Innovative Ideas Man

[Softy 2,991]

I don't think we will ever have good weather again....  

[yellow door 1 1,834]

2 hours ago, Softy said:

I don't think we will ever have good weather again....  

Haha - I genuinely thought I was coming down with some mystery illness - turns out i was just cold and hadnt checked the forecast for a few days

 

[dmck 636]

5 hours ago, Softy said:

I don't think we will ever have good weather again....  

We have all been deceived.  We have been led to believe ''climate change' meant global warming......

[yellow door 1 1,834]

12 hours ago, dmck said:

We have all been deceived.  We have been led to believe ''climate change' meant global warming......

Things do seem to be getting more extreme. 

 

[yellow door 1 1,834]

Got a window in the weather tomorrow morning - and Ive added another freshwater bait for the snappers consideration

[yellow door 1 1,834]

yabbies and reddies couldnt compete with the Pilchards on the undersized/just size pinky schools we tried them on.

They got convincingly beaten - I wont try them again

[Kelvin 2,258]

Small yabbies work well for bream and Snapper also love prawns. I would have thought they would work well for snapper and potentially hold on the hook a bit better than pilchard.

Did you try whole yabbies or just the tails?

Any bigger snapper?

[yellow door 1 1,834]

51 minutes ago, Kelvin said:

Small yabbies work well for bream and Snapper also love prawns. I would have thought they would work well for snapper and potentially hold on the hook a bit better than pilchard.

Did you try whole yabbies or just the tails?

Any bigger snapper?

Nah we found a few schools but they were all tiny pinkies - So I I just ripped the tails off and used those with the shells still on - they might have been a bit big for the little pinkies to swallow.

But they werent getting anywhere near the amount of bights as the pilchard cubes. I gave them about an hour to prove themselves as my mates were pulling in little pinks consistently on the pilly cubes.

I had cut up redfin cubes the same size as the pillies, out on another rod and they were basically getting ignored aswell.

Withing seconds of my first pilly cube hitting the bottom I was on after not catching a fish in the first hour.

So on bigger fish, the results may be different  - but the fact that little ravenous pinkies all but ignored them werent the results I was after -

Salted carp, on the other hand, can usually hold its own against pilly cubes- those were the sort of results I was after

 

[Kelvin 2,258]

Interesting. Must be the smell and oil content

Today is burley making day for me. I'm about to a heap of redfin scraps and small redfin into burley blocks

[yellow door 1 1,834]

2 hours ago, Kelvin said:

Interesting. Must be the smell and oil content

Today is burley making day for me. I'm about to a heap of redfin scraps and small redfin into burley blocks

Yeah something was off. I expected much more interest on the yabbies. Other guys have had success on them - I just couldnt make them work

Even the salting process didn’t spice up the reddy chunks enough to make them tasty
 

I’ve just got back from scoping a mullet spot. Plenty there but I didn’t have my gear

just salted up a batch of chicken to try to secure a few for snapper baits. The local creek is still too mozzy infested to consider going for carp. Even during the day

 

So the mullet will have to suffer

[yellow door 1 1,834]

4 hours ago, yellow door 1 said:

 

 

So the mullet will have to suffer

Not as many suffered as I’d hoped but it was a bit of fun working them out. Ended up covering about a km and polaroiding new schools when the bight slowed
 

I could only pull 2 or 3 from a school before they shut down.  And they didn’t respond to burley for long before leaving. Even mullet can be tricky when they want to be

 

but hopefully the snapper recognise these and know what to do with them

[yellow door 1 1,834]

after mucking around with those slimey mullet the other night - the time has come for a dedicated fishing rag with caribeena

[MAH 449]

34 minutes ago, yellow door 1 said:

after mucking around with those slimey mullet the other night - the time has come for a dedicated fishing rag with caribeena

I do a similar thing. When my partner deems the bath towels are too old/worn and need replacing, I take them and cut them into 3-4 hand towel sizes, overlock the edges to stop them fraying and sew on a small loop to attach a carabiner. A couple of bath towels makes 6-8 fishing towels. I've got a box full of fishing towels, and take one for handling fish and another for wiping my hands. I give them soak in napisan/sodium percarbonate when I get home as they get pretty stinky and my partner doesn't appreciate me chucking them into the laundry basket.

[yellow door 1 1,834]

3 hours ago, MAH said:

I do a similar thing. When my partner deems the bath towels are too old/worn and need replacing, I take them and cut them into 3-4 hand towel sizes, overlock the edges to stop them fraying and sew on a small loop to attach a carabiner. A couple of bath towels makes 6-8 fishing towels. I've got a box full of fishing towels, and take one for handling fish and another for wiping my hands. I give them soak in napisan/sodium percarbonate when I get home as they get pretty stinky and my partner doesn't appreciate me chucking them into the laundry basket.

 

 

Very Nice - Yeah I think I'll add a loop- I was just going to chuck the whole thing in the washing machine but the carbeena might hook on to something in there and wreak havoc.

