Knackers

The problem with Chinese made gear is you never know what you are getting. The "company", Jarden internation, that is Penn, ABU, Berkely and Shakespear or whatever put out tenders to make X amount of reels. I'm pretty sure they don't even have a factory anymore. Manufacturing companies then bid to make the reels. So one Penn/ABU or whatever will be made by a different factory year to year/batch to batch. That is why quality and materials used is hit and miss. Normally you can't tell and buy on good faith then after a bit of use the problems come out. That is why I had one epix baitfeeder that

Swedish made ABU, definitely. I have a chinese made 9000 and it has been surprising good. Had a chinese made 7000 and what a piece of crap. Threw it away. USA made Penns. The Chinese made versions are absolute crap. Had the anti reverse break on a 9500 version. They are crap, crap, crap. I miss a Fenwick glass boat rod I had. It was rated at 20 lb but you could catch KGW on it all day and then catch 25lb snapper on it no worries. Original Sabre blanks I miss as well.

Tufline XP for me as well.

Piccy tells a 1000 words. Whilst not smoking shows the room where you can put the shavings on the coals. I put them both directly on the coals and above.. I find that the weber does just a good a job but can roast and grill/bbq as well compared to just a dedicated smoker. Just play around with the amount of coals you need, whrere to put them for what you want to do.

Consider buying a weber or similar. I don't have a dedicated smoker and use the bbq, big weber and the smaller weber to smoke all kinds of stuff. The smaller weber is this one http://www.weber.com/grills/series/go-anywhere/go-anywhere-charcoal Unless you are cold smoking or smoking heaps of stuff hot smoking is easy. On the smaller one I put 3 - 4 briquettes on one side, get going, and place the sawdust suitably wetted on top. Wait for it to smoke and whack the fish in. I can use it to roast a whole chicken as well up to 1.6 kg.

No worries. I do my good filleting knives at 17 deg on the lansky. Just doing a bit of reading on the web, FWIW it seems that any of these pull through designs "scrape" the knife sharp. Apparently it is not good for knives in the long run. I have a few pull through sharpeners with the ceramic wheels and reckon on cheaper knives they are great. I usually lose or wreck the filleting/bait knives in the boat way before I would ever wear them out sharpening. I might get a set of the FURI for these knives and keep using the lansky with a good steel for the expensive knives. I have noted that if I us

Never surf the internet! These look brilliant http://www.edgeproinc.com/ Obviously not cheap

I have the lansky 5 stone thingo which is good for getting an edge back after hard use and misuse. I like that you can get the sharper angle onto filleting knives. That ebay thingy looks like it doesn't matter what angle of the edge is, it will maintain it. Am I correct before I pull the trigger and buy a set.

What are these "block diamond" sharpeners? Is it a generic name for a type of sharpener or a product name. I just googled and it seems there are lots of different types/brands.

Thanks for the replies. I'm googling the options now.

I'll be heading back to SA soon and don't have a dedicated KGW rod. I use all sorts of stuff for whiting but nothing dedicated. Best so far is a 3000 sized shimano stradic on a 7 ft pflueger trion 3-6 kg rod. The rod is really good, when the fish are not on the bite it will load up nicely not pulling the bait from their mouths. I have found some rods, like my wilson and rapala all graphite 2-4 kg rods, just want to spring back really quickly with a light load on them. I can imagine the whiting just mouthing the bait with slight pressure and then having ripped out of their mouths, if that makes

Best crab bait I have ever used is shark frames or the skin, especially with a bit of flesh left on it (I am a crap shark fillet skinner). An old aboriginal lady gave me the advice whilst netting off the jetty at Denial Bay. She was getting heaps, nobody else was. Lasts for ages as well.

I'm a big fan of Shimano overheads. I have a TLD 15 and 25 for exactly what you want to do. Although my favourite reel in this class and purpose is an ABU 9000. I also have a Shimano Tyrnos 30 that I use for big stuff and it is bullet proof. I did have 3 daiwa overheads, a Sealine level wind 47H and from memory a sealine 400 or 450 and the bigger 900. They were really good for the price but the 47h used to chew through the level wind worm gear for some reason where my ABU 7000s never did. After using in the surf it got relegated to a boat only reel and it still chewed worm gears - ended up rem

And I forgot - LURES. SOFT PLASTICS I reckon with appropriate lures and soft plastics you shouldn't need to take bait anymore, at least on longer trips. Bit hard for a day out on the whiting or snapper though.

I separate all my bait into smaller lots and zip lock. In the boat I also have a smaller esky about 20 litres or so that fits into my chest freezer. I put all the bait and ice into this and chill it down overnight. This goes into my bigger esky with drinks, ice etc and i only get bait out as I need it. I often take home still frozen bait like squid and pillies. I do the same when fishing from the shore but because I have about 300 amp hours of battery in the car and 200W of solar panels on the roof and a 140 watt folding panel I can run a 40 litre engel as a freezer and a 60 litre fridge.

No worries. To be honest, at the risk of repeating as well, I do use the willy weather graphs up here in the NT as most of the ramps are only usable at a certain height of tide. If the tide data is right the graphs are usually accruate to 30 mins either side. Worst case was an hour later which put me retrieving in the dark. I always have a hard copy from the BOM website as well adjusted for the spot I'm fishing. I extract them from the BOM into excel and then add/subract to get the right tides.

I find it much easier when the info is displayed graphically. I can look through a months worth of tides and get a good idea of whats happening in about a minute. BOM only provides (as far as I know) pages of numbers and would be almost impossible. . Here's just 2 days of each as an example. Each to their own though Cheers Rod Capture.JPGPublication1.jpg Rod, I get that and that is cool. But it is only as good as the data WW put in. I have found that their tide data, because they can't seem to copy from the BOM correctly, or use some crap data extraction it is consistently wrong

Why would you bother to go to any other site rather than the BOM for tides? Every other site gets their tides from the BOM. When you look at sites such as willy weather all you are getting is the BOM data and any finger faults that they may have made. And I have found they make all sorts of errors. There was another tide thread where I posted examples of willy weather mistakes. From willy weather: Data Sources Weather information based on data supplied by the BoM

I have had maui jims now for at least 12 years, maybe about a dozen pair. I always have a set with amber lenses for cloudy glary days and the grey lenses for bright days. I get the sport versions as they are light and stay on your nogging when you lean over. Before maui's it was Mako's for at least 5 pair. They are brilliant as well but the glass lenses make them heavy so a neck strap is a good investment as they do wnat to slide off when you look down. I found that they both are fairly scratch resistant and I usually destroy them completely before they get too scratched. I wait until I go ove

The best advice I have ever seen or been given is regardless of the knot learn to tie it well and lubricate when tightening. Then test it before trying to catch a fish on it. Even though with braid I sweat over making my biminis and yucatan/bristol knots perfect with medium/heavy line even if I tied a spider hitch for a double the way I fish I would not come near to breaking that knot - if I tied it carefully and correctly. I lose fish for a variety of reasons but hate it when you now you did something shoddy. I think most of my fish lost recently is not checking snap swivels correctly, lo

Uni knot for me as well. Used to be an improved clinch all the time with the occasional failure but haven't had any failures with the uni knot.

Wasn't there a barramundi farm in the SE somewhere?

Then again, barramudi or saratoga would be interesting

Some idiot will probably release another invasive species into the system so there are easily caught fish available. Like idiots in Vic when I lived there catching wild pigs in NSW and releasing them in scrub. Or the idiots in Tassie that released carp into the high country lakes, creeks and rivers.