AquaticResearch1

Cheers mate. 
Im glad the 1st lot of lures i sold are to fishos that actually fish and catch fish. So hopefully they come back with some good photos videos etc.... 
I'M hoping to get out alot more myself now that my overtime got taken from me at work. Plus winter trout fishing is alomost upon us so I'll be looking to paint up alot more trout lures... 
My biggest issue is finding blanks that not only work bu are going to be readily available for me to get..
Plus i don't want to step on other lure painters feet. Hence why i haven't painted any cod/callop lures...
It's also a case of do you bulk paint say 5 different types of lures in say 3-4 different patterns And sell bulk or do you go with paint what i feel like and try sell it? If it sells great. If not i guess it can be mine to use. Haven't decided yet. 
I'll  keep just painting lures and creating my own styles and if i sell a few great! If not no big deal... i know that when i do get a chance to  go out to fish I'll only be using my lures and Rezbait plastics. All my other brand name lures have been packed up and put to the side... 
 

Yes, there is plenty on EUS {epizootic ulcerative syndrome - or "Red Spot"} but those ulcers are caused by a fungus (Aphanomyces) that is not a problem until the fish get stressed by sudden changes in temperature, salinity, or acidity (in the case of northern NSW flooding of acid sulphate soils}. Common on mullet and bream in NSW estuaries, and very nasty. The fish get stressed, the fungus blooms in minor abrasions, and bacteria move in too to form a horrible ulcer.
These surf mulloway with rashes/bruises are coming from pristine, remote, surf beaches. Hard to imagine better water quality. Might be stress induced by spawning and some secondary infection, as you say.....

Absolutely love that one, a bit of the SX40 colour 'carmen red' on the gill plate would absolutely set that off imo. Absolute ripper of a colour.
 
Would be a demon on rainbow trout

Was painting up some more trout lures tonight and i stuffed the paint job on one of them. So instead of throwing it away i painted over it completely with black paint. Then decided to think outside the box... 
Grabbed some pearl paint and well the photo speaks for itself. Well i think anyway 👌
So it is opaque black as the base. Pearl green top. With an pearl Magenta body and gold stripes... 
I recko this will be one colour ill paint as one i will sell

Beaut colours on this guy 

A midge hatch around lunch time, must of been why they where so active today 

Never really had any issues when i use my fingers to open/close them.. Now and then i don't have enough nails to do it and have it use pliers and they mangle them a bit.

Just for the tease to you jerky lovers - a new batch done today for something to do 

FG knot initially, revert to an improved Albright if conditions don't allow re-tieing a good, reliable FG. 
 
Honestly the only time I'll find out that my Albright isn't as good as an FG, is when I hook a snag and end up having to lock up. Even massive rays and things, I've tied an Albright and they've held without issue. FG just casts better and is a better connection for when you've got to really lean into something. 

If anything, sink the lure on a semi slack line rather than an overly slack line. It sounds like they are using the excess slack to choke the lure. 
 
It can be somewhat unavoidable at times, if you're chasing the trouties, maybe it is worth changing to a shorter jig head or wider gape hook also. If it really bothers you, maybe just fish tighter to the rocks. 
 
It's tricky and can be hard to get around at times, but if it seems to be an unusual trend, the above may make a difference. 

If anything, sink the lure on a semi slack line rather than an overly slack line. It sounds like they are using the excess slack to choke the lure. 
 
It can be somewhat unavoidable at times, if you're chasing the trouties, maybe it is worth changing to a shorter jig head or wider gape hook also. If it really bothers you, maybe just fish tighter to the rocks. 
 
It's tricky and can be hard to get around at times, but if it seems to be an unusual trend, the above may make a difference. 

If anything, sink the lure on a semi slack line rather than an overly slack line. It sounds like they are using the excess slack to choke the lure. 
 
It can be somewhat unavoidable at times, if you're chasing the trouties, maybe it is worth changing to a shorter jig head or wider gape hook also. If it really bothers you, maybe just fish tighter to the rocks. 
 
It's tricky and can be hard to get around at times, but if it seems to be an unusual trend, the above may make a difference. 

Yes Doobs, your over complicating it. Haha
Each of the methods, as with the others outlined, will work - its just some work better than others depending on the species your targeting.
With YFW you can use swivels and clips / loop knots and still catch fish. But your strike rate will increase significantly if you ditch them, instead tying your braid directly to the leader and your leader directly to the tow point of the lure with a tight knot.
This is because it improves the presentation of the lure in the water.
Personally I run the below:
Braid > FG Knot > Mono Leader > Uni knot > tow point of lure.
I've run other options and settled on the above. I have also fished along others who run clips / swivels and the disparity between the success rates of each option is highly visible.
At the end of the day, choose an option that works for you.

