wishing2Bfishing

Berley & balloons, They'll come to you. Last I heard there were bronzies in nearly plague proportions out of whyalla. Rellies of mine were hooking up to 2-3 each time they went out but that was about 6-8 months ago

Sounds like you have the idea I would try the shallows at night berley up & don't use heavy trace n huge hooks I would prefer to hook n loose than scare them off Hammer heads & Kingfish are options around the rip to

I like lure fishing don't get me wrong there's nothing like a snook, salmon or even a flathead inhaling on a soft plastic or a hard body, whilst u strike and watch the tip load. But what really grinds my gears is that in 21st century opening up the various fishing magazines from around Australia and seeing every fish great and small with a lure dangling or hanging from its mouth. The lure industry is a multi million dollar game, and I have no doubt that a lot of these products are gently pierced through the fishes jaw after capture to sell a product or its line. I find it sad that the corporate marketing crap that you would expect to find in a jewellery store. is more than present when your out fishing trying to get away from the everyday :c

i have never caught a shark except for once when i was about 7 and i pulled in the crab net and found a gummy sitting in it, so i've been told anyway, i dont remember. also caught about a million doggies but i dont count them, they just steal my snapper baits. im talking about bronzies mainly, and a hammer if they are in the area. in this thread im looking for any information that people can give me regarding fishing for sharks from the boat. i have tackle sorted, i got a Stella 10000 spooled with 65lb braid and a 40-80lb Terez so will be able to knock over any shark that might come my way, even if i have to up anchor and chase it. I've also got bait and burley sorted, got heaps of tuna oil as well. The information im looking for mainly is what sort of area i should be trying in, shallow (30ft or less) deep (30ft+), reefy or weedy or broken bottom? i have three areas in mind here in Whyalla, two are shallow and one is deep. Of the two shallow ones one is mainly broken bottom (Mt young through to cowleds landing general area) and the other is a bit more reefy (false bay round to black point), . the deep one is sandy (fitzgerald bay, north of the Pt Lowly rip). I think that the best technique would be to balloon with one bait and suspend the other in mid water otherwise i can see myself spending my time trying to skull-drag 50kg+ smooth rays to the boat and if it sticks itself to the bottom getting frustrated coz i cant snap it off when using such heavy gear so potentially losing 50ft of braid at a time. im not too keen on that!So yea, any tips from the shark fisho's out there would be sweet.cheers

i use the top one for everything, caught tuna, groper, snapper, rays with it and never had a problem with them opening. i have had the second from bottom one open on me though so i do not use them anymore.

