble trailer will get you more hook ups then the standard jig will.