davetheslave

Hi.As others have said salmon does not freeze particularly well but can be frozen for a short duration if prepared properly. Salmon which has been frozen can be used in place of tuna in a mornay, in a fish chowder or used to make fish cakes/patties.

I have been going to Streaky Bay fishing for over 30 years but usually in feb/march/april. It's a great little spot. October MAY be a little early for the snapper but i know they are caught there in nov/dec and off the jetty as well. Salmon are available from back beach and also at a beach called Halleys just a bit further up. If you have access to a small boat ask for directions to a spot called "the bushes" which is a good whiting spot and also around "little islands". Razorfish can be pulled [25 perday bag limit] and the broken shells and entrails make great burley. If the trumpeters are in by then make sure not to burley too heavily. If you are mostly land based try spots like tractor beach and smooth pool[just before high tide], for salmon trevally and whiting. All the best. I'll be over there in march as usual.

I wonder if anyone here has used the humble mussel as bait or burley. I have used crushed mussels successfully as burley for snapper but have never used them as bait for whiting or other species. The most up to date info i have been able to google up says that FARM GATE prices the producers are getting for mussels is only $2-3 per kilo [dont't know what retail price that would equate to]. Wonder if there isn't maybe a bit of a market there for mussels even only as bait given the ever rising price of cockles/pipi's. What do other members think. Are they a good bait and berley alternative to cockles.

I wonder if anyone here has used the humble mussel as bait or burley. I have used crushed mussels successfully as burley for snapper but have never used them as bait for whiting or other species. The most up to date info i have been able to google up says that FARM GATE prices the producers are getting for mussels is only $2-3 per kilo [dont't know what retail price that would equate to]. Wonder if there isn't maybe a bit of a market there for mussels even only as bait given the ever rising price of cockles/pipi's. What do other members think. Are they a good bait and berley alternative to cockles.

I wonder if any others on here have had any bad experiences with wake boats particularly on the river murray. By wake boats i don't mean your average everyday ski boat, but those which are specifically designed to throw up a huge wake. On my last trip to the murray i was tied up to a snag doing a bit of fishing, there were a number of ordinary ski boats going up and down the river all having a good time. The next thing i know one of these wake boats roared past me very close, the wake from this boat threw my tinny right up on top of one of the branches of the snag i was fishing and all but tipped me and all my gear out of the tinny and into the water. Later when back at the friends shack where i was staying one of the kids told me that another of these wake boats had come past and that my boat was sinking.When i went down i found my tinny 3/4 full of water and almost sitting on the bottom. While i was there bailing out the tinny this wake boat came roaring past again the wake again almost filling the tinny with water. As it went into a shack just down from where we were i went down and suggested that they stop their stupid antics otherwise they might find their precious boat sitting on the bottom come morning. Despite some abuse i had no further trouble that trip. I think that these wake boats should be banned, at least from the river murray as i believe it is only a matter of time before a tragedy occurs. Also given the recent spate of river bank collapses attributed to low river levels, i wonder how much might be due to the bank errosion caused by these boats. What do other members think.

Green banana prawns can be bought from coles/woolies for as little as $14 a kilo making them cheaper than cockles and they will catch almost anything.

To get the best out of your alvey you should make sure that you get a rod designed for it, just any old rod will not be suitable. Ideally the rod should have the winch fitting close to the butt and the first runner should be large and around one third of the way up the rod.

I have 4 alvey's of varying sizes which i used extensively many years ago when rock and surf fishing. They would have to be the best CASTING reels out, as far as distance goes. Years ago when i lived in adelaide and involved in the angling club scene pretty much all the casting comps were won by blokes using alvey's. Early on i almost gave them away as i was always getting what we used to call 3 stranders where the line seemed to loop off causing tangles. An old bloke in the club i was showed me why. With a spinning reel the line is wound back on the reel in the same way that it comes off, it is the same with an overhead reel, but with an alvey sidecast reel the line loops off, the same as a spinning reel when being cast out, but is wound in the same as a centre pin or overhead reel. He suggested that i always use 2 swivels instead of one on the main line to counteract this. For the life of me i can't see why 2 swivels would work better than 1 but it certainly greatly reduced the amount of tangles i was getting when casting.

Wish i was over there, i love prawns, have to make do with crumbed garfish tonight lol. BTW snapper wings from the larger snapper are excellent smoked up as well.

A pity they don't do some research into possibly making feed pellets or similar for the kingfish and tuna from all the carp in our waterways. Carp are already used as bait for the crayfish industry and crabs like em too, surely it would be worthwhile spending a few dollars seeing if the tuna and kingfish might find them palatable, maybe start a new industry, ease the pressure on our pilchard stocks and help rid our waterways of carp.

