Squid Inc.

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
 

Just getting a feel at who would be interested and seems i have quite a bit of interest in them... 
For now here is a couple i have been working on and practicing my skills on...
Will post pics of the Topwater lures later on when i have finished with them.  
 

I've joined a Victorian fisheries program called the recreational fisherman's diary program, anyway to cut a long story short!! When searching the fisheries website searching for information on studies done or ongoing all i can find is very old and mostly irrelevant information, so when i contacted the authority i brought this up with them and suggested that people (fisherman/women) would better understand why you make certain areas, limits, and sizes if they were able to access current relevant information on whats going on with the fishery, maybe some publicity in the local newspapers publishing the results, instead of just printing on all there paraphernalia "your license fees at work" as this gives no actual account of what they do😴
Today i rang them again about a study on snapper and flathead they asked me to do, while discussing snapper i remarked on the ban in S.A. and after some general discussion on the subject he told me that a group of our guys are in Adelaide at the moment having discussions on how to manage the recovery, he also said it was a number of reasons that caused the issues and in summary a few bad spawning years coupled with overfishing is what lead to the problems that are faced at the moment, he told me that here in port phillip bay almost suffered the same issues a few years ago, but the interventions setup and monitoring of the stocks via radio receivers to track the breaders gave them the information needed to secure a sustainable fishery.
After my discussion with the fisheries guy he thanked me for the work im doing to help them in their job and said hopefully i can pass some of the information on to other fisherman/women, being the person i am i wondered how could i best get the message out there? Anyway a couple of weeks ago i went to the "gone fishing" day and while there had a chat to some of the guys from the local fishing club, i had been thinking about joining one for some time and tonight i went along to their monthly meeting and joined, on the program for tonight was a discussion on how to target snapper, kings and tuna. This was a very informative night and this also got me thinking about whats been going on in the fishing sector for the last few years and the responce by people as to the affect it has/was going to have on them (both good and bad) "your license fees at work"? The comment by me that the information was not getting out, the comment by them saying that they hope i can help to get more people on board and information out?? Why don't i invite fisheries to come an speak at a meeting and give us the run down of what they are/have been doing with all the information gathered from us the fishers and their scientists? 
Rather than a night finding out how we can catch more/bigger fish why shouldn't we find out how we can help and how the information we could/are collecting for them is used to better maintain the fishery we love to relax in while exerting ourselves reeling in that fish of a lifetime? Could this be a way of getting the information out there to the people who it affects the most? Sure not all fishermen/women are in a fishing club but they do talk to other people at the ramp or cleaning table and pass on information when discussing things that are going on.
I've decided that i will bring it up with both parties and get the ball rolling as i think it's better to know why things are done and when things are going south before they happen rather than after😉 im guilty of complaining about changes they did back when the marine parks were marked out stopping us from fishing in some of the most productive areas, however now that i know why im happy they did it, instead of telling us we are doing it cause we are, they come tell us we need that area as it's were the unicorn seahorse breeds, then we can say well ok take it because i like eating them so let them breed lol
I hope im not ranting too much😴 i just think if we can get them to give us.. no keep us better informed then when things start going south it doesn't get as bad as it has now?

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...

Tried a tiny stream around the Lobey area this morning. The wheather was pretty average. only 11 degrees in the hills, wasn't expecting much activity.
A bow n arrow cast into a murky twig infected hole and this juvenile could not resist. 
simple grub i tied years ago.
Spotted this guy high on a bank, snuck behind him and made a short cast
Trecked a few km's, with hardly any sightings.. Overall a quiet morning. When i arrived back in the Barossa it was 18 degrees and the sun was shining..
 

Hi all here is a quick video I put together of my most productive carp fishing session this year 
Cheers LL
 

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
 

Chasebait  "Flick Prawns" have hooked me lately. I use them in shallow drains and shallow drop-offs on flats. They drift horizontally, life-like, and I've caught flatties, estuary cod and pikey bream on them with more or less a "do-nothing" retrieve. However, they are snag-prone, even if rigged weedless, and are not cheap. Good old gold bombers continue to catch barra for me night (Tinaroo) and day (shallow drains in the  Hinchinbrook mangroves), but YellowDoor's Sebile Magic Swimmers need some more time on the field up here. They look sooooh good in the water.

