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Fresh local mussels


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With cockles getting hard to buy and prices around $22 a kg, I was wondering if anyone has given the fresh Australian mussels that Woolworths sell for $7.50per kg a try? Even to just crush them up for berley, like we use to with cockles. Just thinking I might regret asking this, if all the fishos get onto it and the price doubles lol.

https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/productdetails/62900/woolworths-fresh-whole-black-mussels

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9 hours ago, TENNANT said:

With cockles getting hard to buy and prices around $22 a kg, I was wondering if anyone has given the fresh Australian mussels that Woolworths sell for $7.50per kg a try? Even to just crush them up for berley, like we use to with cockles. Just thinking I might regret asking this, if all the fishos get onto it and the price doubles lol.

https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/productdetails/62900/woolworths-fresh-whole-black-mussels

In my experience, there is nothing quite like the local mussels you pick and shuck on the spot

I got an "apprenticeship" off an old bloke down at the local docks and I thought I might be able to become the master, by using lighter gear and more space-aged technology.

I figured mussels were mussels and I could just buy live ones produced 70km away in ocean water. But they were no match for the disgusting, polluted, river mussels that grew on the pylons at out feet.

When fished side by side, freshly shucked, local Mussels, way outperform live ones from somewhere else. The levels of disgust, my local bream showed for foreign mussels, were alarming.

Getting outfished 15 to 2 in an hour - then becoming a fish catching machine when I borrowed some of the masters mussels - can change a mans views on things😉



 

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Ive also wondered if pureeing mussels flesh and using it as a marinade on precut chicken pieces would be a good idea

I used to make lure scents from blended mussel, oil and salt - but never tried it on baits.

I also remember watching a guy on King Island useing cotton wool dipped in the yellow un cooked gunk, inside of a cray fishes head as bait - and he was smashing the trevally on it. So anything can be made tasty if it has the right marinade😉

Cover_May_Cove5Sm.jpg

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4 hours ago, yellow door 1 said:

Ive also wondered if pureeing mussels flesh and using it as a marinade on precut chicken pieces would be a good idea

I used to make lure scents from blended mussel, oil and salt - but never tried it on baits.

I also remember watching a guy on King Island useing cotton wool dipped in the yellow un cooked gunk, inside of a cray fishes head as bait - and he was smashing the trevally on it. So anything can be made tasty if it has the right marinade😉

Cover_May_Cove5Sm.jpg

I was thinking of soaking them in some tuna oil as well. They have fresh mussels for $9 a kg grown in Port Lincoln.  If whiting are eating chicken pellets that people are using for burley, I think it's got to be worth a try, if they don't want them on the hook, they can go in the burley bucket.

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7 hours ago, TENNANT said:

I was thinking of soaking them in some tuna oil as well. They have fresh mussels for $9 a kg grown in Port Lincoln.  If whiting are eating chicken pellets that people are using for burley, I think it's got to be worth a try, if they don't want them on the hook, they can go in the burley bucket.

Not sure you can use them. I used to buy mussels from SFS and ray and annes - all which came from port lincoln - but PIRSA decided that they were too much of a risk in our waters and have banned the sale and use of them!!

I still have about 4.5 kilos in the freezer, which I'm using sparingly but will likely try harvesting them in the port when I run out - as they are gun whiting bait.

Razorfish are also very, very good but harder to come across in metro adelaide (although there are some pockets if you know where to look).

David

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Yeah, as David said my understanding also is it is not legal to use supermarket and the like seafood as bait even if using it from where it was harvested, that said your mussel plan is a guaranteed winner. Also SA king prawns, even at full price $30per kilo work out cheaper than pillies for the amount of baits they can produce and are the best, most versatile all around bait, easily bar none, for anything that swims in our waters from tiny slithers for gar, #6 circle sized chunks for whiting up to whole on a pair of 5/0s for snapps when we can do that again. Or so I've been  told..........

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If you can not use fresh, local mussels for bait because they are sold for human consumption, fisheries need to get off their ass and fix it. How can you sell wild bred cockles that are under commercial pressure and not mussels that are farmed, both grown in SA? Maybe it would be a good idea, to reduce the cockle quota and start encouraging companies to grow our bait. When cockle that are just taken are $22 a kg for bait and mussels that are farmed are $8 a kg for human consumption, some thing is very wrong.

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