Wert

You've never fished West Lakes?!?! How is that even possible?! I mean it is younger than you but that's no excuse, Monday morning looks perfect for fixing that......

West Lakes is surprisingly good for bream on lures but the reality of bream on lures is it can be hard work, especially in the middle of winter. Seems likely you have the right gear so my advice is mix up your retrieves (anything can work at times from slowing right down ie 5 second plus pauses to straight cranking in as fast as the lure will reasonably allow) , keep moving around, target structure and just keep casting. You'll get onto them eventually and in the meantime you can enjoy the STs.

Honestly? Caught more legal snaps including my pb since they were banned than ever before, it turns out that I should have been trying not to catch them all along, especially on lures, look forward to keeping the odd one or two 50cm or so bycatch snapper I catch.

Interesting indeed, for the record I too mainly go mainline to swivel with snap (not a snap swivel, i like small quality rolling swivels and snaps to suit line class), for heavy rigs no snap, uni knots and perfection loops for tidy reliable simple knots. That said at times, ie land based lure tossing, the mainline to leader thing is the way to go and I always use a knot I accidentally invented by watching a tutorial wrong, it's basically a double double uni knot, because it's what I know and it works great. Worth a mention too, i always snood hooks and connect lures by loop or clip,

I also run 20lb tough trace (among others) find it to be really good but it is unforgiving if you don't get your knots right, I suspect due to its stiffness. The hooks themselves can be a problem too, some hooks can have a sharp edge at the end of the hook where it forms the eye, 20lb is pretty light line for an average 3/0, the snood may be slipping up and getting cut almost like clippers if the eye's "join", hope that makes sense, it's a bit hard to explain without demonstrating. My last thought is perhaps a lighter gauge hook like a mustard penetrator (my go to for lighter tackle

Any colour works, if i had to choose.... Probably chrome... probably

Oooo, another thing especially useful for land based off the rocks is floats, if you can have one out while you prospect around with a straight jag or in particularly rough country have floats on both and use the current and wind to work drifts if you can. Weighted squid floats and torpedo floats will actually help you cast light jags further and can work as an extra attractant, also it's pretty fun watching your float shoot off kicking up a roster tail.

You'll get them all year round, winter is known for big ones, summer they can be more prolific but in SA I reckon it's safe to say it's always a good time of year for squiding. The one thing that is most important, that you've noted, is water clarity, clearer is better which also generally means light winds are also better. You can still get some even when the water looks like coffee if using a teaser but it can be hard work. One more thing is you'll get plenty at night, use a lumo jag and cast around the edges of any light, night can be very productive if not quite as fun since you

Weed and structure is a squids best friend, anywhere there is seagrass & sand patches in 2-5m or so of water you're in squid territory, add reef, ie a rocky shoreline, breakwater or jetty, and I guarantee you there will be squid passing through there regularly. If you don't mind a bit of a drive I reckon the best land based squiding you will ever find is the Yorke Peninsula from Tickera around to Ardrossan, basically anywhere with the above ingredients around that stretch of coast, which is like 80% or more, will have good squid and be a nice place to be, also you will always have an

For me I find gar are a bit slower in winter as they don't seem as densly schooled up, also I fish the same general locations but find heading deeper can be better. I tend to be more land (jetty) based in winter, I like the old combo burley float & pencil float rig and a long 2m+ trace. It's otherwise normal gar fishing for baits, burley wind and tides. Great way to pass a winter's day and score a delicious feed, the real trick will be getting through the Tommies who love the colder months but that's a pretty good "problem" to have I reckon.

RH(or more correctly dominant hand) wind for me, the LH (non dominant) wind thing has been around for forever and frankly, to me, it makes no sense. Winding a reel is more of a fine motor skill job than holding a rod and often requires more stamina (ie chucking metal in the surf) also it is what you do easily more than anything else when fishing, sometimes you go fast, sometimes you need to be percise but you're doing it every cast. Swapping hands after a cast (or while the bait/lure is still in the air) should be a fluid beautiful thing for a seasoned fisho, fighting a fish requires much

Add in tiny bits of prawn, over the last year or so and after a reasonable amount of side by side comparison I've come to the conclusion that our gar in both gulfs probably prefer the prawn more than anything else, barely touch squid, okish on cockle flesh, certainly like gents but if I had to catch one to save my life 2 years ago I'd have said "I'll use gents thanks" but now it's prawn, which kind of makes sense given the previous post on diet since prawns are kind of giant versions of their natural, non salad based, diet.