I will give it a go and post a pic here when I do it. I bent up some heavy 316 stainless rod to make my own gaff, using heat and a piece of water pipe as a sleeve-lever. I have some SS chain and thinner rod I can cut to make the "crook" to weld under the gaff hook. Thanks for sharing the idea! All the net closures and license buybacks from NSW up to the Cape have certainly been a boon to rec .fishers in many ways -- but they have released the inshore bull shark/pig-eye shark pups from a major source of mortality. They were a significant gillnet bycatch and sold as "flake" (fillets) in the local market. Now folk are being sharked like crazy by "bull sharks" offshore. Tagged bulls (acoustic tags) have gone from Botany Bay to Townsville, and from Cairns/Townsville back down to NSW. I even saw a shark get "sharked". Anglers in sthn WA eat little "bronzies", but Qlders scorn shark. If we ate some little bulls caught in the creeks we might dent the population a bit. Here are some bits I "got back"

Hi Guys, it's a bit quiet out there so I thought I would post the second instalment of my DIY tackle.... as you've heard me say before I get a lot of success with using Bread Punch on the hook, all my bread punches cost me nothing so here's how you can make some for your own tackle box.   Firstly obtain some empty bullet casings of different sizes and cut the open ends off with a fine blade hacksaw, get some wooden dowel or any suitable solid tube and make the ends fit the bullet casings snugly. I glue mine in with Araldite but make sure the glue doesn't comeup past  the flat face of the dowel (it will taint the bread as it is a 2 part chemical) also VERY IMPORTANT have the flat face-off the wood  a 5-7mm  shy of the end of the brass tube ( see bottom punch.) This is because when you push this (and it is only a mini biscuit cutter after all) into the bread it will automatically compress the bread and that will stay on the hook for longer.  You can put two different diameter casings on each end which gives you options for punch size... the size variants are endless (I have used a leather punch on occasions too!)... Lastly as an optional finish, varnish the handle and you're ready to go.
Last week Mr. Crabtree and myself wanted to get some carp for crab bait and we are also going to try and catch some small sharks with them too, so we thought if we could catch 10 - 15 carp around the 1/2-3/4kg size and freeze them, next time we go to "Yorks" we can play around. So we fished exclusively with bread punch on 12 hooks and got 15 fish quite quickly. I always buy the cheapest, freshest white, thick sliced bread, I get two or three slices and flatten it between fingers and thumb ( you can use a rolling pin) and discard the crusts... 10 seconds in the microwave also makes the flattened bread a bit rubbery ... just what you want. Then like a biscuit cutter, 'punch' the flattened bread and put the hook into the middle of the bread whilst still in the punch and lever it out. If you have never fished punch before ( it does work best with a float) you will be surprised how well compressed bread will stay on a hook, once you have a bite though, you will have to check to make sure you still have bait on.
I reckon one day, I caught about 40 fish on two slices of bread, can't get any cheaper than that.... any questions please don't hesitate to ask!
 

You don't need corrupting...     us poms were brought up MATCH FISHING.... sometimes hundreds of anglers in a match, light lines, small hooks, burley/ground bait essential and small hooks. when we all invaded here, we kept to the same methods but because the fish had never been caught before you could go heavier with line , bigger with hooks and simpler ground bait, I remember my first match on the Torrens I fished 2lb line  14 hook and small straight wagglers... I got smashed up about 10 times, didn't take me long to wise up, I can tell you.
At intervals I will let the guys know how to make bank sticks, keep nets, plummets, cage feeders, bite indicators for use with bite alarms, disgorgers, bread punches, sit on tackle boxes, tackle box carrier, rod tube holder and what ever else I find in my tackle box that I have made!
All the best mate...