Originally Posted by yellow door 1 I prefer to believe that observing superstitions, bizarre rituals and voodoo curses are the key to catching fish

Claiming out loud, that one particular angler enjoys the company of horses, is a powerful fish catching technique in my local waters.

Taking a Swig of "Bream Juice" (diet coke) works well for one angler I know.

Repeating the mantra "Cmoooooooonnnnnnn Snapaaahhhh" in the most irritating singing voice you can muster is a guarantee.

Another angler I know does special wrist exercises in the morning before every session.

Arrogantly naming a location after yourself guarantees action

Pulling up the electric and driving off to a new location with out letting your mate finish his retrieve shows you mean business - and the fish at the next spot respect that.

If someone suggests a change of location, the only answer to give is "I dont care, I'll catch 'em anywhere"

Buying a new rod, reel or boat gets you connected to something good the first time you use it.

Never, ever wear any Orange clothing - the bream hate it and so do the Ladies you wave to on the river.

Some people fish better with a hang-over and others dont - trial and error over an extended peiod of time is the only way to sort this out. Once you work out, what works for you - stick to it

These are just a few truths I have gleaned over the years - they may have no place in tournament angling but then again.....maybe the last time you blanked in a comp was because you were wearing "Orange" undies and you didnt have any "Bream Juice" on board

Common explanations include:
When top-heavy ships of earlier eras would sink, precious little other than the bananas they’d carried would be found floating on the surface, thereby leaving some to conclude conveyance of the fruit itself had led to these naval mishaps. Spiders, snakes, and other poisonous vermin living among bananas carried in the hold would, on long haul trips, expand their horizons by infesting other parts of the ship. Because the speediest sailing ships were used to get bananas to their destinations before they could spoil, those attempting to fish from them never caught anything while trolling. Fisherman became ill after eating the fruit. Other fruits would spoil more quickly when bananas were being shipped along with them, causing folks to deem bananas “bad luck.” (Actually, it wouldn’t have been ill fate that resulted in the spoilage of other foodstuffs, but instead the ethylene gas emitted by bananas as they ripen.) Crew member injured by slipping on discarded banana peels. Fisherman misses landing the big one due to a case of “the runs” caused by bananas he’d ingested. Banana oil rubs off onto the hands of fisherman, thereby “spooking” the fish. Early anglers in Hawaii would embark upon lengthy fishing trips in dugout canoes provisioned with (along with other food items) bananas. The farther they went, the fewer the fish, causing some of them to mistake correlation for causation.

Mike, I tend to tie everything from 150 down. Just keep the knots simple, uni knots to rings and swivels, maybe a Snell to a top hook in a two hook right with a uni fixing the bottom one on.
 
Flourocarbon is a fair bit more stiff than mono, so it makes it harder to tie knots in the heavy stuff imo. 

Great write up mate, top read. I've always been keen to chase sooties, this just fuels the fire. 