What a day of perfect weather Wednesday was.What better to do than spend the day wading on the sandflats in glorious sunshine. You could not get nicer conditions. Crystal clear water, barely a breath of wind, the water like glass and the warm winter sunshine on your back. So nice it would not matter if I did not catch a thing.Just as well! I could not find any Yellow Fin Whiting. I was surprised as I had seen plenty of feeding marks in the shallows near the mangroves where they were feeding at the top of the tide. No fish yet, but I was having a marvellous day in magnificent conditions. I moved over to another large sandy area and what do I run into but some Yellow Fin Whiting. In these conditions they are seen clearly. You stand perfectly still. Minimise as much movement as possible. You know if you can see fish right on the extremities of your vision, then rest assured, they have seen you long before you saw them! Quality polaroids are a must.First cast a nice 35cm fish came in with the usual tenacious tussle these little fish are capable of. The second fish was caught as I cast back over the school that chased the first one in. They are competitive, chasing the one with the bait and hook in its mouth! In beautiful conditions, Sight fishing Yellow Fin Whiting is such a delight. It goes something like this;You cast out beyond the school and retrieve your bait past them. Tempting them to take it. "Ooops!" I startled them the cast landed right in the middle of them. They scattered! No bite!"Aaaahhh!" perfect cast. You just allowed enough for that light breeze that can drift your light tackle across.It's a slow steady retrieve past the fish ... "Take it, take it, taaaaaake iiitt! " you scream and plead at the fish as you drag the bait past its nose!"Yes! Yes! Yes! Go ooonnnh! Take it a bit harder. Hit it harder now." you coax the fish.You strike. "Yes! gotch ya! Gotch Ya, Ya buggah! Trying to pinch my bait! and get away?"You reel it in. It pulls hard. Some drag comes off. It is feisty. You can see it has got some size to it. It is in close within reach then it darts through your legs. You raise your rod, directing it away from your boots and lift it up, some solid weight to it, as you try to grab it against the belly of your waders and then the lip hook pulls! Damn! I should have used the landing net. The cycle starts all over again, but you are still smiling. You are hooked on this, not the fish.It sounds like and is simple fun in glorious conditions. When the water is crystal clear, sun shining through the water, with perfect visibility, your gear needs adjusting to suit these conditions. I get rid of my heavier running sinker that is usually up the line above the swivel and replace it with a small 0 or 00 ball sinker that slides down against the long shank hook. I always only ever fish for YFW with the 1 hook. A size 4 Gamakatsu long shank at the end of a metre length of Flurocarbon. This now resembles a jig head for soft plastics. Except the weight is removable and adjustable. Very light but all the weight is concentrated near the hook which allows for a good cast with a flicky soft plastic rod. It creates very little splash, so it wont spook the fish. The clearer the water the easier they spook.Well it was a bit of a procession so I tried to mix things up a bit. I got the poppers out! Yup the previous week I went out did the round of stores and bought a collection of poppers. After seeing this video clip;http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=NWJCxIl1wSkI thought these must be the ants pants. They can out fish bait! The conditions were perfect, weed free. I tried these 4 poppers and managed a fish on each. Yes my first, second, third & fourth Yellow Fin Whiting ever on poppers.Frankly I was not impressed. It took on average, about 12 to 15+ casts per strike. Maybe my technique is no good? I checked to make sure, in case the fish had moved on. After every popper fish I changed back to my bait rig. In every case I had a fish within 3 casts of the bait, at the most! So a nice bit of video editing makes it look like non stop action instead of a tedious 4 hour session. Poppers have certainly caught a lot of fisherman me included.I don't see why you would use your thumbnail to put a screw in the wall, when you can use a screwdriver or a power drill! Just my take on it.However the Gulp soft plastic sandworms in the "bloody" red colour worked well, as always. It took the bigger fish. A 40cm, a 39 and a few 37-38cm were the better fish.The fish I kept are from 33cm to 40cm. I would have released another 20 odd fish in the 29-32 range. there were plenty of YFW about on a heavenly day!Cheers, Des

All of a sudden i feel like eating Tuna that tastes like chicken...

Noting a few recent posts enquiring after Yellow Fin Whiting, I thought I would put up some general info regarding a species I have obsessed over for a while, along with a part log for this winter so far.Yellow Fin Whiting are available all year round.There are independent resident populations in the St Vincent Gulf, Spencer Gulf and in WA from Albany through to Shark Bay.The is no migration between populations.Yellow Fin Whiting follow the COLD WATER. At various times of the year you will find them in the part of the gulf that have their natural habitat, but were the water is COLDEST. So I track them all year round, up and down the gulf following the water temperature.By the start of April they would have disappeared from the Adelaide beaches and moved north. This catch was at the end of April in a "middle" part of the gulf. Flathead are a nice by catch, but disappear along with the baitfish when the water gets too cold. However Yellow Fin whiting are still found in the cool water shallows. I manage regular catches through May and June. But it is the Bloodworm runs that really concentrate their numbers into the shallows. And it is then that the better size fish are more abundant. This catch was in the middle of the July bloodworm run.Another bag at the end of JulyThis bag in the middle of the August Bloodworm runAnd I recently managed to find a day with light winds! Which resulted in this bag.Now it is not just us recreational fishers that get stuck into the Yellow Fin Whiting in winter. The graph below from a study in 2000 shows the large majority of the professional catch taken in winter months.Cheers Des

Anything with fins....except for that scuba diver i hooked at hughes jetty.He was pretty unreasonable and wanted to punch my head in. cheers brentonP.S if your reading this mate you scream like a girl

I tend to agree with that' date=' any fish is a good fish! Preferred fishing method is land based with soft plastics. Favourite target is probably Bream, but always good to mix it up.A few photos of land based soft plastic caught fish, all local metro except the Snook. Bream from the Port[img']http://imageshack.us/a/img502/9424/109tv.jpg[/img]First Flattie on a SPOldie but still my PB metro SalmonFirst LB SP SnapperPB Snook from CoffinsYet to crack a Mulloway on a SP :silly:

Heading slightly off subject, I recently shelled out 5 bucks and scored enough redgum sawdust and wood chips from a local cabinet maker to last me for years. I blend this with off the shelf hickory or whatever else you get in the small woodchip packets from camping and outdoors shops. Most furniture makers would be happy to let you have some if you offer to pay and take your own bags. Should save you heaps in the long run.