Also where would be the closest place to the marina to launch a kayak.

Hi all. Was just wondering if anyone has done any kayak fishing at the new wallaroo marina.Looks an ideal spot for kayak fishing as it is very sheltered. Has anyone had any success there.

We don't pay a cent to launch here in port pirie.and we have a good sized car park. When they did the old ramp up a number of years ago the council wanted to charge us but as they got a grant from the gov't to do it everyone kicked up about it saying that we had already paid for it via our registration fee's and the council backed down. Mind you we havn't got a big marina and multi laned ramp like they have in whyalla. The council is talking about a further upgrade to our ramp now so i suppose there will be a charge put on soon.

When i rang up fisheries about this early in the year, they denied outright that they were considering it, yet on abc radio a few weeks ago a fisheries spokesman said they were. There was a fisheries stand at the smelters picnic here in port pirie on wednesday so i tackled the fisheries officer who was there. She said that is was already legislated for in the fisheries act but that the legislation had not been acted on as yet. She led me to believe that possession limits would be in within 2 years. I believe that even now there is a de facto possession limit in place where if you have more than 72 whiting in your freezer it is deemed to be a commercial quantity under the law.[ I will stand corrected if i am wrong]It must be said though that 72 whiting should be enough for anyone surely. I visit the west coast around streaky bay once a year and usually go for around 10 days. Staying in the caravan park there i have seen many vehicles from mostly victoria and qld. Many of these people have very large freezers on board, they stay in the area for weeks or months and often go home with hundreds of kilo's of fish fillets. I believe it is these people that fisheries should be targetting. I only take a small engel or chescold freezer with me and i find that the fish i take home with me last for months. I hope that when fisheries bring in these possession limits they are at least reasonable otherwise it will sound the death knell for many of these small towns. Why would i undertake a thousand kilometer + round trip to streaky bay for 10 days if i were only allowed to bring home a couple of dozen fish.

If anyone has the time have a look at "on line opinion".There is an article on there called " how not to kill the ocean for fish" by a bloke called Alex Rogers. Its pretty scary stuff about the parlous state of fisheries all over the world.

My fiancee loves fishing and camping out, she has gone with me to streaky bay the last 2 years, we camp out in our caravan. She comes from whyalla and often went fishing out in the boat with her dad.She always used handlines but i taught her how to use a rod this year. After nearly piercing my ear a few times she got quite good at it and caught plenty of gar and some salmon up to 3kg. Now if only i could get her to learn to clean and fillet.lol.

I just saw an ad on tv for these,iv'e heard the old saying that lures catch more fishermen than fish but i'm going to give them a go, they seem to have a good action, might try em for the kingfish and bream and school mulloway down the local wharf here in pirie, and maybe for the trout in the broughton river. Has anyone here actually tried em. Will keep ya posted anyway when i try them out.

one of those super large crab nets should be able to handle most snapper, but might need a bit sronger rope than they are supplied with.

good luck on your trip nev. I always used a drop gaff[ rope gaff]when i used to go jetty fishing worked quite well except once when i was at port giles jetty and had a 10kg mulloway on, asked a bloke to do the honours and he threww the gaff on top of the line and broke it off grrrrrrrrr.

hah thanx for all the moral support fellas lol.managed to get one from pro angler in victoria. Hoping to try it out when i go to streaky bay next week, wish me luck. Hope the bities arnt too big this year.

tonyb wish some of those mid europeans would come over and steal some of our carp lol.

Its not only the reef which suffers from predation by these people a year or so ago a mate of mine who lives in adelaide went to torrens island fishing and saw a whole family of them catching small bream etc only a few inches long as soon as they were landed it was off to mum to get them minced up straight away.NO EVIDENCE.I believe they knew exactly what they were doing.

Hi all I will shortly be re-building my old surf rods when i built them many years ago they had a nice shiny black/brown coating on them they are now looking fairly delapidated and i wondered if anyone here knows of a product i can re-coat them with to bring back a nice finish b 4 i start re-building. CHEERS DAVE.

float tubes are an inflatable pontoon type seat you can sit in them and fish they have built in rod holder and pockets for storage of gear propulsion is by way of fins which attach to your feet much the same as divers use.they are used extensively in the usa mostly for freshwater fly fishing.i am hoping to adapt one for use in our shallow sheltered bays and estuaries chasing flathead tommies mullet gar whiting etc and perhaps in the murray.if anyone knows where i could purchase one here in australia the info would be much appreciated.

Hi have been fishing for many years but have just found this site.i am considering purchasing a float tube and fins for use in the murray river [oops sorry murray lake]and some of our sheltered bays,estuaries and inlets.would be interested to hear any information from anyone who has used these and where one might be purchased.