As a keen COARSE/FRESHWATER angler I find I can't get some of my prefered tackle in Australia so I have to buy it online from the UK or make it myself, so as promised I will share some of my favourites over time in this set of posts...
FLOATS... I am addicted to making floats, I love giving them away to people who fish like I do and HATE losing them. 
Most of my floats are wagglers, straight or bodied, as you can see from the photo they are all slightly different depending on what they are for, or where I am fishing, some can be used in saltwater for Gar and Tommies etc as well as in freshwater. The bodies are made from balsa wood which I turn on a small lathe, but you can also easily whittle then to shape with a sharp knife or stick them in a drill chuck, I always finish with fine sandpaper and fine wire wool. Carefully one end needs to be drilled to accept the stem, which I make from peacock quill or even better native reed stem (I always use the type of reeds that have the fluffy top and the stems are like mini bamboo, there's masses on most river banks (must be dry and brown not green) Always cut at a node so the tube is buoyant.   I superglue this into the balsa body. At the other end I glue in a short piece of bamboo skewer ready to have a safety pin eye whipped on and the whipping superglued.
To strengthen the main shaft, as you can see from the photo I do some decorative whipping nearly to the top, this does strengthen it considerably, we are now ready to  apply a base white top (cheapest way is to get some flat white acrylic paint, a sample pot from Bunnings is ideal) The florescent top is just a can of that Hi Vis stuff they spray on the road to mark where they are going to dig holes etc. I shake it well and spray some on a bit of paper or the like a use a small brush and paint over the flat white base down to almost the end of the white.. it dries very quickly!
Now all you need to do is varnish the whole thing, any varnish will do as they are not exposed to the weather much, I use a stain varnish (walnut) as this gives me an attractive brown effect.
As you can see all the floats are different, it's good to experiment and see what suits the type of fishing you want to do, they are so cheap to make and work much better than bought ones.
Hope you like that.... have a go, it's great to catch a fish on home crafted gear as I did today a 17+lb carp... any questions please don't hesitate to ask, and if you ever meet me on the bank please ask for a FREE float I will be only too willing to let you have one.

The Port Hughes Fishing Competition is on again this year, but just for 1 day (26 Oct)
https://angling.eventdesq.com/
 
 
The Ardrossan Fishing Compitition is on the same day.

Yeah before the sorting process I was congratulating my self on how well prepared I was

I had my rubber gloves on - I'd already dug a 2ft pit for the scraps - I had the hose ready to rinse the maggots in a sieve - I had the bran all ready in there storage container

My plans of a smooth operation flew out the window when the stench set it - from then on it was a mixture of panic and rash decisions😉

Trying to pry open the head, to get all the maggots out, unleashed a smell worse than Satan's bung hole and thats when I started to panic - after that I was cutting my losses and trying to get the stench underground - collecting the maggots became a secondary concern😉
 

Well that was a freaken night mare

Here's some stuff I learnt about using carp for maggots

There is a heap of moisture in a carp as it breaks down - so you would either need a bucket with a drain to let it out - or about 10 times the newspaper I used

If you dont use enough newspaper it will break down and turn into a sludge - a maggot infused sludge that is very difficult to pick maggots out of.

Also dont use the head - they just burrow in and hang on when you are trying to shake them out

End result was a hell of alot of mucking around and I lost 2/3rds of the maggots in the sorting process. The ones I salvaged are in a sea of newspaper, guts and scales - its almost enough to dampen a mans enthusiasm for breeding his own😉

At least I'll know what to do next time

Did knock up a few years ago,more commonly known as bucktails.
(Waitpinga salmon) 🙂
 

Just when you thought it was all over - It begins again - this time with fish.

Dont worry I'll spare you nearly all the details - but it will be interesting to see how many maggots come off one carp carcass

And the fillets will go towards feeding the local snapper population

I wont be out fishing Saturday, so will watch it and hoping GWS thumps the Vics  
BBQ and beers are the go  

Crazy but i have to attend a birthday party that starts at 2pm!
He can't stand footy - will be interesting to see how many people attend!
I for one will be streaming some of the game on my phone 😊 Not that i support either team but still an important game

So with some really nice weather and conditions coming up over the weekend, the burning question is - watch the Grand Final, or take the boat out?
Must admit, I'm struggling a bit!
 

Rileys shallow reef, good for squid, snapper maybe gar by novemeber. For the Reds-  If its blowing an Easterly, balloon off with long trace, will save you loosing alot of rigs on the bottom.
The snapper ban may be in place by then tho. 

Oh Boy!! I feel I have way too many lures & a large variety of brands as well.. I'll let the photos tell the story...😉
And these are just the ones I've taken photos of... only use them on the trout..
cheers
Adrian