Bretto77

Yummy feed there.

Stitch up lol

Talk about being pipped at the post by @Kat. She hasn't even had to put up a photo

Can't see a March whiting entry for @Kat???

Nice work. Catching beach worms frustrates me lol. Lack of practice and experience in that department.

You can't machine for ever Bob... Everyone needs rest and time to prioritize. Now, about those north siders...

Were chocolate donuts and jam drops deployed?

I feel your pain. The question is what to do with them? I got a very rude shock in Tinaroo dam a few years back... It's been overrun by forktail catfish. They are taking over fresh and salt. The humble mouth Almighty appeared to be gone from that impoundment. Fished it so much as a young kid and never caught a single forky. The odd eel tail was caught however. Mouth Almighty was ever present. Things have changed a lot.

Thanks for the leaderboard update @ellicat....

Spotted grunter 42 Whiting 39.5???

Omg... EDIT... "Sorted"....... Shouldn't you have got out your red pen @kmcrosby78?

Thanks Hamish. It had it's frustrations but that ultimately meant opportunity for learning. Keep gathering your data and use the tools available now to interpret it. I wish I had done that better

The "vermin" is consideration for a whole other discussion at some stage. I think a conversation about changes noticed in systems is warranted and worthwhile. It was good to get a feed for the effort. Always great to get pipped at the post by @Kat

Yes Steve it's the protein for quite a few meals for us. You get the learning experience that you can't get if you buy that protein from a shop also. Was a good day overall.

A very late notice and unexpected child free weekend revealed itself yesterday morning. While I was not happy about the circumstances, @Kat and I wasted little time in seeing the silver lining. With a coastal wind warning current it would be tucking up a creek somewhere that didn't involve travelling great distances in the boat. Our regular haunt ticked the boxes. We organised some blood worms, packed the boat, some sandwiches etc and off we went to brave the wind. There were plenty of spare parks at paradise point ramp as expected. We could have launched much closer but a better ramp with a pontoon and no cross current is worth a couple of minutes travelling in the boat, even in yesterday's wind. We found a spot that was sheltered from the wind and anchored up. It was less than about twenty seconds before my basically free spool drag screamed off. The catfish that appeared shortly after at the boat signalled the start of what would become a monotonously regular annoyance. My next bait was out a few minutes before it screamed off in a similar fashion and I think I actually called catfish again but was pleasantly surprised when a reasonable spotted grunter appeared at the boat. It had actually made a bit of a mess of my 10lb leader so I'm glad I opted for the net. @Kat couldn't seem to get any interest on her side of the boat yet and started making noise about swapping sides. Very soon it didn't matter what side of the boat you were on it was catfish aplenty. This went on for a while before I landed a solid whiting that was frustratingly shy of the magic 40cm mark. There were a lot of other undersized grunter, a few legal bream and tarwhine which were released, (and of course the mandatory pony fish). Kat then landed a good legal whiting, but it was back to catfish and undersized spotted grunter straight after that. Unfortunately it was looking like we were going to have to endure a lot of undesirables to get a feed of whiting. We chose to move to try and escape the catfish etc but to no avail. It was the same everywhere, a couple of good fish and then we just couldn't get past the vermin. @Kat bettered me on the whiting tally again and contributed two very solid specimens that were almost identical to the first one I got. But neither of us managed to bust the 40cm mark yesterday. Catfish OMG the catfish. Wow, to think that @kat wanted to rename her boat to "Katfish".

Crew morale sorted

Well done. No doubt @Katwill be baking jam drops for the next trip with Brian . Great results in tough conditions

I often wondered about this too. I thought that the scientific description (Bidyanus bidyanus) came largely from an aboriginal word for them and basically translates to "grunt grunt". This kind of works given that they are actually part of the grunter family and not a true perch. "Happy moments" is another common name for a fish that for sure has left some wondering... Looks like a fantastic trip overall, good job

They are great fun and the places you find them often tend to be very picturesque. Well done

Never fished it but often looked as I went by and thought that it had to hold fish.

Shame about the numbers. Looks similar to scenes I remember from Tinaroo when I was a young tacker.

Very nice boat. Looks like you definitely have got it's mojo on track too! Congratulations. One day.... One day I'll be able to get a bigger boat

Working holiday?

Yes they are bad down here too. When I was fishing up that way we used to have trouble with them sometimes but it definitely seems to be harder to get fish past them anywhere these days. While the officially adopted data may say otherwise, the endangered idea is hard to sell to the average fisho.