AFThe Hark link is topical for me - a mate bought one of these earlier this year and we christened it on a trip in Aprilhttp://www.hark.com.au/index.php?route=product/product&path=24&product_id=80Not cheap at $400-ish, but does the business to be sure.(BTW we found out the hard way with the second lot - go very conservative on the saltiness of the brine mix, recipe or no recipe!) :ohmy: But moving slightly off-subject, this one caught my eyehttp://www.hark.com.au/index.php?route=product/product&path=24&product_id=88Looks a lot like what is marketed by ALDI in Vic as the "Coolabah mini-spit rotisserie grill", I scored one on sale for $50 (retail $70) during a visit a few months ago.- Passed a post-cooking redgum torture test with flying colours, and the enamel coating is weapons-grade!- Don`t use the legs, a couple of bricks will do- Can be used as rotisserie, grate cooker or open-top shashlick skewer cooker- 2 small netted lamb roasts over (judiciously replenished) charcoal are done in 2 1/2 hours...with the 2 D batts still going strong (I am a rusted-on Duracell fan though - pay the bucks and don`t buy anything else)- Basically a "poor man`s" spit roast, if you don`t need to feed more than 6-8 people of course...- And the beauty is you don`t need a 240V socket nearby

G'day w2bfIf you decide to buy "off the shelf" instead of building your own, this mob have a fairly good reputation (and the prices aren't too bad at the moment, either):http://www.hark.com.au/I believe there are a few users of these smokers on this site, so hopefully they may be able to offer some feedback.Cheersaf

If you can get the kegs the you can have both by joining the two kegs together with a short length of downpipe(around 50cms)one above the other,the one with the flame is your hot smoker then the second one is your cold smoker,have a look on the net and you'll get the idea its easy as. cheers brenton

We use an old galvanised dustbin. Bolted on some legs, cut a hole in the bottom, drilled some holes in the sides to accomodate rods to put racks on. We've got 2 racks and can take a decent feed of Tommy/ST/Mullet fillets. We fit a tray with the sawdust/chips on it over the hole in the base, put a burner under it to get things smoking then turn it off & keep an eye on it, if we need more smoke we'll fire it up again. Experiment with different brine mixes to get the flavour you like.

I use an old clothes drying cabinet but started out using an old tea chest i reckon a keg would work fine as long as you have a small flame to smoke rather than cook your fillets.Cold smoking takes up to 5 hrs but is dependant on how dry the fillets are when put in the smoker and of course how big they are.Fillets off a size S/T will take aroun 3-6 hrs cold smoked and 15 mins hot smoked.Cold smoking for me all the way plus you can do squid, beef etc and they'll keep for a lot longer than hot smoked food.......except you'll eat them all before that is a problem. cheers brenton

ay mate one better than salmon is Snapper . I have a mate that smokes it for me ill find out and get some pictures of the smoker for ya . all I can tell you is that's it a old Steel fridge the old school ones that are all metal ( yes very old ) it has all the smoking racks already set up . He uses Oregon wood saw dust .Ill sus him out but the key is in the salting process before the actual smoking . I actually have some in the fridge now .

ive just got a metho burning hot smoker.. for less than a hundred bucks.. was a good way to get it... real time experimentation with how much heat and what saw dust to use is the trick..

