Territory Lad

Sorry to hear about all your situations lads, truely a harsh time for a significant number of people. Hopefully, everyone can hang in there long enough for things to turn around again

Im sure there are some dusty lures around people would happily donate for a refurbish.

Glad to hear it. Your progress has been impressive. Magnif!!! Cant wait to see your progress in this area, especially if you managed to get your hands on some of the larger 95mm blanks. Keep the updates coming, always exciting to see.

Your finishes have really improved sBT! Some cracking looking lures there

Looking good mate.

Looks great! Its the small touches and finishes that make all the difference.

Some good finishes there mate. That top one looks good hey

@MIKECATTS How do you find the FG Knot Tool to use?

@doobie no dramas. Everyone has been quite helpful to me in the past, so happy to return the favour when I can.

The main thing is to be organised. Less is more and what you have you need to be able to access easily. When I first started I had a small, standard backpack and I found it quite difficult to access my gear and get the lure I wanted whilst wading. I soon moved to a "sling bag" (there are a few out there, I went with the rapala version). This allowed me to easily slide/swing the bag from my back, round in front of me without having to take it off. Other options would be bum-bags (black magics come to mind), small satchel bags (Diawa), the Alvey wading bags, and even fly vests @Meppstas gave me that one when I was first looking around and I later found it is also what Bushy uses when wading. I then upgraded to a tub (blatantly stole this from @Underpants) - which makes things easier again. It also allows me to cheat by having 3 different rods, all rigged with different lures which means Im changing less lures on the water. Regarding changing of lures and frequency. When I first started, I changed as often as possible as I wanted to speed up my learning - which lures/patterns/retrieves worked best in which scenarios. The biggest problem I ran into wasn't actually changing the lure, it was running out of leader. Changing a lure on the water is easy. Tying on a new leader whilst on the water is a pain in the a$$, especially when its windy!! Once I moved to a tub with multiple rods, I had 3 times as much leader to play with - cheating really . If I had my time again, or I was advising someone just starting out. My advice would be this. 1. Less is more. No need to take the kitchen sink. A small tackle tray that holds a handful of lures is more than enough. 2-3 stickbaits and 2-3 poppers will provide enough variance but still allow you to focus of nailing their retrieves. 2. Get a small bum-bag (just because they are cheaper) that can hold the tackle tray, scissors, a spool of leader, small pliers, suncreen and your car keys. Bum-bag goes over one shoulder and under the arm of the other. Creates a "sling" action and you have everything at the ready. 3. Pick a braid-leader knot and direct leader to tow point knot and practice them at home. I dont mean sitting down with the rod over there and your leader spool beside you. I mean practice as you would on the water. Rod tucked under one arm, standing, gear bag on. Otherwise its a long walk back to the bank to deal with it each and everytime. 4. Just keep casting. Persist, persist, persist. Like anything, once you crack the code its sooooo much fun.

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.

Happens regularly unfortunately. Always pays to double check.

Had the chance to run a couple of these in my last two session and below are some early thoughts. I'll also continue to post back in here as the summer goes on. To start with, im coming from a view where the Sugarpen is the gold standard in my eyes. The Pen casts like a bullet, skips across the water beautifully, is quite a flexible lure in terms or its applications and has a success rate that is widely accepted as high. So every commen / view I have on sBT's stick bait will be relative to the Pen. That being said. 1st impressions: On the RHS are the 4 "Bangas" as I have affectionately named them. On the LHS are the same 4, mixed in with 4 Pens to give you an idea. - the blank is almost exactly the same. Same length, same profile/shape. The only differences I can ascertain are (1) a small "scale" finish as opposed to the Pen's lateral dots, and (2) the casting weight is marginally further back in the Pen. - the blank has a rattle, where as the 70mm Pen doesn't. This appears to be due to the blank having the casting weight in the "chamber" as oppsoed to right at the tail end of the lure like the Pen does. - the assist hooks they come with look good. Size wise they are maybe a #6 equivalent, possibly even a #4. The braid / assist robe used actually glows bright orange under black light/UV On the water: - the blank sits differently in the water at a stand still. Where as the Pen sits almost 45 degrees (head up, tail down), the blank sits realtively flat with no discernable difference in buoyancy between any end of the lure. One of the blanks sat upside down at rest - maybe it was just a dud - but the others seem to be fine. - casts well, much like the Pen does. To be honest cant tell the differece in that regard. - seems to swim fine. Ever so slightly different action to the Pen, but this could also be due to the lack of belly trebel on the blank. Might pull the trebel off one of Pens then compare like for like. Importantly - Results: The plan I have used is - find the fish with my normal toys, then throw the "Bangas" in and see if they bite. Trip 1 was pretty tough, nothing in my kit bag really got the job done. However the blank did seduce a couple of roughly 24 models. Trip 2 was also tough, the wind was up and I wasn't confident the blank would create the water disturbance I needed. Normally in these conditions I would be throwing the larger 95 Pen. However I persisted and nailed an early to mid 30s! RHS is Trip 1 (~24cm), LHS is Trip 2 (30+cm) Note - I have cut the dangly bits off. I found they looked like weed and once I removed them I got more engagement for the fish. @southie THE BANGA overall a good blank and very comparable to the Pen. More feedback / photos to come over the remainder of summer. Cheers TL

Nice! Some interesting patterns in there, seems like you have tried a few different things in terms of the patterns that run down the top/back of the lure. Can see more than YFW falling to these, surely a few Bream will get tricked

I fished it once when on holiday there as a teenager. Fished off the jetty, caught a handful of small spanish flags. Had a hungry cuda latch onto one mid fight. Interesting, but very one sided fight on 2kg mono Depending on time of year I would imagine you would get a range of different fish (GTs, travaley, cuda, mackeral, flathead, estuary cod, Jewies, bream, flags etc). Whether they are there in numbers or they just the odd one floats through it a whole other story though.