Worked out really well tonight - didnt have to touch a mullet - no more stinky hands on the steering wheel. And no more slime wiped on my clothes

Ended up just rinsing it under the tap and I'll give it a sniff test to morrow to see what extra needs to be done -

Thanks for the tips on cleaning and separate towels for different jobs - makes alot of sense

 

[yellow door 1 1,834]

I’m having a bit of a crackdown on my hands getting unnecessarily stinky at the moment

and my fingers now have a faint whiff of rubber instead of fish

[yellow door 1 1,834]

Out of the hundreds of mullet that saw it tonight - only a few let me know that my lure choice and retrieves were interesting enough to hit but not enough to inhale.

[yellow door 1 1,834]

Bit of a learning curve on the new mullet trap-

only thing that likes these traps more than mullet is seagulls -  if you walk more than 10ms away - the seagulls swarm them and stick their heads in for the bread.

Even had a few terns grabbing the mullet before they could get in.

But the fact that 2 found their way past the flock of birds guarding the entrance, was very encouraging - . Had to leave early as a gale was steaming in -but now that I know I have to shoe the birds away - it could be a goer

 

[yellow door 1 1,834]

Just an update - more for myself than anything 

-  I scattered tuna oil soaked, mushed up chook pellets around the trap - just a couple of teaspoons - (I didnt want tuna oil in my traps because they would stink out the car) - I figured the oil slick would help the mullet find it, as it was too windy for me to wade around and spot them. 

I think this really hurt my chances - the oil slick made the traps very visible from the air - both seagulls and terns have evolved over thousands of years to look for slicks - and I reckon that helped them find the traps much quicker than they would have.

Might be ok in still conditions where the slick wouldnt be so visible - but in the wind, it was very obvious.

A youtube guy mentioned if birds are a problem, you can draw them away by feeding them bread on the beach after you have set your traps.

But Im going to have to get sneaky to make these traps perform - unfortunately alot of my mullet spots close to home, have very poor land based access to the water - steep walls and knee deep sludge - and these traps need to be retrieved by hand. So its not going to be quite as easy as it looks on all the videos where the seagulls are all super well behaved.

Might have to add a few extra KMs to my trips to find suitable waters

[dmck 636]

On 28/11/2022 at 9:10 PM, yellow door 1 said:

.....my fingers now have a faint whiff of rubber ..........

 

SO... is this from the new blow-up girfriend..??????  KINKY !!!!

[yellow door 1 1,834]

A mate sent me this dehooker - interesting set up
 

 

[yellow door 1 1,834]

Pvc mount for the torch

 

 

[yellow door 1 1,834]

may aswell leave this here aswell - could be handy for more than just reddies
 

 

[yellow door 1 1,834]

Was wondering how hard it would be to make a handle for a torch that gets hot - turns out its not that hard

Can either drill through and use a 1/4 inch bolt to screw into the hole provided on the torch. Or just duct tape of velcro it on

[yellow door 1 1,834]

 

[yellow door 1 1,834]

Went with the hose clamp in the end - It allows you to orientate the torch for single handed button access

[yellow door 1 1,834]

last update on the torch handle - I nailed it - a fully enclosed handle is the most ergonomic for a variety of different angles
 

 

[yellow door 1 1,834]

Guys have been getting some big reddies on jig spinners recently so I thought Id give them a crack.

Obviously Im not going to pay "TT" prices for them - so I bent up some wire and gave them a swim.

No huge ones yet but I lost it to a snag a couple of casts after this one
 

 

[yellow door 1 1,834]

And the beauty of diy is - if you lose the prototype to a snag - you just need 10 mins to whip up a few more when you get home.

[yellow door 1 1,834]

I made up a few last night and it renewed my hatred of working with tiny split rings
So I made up these rings.
Too weak for attaching a hook to but plenty strong for the spinning blades

 

[yellow door 1 1,834]

 

[yellow door 1 1,834]

A lot of tools you swing have a fat bit at the end - so do my rods 

I originally used fat bits of cork because my guts would get bruised during Jewie season. (I used to fish for them regularly with heavy live bait gear)

Jabbing the rod butt into your guts on the strike and holding it there during the fight can leave a mark with skinny,/poorly shaped or metal butt caps. 
 

I always fish around structure so you have to hit them hard and fight them hard when using heavy-ish bait gear. In one spot I have to strike, then run 30m up the bank, to change the line angle, so I had a chance at getting them out. It was a clumsy affair with lots of adrenaline based gut jabbing. So by the end of the season it was hard to find a spot that isn’t bruised, to rest the rod on. 
 

that’s when I started thinking about comfortable butt caps

The added bonus I hadn’t considered was the ergonomics of having a fatter butt while casting. My rods had slight tapers before I shortened them. But making the butt fatter means you don’t grip as hard. 
 

it not a huge deal but it is noticeable- and it was a pleasant surprise the first time I used one - even my bream rods have them now

 

[yellow door 1 1,834]

No gut bruises off this guy tonight. He was hanging out with a bunch of perch 

[yellow door 1 1,834]

Ive been doing a bit of sliding around on steepish banks recently - Walking back up Grassed banks are where i seem to do my most sliding.

Im not sure how big an impact this will have but it offered more grip when I rubbed it across my hand - and in my experience a little bit of grip is better than none
 

 

 

[yellow door 1 1,834]

The new elasticated leader spool maintenance system made from a sushi soy sauce bottle lid
 

 

[Des 837]

2 hours ago, yellow door 1 said:

The new elasticated leader spool maintenance system made from a sushi soy sauce bottle lid

 Always inventive