At 747 metres elevation, Koombooloomba Dam is Australia's highest tropical storage. It is perched in the dense forest on the Great Dividing Range on the headwaters of the mighty Tully-Millstream River and feeds some hydro projects below. The water is very clear, and cold in winter.  Unlike other stocked dams, it lacks bony bream, freshwater mussels, water lilies, and other submerged vegetation.  I guess the lake fauna and flora comprised whatever was in the fast-water streams blocked by the dam wall at the time. It has been stocked with sooty grunter and barra, but the barra do very poorly in the cold, with dead and dopey fish reported each winter.  Lean pickings for fish, and popular wisdom has it that wind-blown insects drive  the food chain. Perhaps sooties were already up there, or the stocked fish have found spawning habitat in the rapids, but whatever the reason there are abundant sooties in there with "cricket score" catches reported and hoards of juveniles visible along the edges.  Few have caught barra in there, and those that do report that lures resembling sooty grunter are the go. 
Sooties need rapids in the hot, wet season to spawn successfully, and recent storms from a much-delayed monsoon had some of us hatching a plan to get upstream to the inflow to  flyfish the spawning aggregations. The day did not start well, with lightning knocking out the power pre-dawn and torrential rain, with the flash and rumble of the dreaded cloud to ground lightning. during the 2 hour drive. Amazingly, the rain ceased  just below Koomby and we were off in the tinny threading and feeling our way up along the old river channel through a dense forest of dead trees and prop-busting stumps.  The plan was to get up to the Tully inflow and walk the bank with flyrods to sight-fish sooties.
At 28% capacity we had just caught the first inflows of clear, tannin-stained water, and there were some cascades and rapids to fish off the rocks. Dan fished the opoosite bank with a blooper-type fly and I used a tiny shrimp-cicada thing tied by an SA mate (Dave) 20 yrs ago. At the first rapids the tiddlers just belted the little cicada if I let it sink deep and I soon had a half-a dozen captures before they wised up. Dan did not get a hit, so switched to a white clouser and moved up into the limpid pool above the cascades. Immediately he raised bigger fish and caught 2 in quick succession.  He was trialling a line-tub worn around his waist to stop the flyline tangling and missed some takes.
On the opposite bank I found what SA Dave calls a "Monty" of a spot. A fish surety. A tiny crystal-clear rivulet running over a sandbank to a deep dead tree. I got belted 3 times on that snag, with the first 2 humping boils at the surface by obviously big, angry, sooties. The third take was on the wrong side of the snags and within milliseconds I had been dusted. Broke the 10 pound flourocarbon leader just below the flyine -- and I had no spares in that department, so a long walk back to the tinny for more. Sooties are smash,grab, and run back to cover specialists.
We decided the big fish were either absent from the rapids, or not biting, so we tried Plan B. Motor down in the boat and find islands or points with horizontal "lay-downs" of dead trees. Not that common, but marvellous habitat for a sooty ambush predator. Again, small fish were eager biters but no sign of the dark-black brutes that inhabit the dam. Back-casts often ended up in the dead forest, too.
So the last plan of the day, before escaping the approaching lightning storms, was to try walking a steep bank with deep water, rock ledges and lay-downs. I thought I would "ground-truth" the presence of bigger fish with a spin rod and little Mohawk deep-diver. Dan went off along the bank and I fished off the boat, testing a deep rock ledge. Some tiddlers on the fly were followed by a decent fish on the lure, which pulled the hooks at the net. So there were big fish there!
Then we started to see sooties patrolling the edges as the shadows fell on the water. I was mucking around with various little Clousers on the tiddlers, by applying "S-factor" scent and testing if Dave's 20 yr old, high-sparkle flies attracted more attention when a grey/brown fish in the 30's came out for a look. I changed to a bigger, ratty, marabou fly and landed a better fish but could not tempt the lurker. Meanwhile Dan raised 2 huge fish on his Clouser from the base of a high dirt cliff with overhanging snag -- another "Monty". We spent the last half-hour of the day together trying to fool those fish, which were joined by a third that emerged swimming along the drop-off from left-field. I don't think they could see us, but we could see them and they would not be fooled by flies, soft-plastics, minnows, or even a very lifelike savage flick prawn, scented or not. Easily 40cm -plus fish, with charcoal backs and big spade-like tails. They showed mild interest, but were rejecting the offerings from afar. I guess they don't get that big by being gullible.
At the ramp we met a 'yakker who fished there regularly, and he told of once stumbling across a hatch of the spent, winged termites that blanketed the water in wind-rows. He told of sight-fishing sooties breaking the surface. Now that would be an experience to go keep going back for.
 
 

This is the rig I used for beach fishing for Mulloway at Middleton, baits were strips of squid, squid heads, pilchards, small whole mullet, salmon trout & even salmon & mullets fillets because they're an oily fish.. 
cheers
Adrian
 

Had a reasonably good spin session just over a week ago chasing trout in the tannin stream again.. One of my better spin session for quite some time..
Wild windy weather has kept me home of late... hopefully I'll be back in a river in a day or so..
cheers
Adrian
 

I'd be happy to help, I'm always around them and chase them a bit further west than most.
I'm in Adelaide until the 23rd and will come back again at Christmas, so if you're that way inclined, let me know and I'll sort something out. Happy to help.

Hey all as the title states I am looking for a handful of people that Regularly chase YFW on Top water lures....
I have sourced and custom painted a few and would like a couple people to test them out. As well as getting opinions and  feedback on them....
If interested let me know.
Conditions of getting your hands on one are:
You must actually chase Yellowfin Whiting on Lures
You must be able to give me feedback on them and pictures of the lure catching fish.... 
Im not going to release anymore information as of yet until I get some feedback and see what hardcore Lure Fishos think as if they seem like an popular item i will be putting these up for sale.
If interested hit me up.... I will leave this here until next Wednesday and will select 5 people from who ever has applied. As i have limited quantities at the moment...

Top stuff Adrian, brilliant fishing and enviable determination in tallying every fish; I know I wouldn't have had the patience!
 
Hopefully there's still plenty of trout seasons left in you yet. 

Well I finally caught my 10.000th Tasmanian wild trout since we moved here back in March 2000..  it's a milestone I never gave a thought to until the start of this trout season when I was going through my end of season reports when I noticed I only needed 129 trout to reach 10,000 trout here in Tassie.. So yesterday and only needing another seven trout I reached it, actually caught & released fourteen all up..
cheers
Adrian
 

Found a photo of the big girl. She may have seen even better days previously, judging by the size of her head, but what a beast it was. 
 

@AquaticResearch1 old mate from the Sandflat Fishing Australia youtube channel has the same view as yourself mate. Its quite interesting to see everyone's point of view. I think like all things its a personal preference really. 
@Softy seems to be a common theme. Your either in one camp or the other. Thanks mate. 
Appreciate everyone's input on this by the way 👍