I seriously love this stuff, it explains why they love a gent or small piece of prawn and are always covering everything in their poop, keep em coming.

This is my view too, don't believe everything you're told but don't just write it off either, do your own research and experiments then draw your own conclusions from that, such a positive and enlightening way to go about life generally. Sorry to go a little off topic Des, glad you sorted the problem, I'll leave it alone now. I look forward to more of your threads though, you have a good way of laying things out .

Glad we could finally set the record straight and stop the proliferation of misinformation on the internet then because, please pay close attention, SWIVELS DO WORK ON BRAID.

No, I can see fine, I also don't always use a swivel depending on location and style but it is a FACT that swivels DO work with braid and can absolutely assist with avoiding wind knots.

Sorry but you're wrong, small quality rolling swivels 100% work on light braid, so do the fancy ball-bearing ones on heavier braid I've literally watched the swivel work as advertised many, many times when fishing in current and testing to make sure my bait doesn't spin, in fact when the swivel doesn't spin (but the bait does because I didn't quite get it right) I check to make sure it's loose because sometimes they catch, give it another go and if it doesn't work change it. Are they as effective on braid? No, certainly not, you won't get your line 100% twist free but they absolutely

Yep, it probably is a combination of everything, the shim thing for sure, as a kid I'd even make my own (well pre braid) for an even lay, my Grandfather taught me that, another thing he told me relevant to this was always have tension on the line when winding in, if you don't have weight on use your finger otherwise you get loose coils which will cause tangles. I still do as he taught me and have NEVER had a wind knot, I do occasionally overfill a spool though and get the same experience.....

Cheers Des, very interesting (no really ) I love me some proper research based on factual sources, for what it matters it explains a lot of my observational findings, in particular why at one particular location mid Spencer you catch them all year round but target them differently, ie shallows in summer, deeper 5-6m "pockets" in winter. Also the bloodworm taste thing, so true especially for September KGs and red mullet, makes perfect sense now. Keep these coming as much as you want, I'll read them for sure.

And it went spiderwire braid, fireline then spiderwire fusion depending on what you could afford, fusion would lose the coating and turn into a bundle of silk after a couple of decent fish, awful stuff, fireline was pretty good but stiff until it went fluffy and you had to underfill a little then Spiderwire braid, it seemed weird as at first but once you got used to it braid was the schiz but sooo expensive, ahhh the memories.

Hands down the best braid I've used, moved onto the ADV a while back, does actually seem even better, will definitely be ending up on all my gear eventually once the old stuff wears out.

I've stupidly jumped in after a few things, stupidly for me is pretty much when you can't see the bottom due to dirty or deep water, or jumping in the Torrens lake, that's plain nasty . The only one that compares to you though Mah for plain fear factor and temporary insanity was one night at the end of Wallaroo Jetty something big took my favourite light combo, poor thing, drag was set right and screaming, I nearly got there too but the tiny 1500 spool just couldn't keep up. Instinctively went straight after it, probably wasn't halfway down when I realised what an idiot I was, we'd

It's not legal i imagine, either the 3 hook or 5 hook rule would apply, i reckon it should probably be the 3 hook rule but i guess you could argue 5 is ok and use a small version but why bother really?

Not sure, didn’t ask but shameless baby crab pillaging was rampant, particularly at Wallaroo. As for stepping in i wouldn't advise doing it, I'll get stabbed one day but it just makes me so annoyed when you give benefit of the doubt and explain size limits only to be ignored completely.

So I walked a number of Yorkers jetties on the weekend and was shocked and disgusted by a.) The lack of legal crabs while huge numbers of smaller ones were present and b.) Some people's total disregard to size limits and not keeping berried up females. I honestly didn't see a crab bigger than barely legal, they should be everywhere and saw certain groups who between them probably kept well in excess of a thousand undersized crabs (even after I helpfully released a few buckets worth). People may say so many small models is a good sign but with no bigger ones amongst them it is not and