Here's a photo of a ray wing I just prepped ready to cook tomorrow, while I was cutting it up I had one of those fish coating mixtures (those ones you buy from woolies with spices mixed in with the bread crumbs) and didnt even soak the ray in milk first, cut it straight off washed it in a bit of tap water and coated it and deep fried it. Came out tasting beautifulOn the right in this photo you can see the meat I have cleaned off, and on the left you see the inner cartilage layer of the wing with the meat trimmed off. About a 10 minute job at the most (the large piece of cartilage missing is where I wanted to see how sharp my knife was after cutting it, I cut the tips of the flaps off as well as there wasn't enough meat on that part to bother with "filleting")the flap I used in the above photo came from the wings of this stingray pictured here

All boils down to how you cook it.As soon as possible after capture you want to remove the flaps (watch out for puncturing the liver if you puncture it and it bursts remove any meat off the flaps and roughly a cm away from where its permeated into the meat) and put them on ice, Alot of people say to skin it straight away but I found it didn't make too much of a difference. You can either soak the ray in milk (which will tenderize it at the same time) or soak it in brine for 2 hours prior to cooking in order to get rid of any ammonia taste that may be present in the flesh. There's alot of different ways to cook ray and so far I've only tried poaching it in water seasoned with atlantic sea salt, garlic powder, onion powder and lemon pepper which turned out beautiful and tasted pretty much like snapper. Or you can do what I did with my first one which was cooked it in a curry, I got some balti curry paste, coconut milk spicy taco seasoning (i think this was the one with paprika, onion and sun dried tomatoes in it) and added some brown onion, red capsicum and chillis. I started cooking the onions capsicums and chillis first of all then added the stingray meat into that after roughly 5 minutes to let the vegatables sweat off slightly first, I cooked that for a further 2 minutes then added in my curry paste (along with a small amount of boiling water for ease of mixing) and let that simmer for a further 10 minutes then added the coconut milk in and simmered for 20 minutes. Came out beautifully (although I used my own homegrown chillis which made this curry over the top hot as jessie found it to be LOL) I was talking to rowdy the other day as well and he said he was at a party one time and the bloke came out with some smoked stingray and offered a piece to everyone in the party and asked them to guess what it was, most guessed chicken turkey/snapper etc and were all surprised when he said it was stingray.If you want to try smoking the ray you should skin the flaps and the meat is very grainy sort of like flaps along the cartilage, cut the meat along the cartilage line in the middle of the flaps to remove all the grains then cut into chip sized pieces soak it in milk then put it in the smoker. There's no real strong fish taste to the ray either, the texture is a cross between snapper/chicken depending on how you cook it and I could happily eat it any day of the week.I pulled another flap out of the freezer yesterday and I might cook it up tomorrow so if you drop into work on saturday let me know and I'll bring some in for you to try, jess and will tried the curry I did first of all and enjoyed it.The rays themselves I found didnt really have any blood in them apart from a small amount that was present in the flaps when I cut them off.If you want to avoid wasting any part of the carcass then remove the guts from the ray and double wrap them in a freezer bag for the next time (or first) you go for sharks and use it as berley, sharks absoloutely LOVE stingray guts.Carcass you can probably put down on a drop or something in order to feed the area up bringing in crabs/"shitfish" which will in turn bring the larger predators about.I forgot as well, I haven't tried eating the smooth rays yet but from what I hear the eagle rays are the ones to eat if you are going to try one, The maoris/aboriginals/asians swear by stingray from what I hear

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/glenelg-jetty-to-be-closed-weekdays-during-work-to-cover-sand-pipes/story-e6frea83-1226664044726

Got out Saturday, Sunday and the Saturday before, about 200 KGW in 3 trips. 170 of them up to 30 cm the rest 31 to 38. Few Red mullet, tommies & ST's. Couldn't find a Squid. 3 different deckies all had a ball & a feed. The undersized fish were all released in good condition to grow for next weekend.

popped out in the boat this morning for a quick sesh, went and burleyed up some drops then had a fish for whiting, we managed 2 keepers amoungst about 20 small to just unders. we then had a troll for some ST's, ended up with 19 nice plump little fellas. cant wait til my missus' dad makes a smoker for us out of a beer keg, should be good

Thanks, Ugly4life, Tackle and Tucker, Bjorn and everyone who voted. I'm rich Biatch!

Blue groper are from the same family as these wrasse, they also do the same thing as piratepom described with the male being electric blue and the females brown, take the male away and a female takes his place. nature is amazing