ShimsMan

Heya ausea,I own a live fibre 10'5" and it's a nice rod, are you looking for one for spinning reels or an alvey?They have a 13' 2 piece rod that's rated up to 15kg Here that looks nice, could probably cast 3oz without worries; although a certain someone might have to chime in and correct me on that!Good luck mate, they're worth every dollar those wilson rods! Might have to sell mine soon as i don't get down south often enough to use it; i'd offer it to you, but it's only got a cast weight of about 70g or so and won't be up to the task.

That's on helluva knife there, love those shallow chisel ground deba's!

Heya del,Yeah, i'm using the wilson live fibre trophy 10.5ft, very nice rod; but rated only up to about 60 grams or so.the 500BC does well and holds plenty of braid, so is good for what i need and line slap free for the most part. the leader and the weight are my main concerns i guess, so what's the lightest leader i could go with that kind of cast weight (~60gm)?

Hey guys n gals,Finally set up the alvey 500 with 20lb braid and 40lb fluoro, but i'm having some issues with casting distance, i can get maybe a max of 50M at the local sports ground with no wind and 28g weight.This isn't too bad a distance, i know; but sometimes the uni to uni knot catches on a cast and messes up the cast angle, (sends the trajectory very low) and i get even less distance.Is there a better way to set these reels up for casting? Should i be using a lighter leader, more weight, i'm a bit stuck when it comes to beach casting setups...

Whiting nuggets or old fish frames works well for me, although the nuggets do tend to attract more tommies, gar and general bait thieves. Just get yourself a berley bucket and tie it to cord wrapped around a hand reel, that way you can keep it all neat when not in use.I have heard of tuna oil soaked weetbix as a successful mullet and gar surface berley, most cereals are great for smaller species!

I'd go for my beach rod,Alvey 500BC on a 10'5ft wilson live fibre trophy 6-8kg.Line would be 30lb braid with 10 foot of fluorocarbon leader.

Sounds great Bjorn, those are some mean looking lures too!

Thanks Kelvin,I made up a jig for making the loops and it seems to work much better, i see what you mean about using stronger mono, the platypus stuff doesn't seem to take knots all that well.Using 4 loops made a little difference too, will be testing the rigs out today! :cheer:

Hey guys n gals,Been making some rigs up recently with longish dropper loops for attaching hooks and they work well, but the droppers seem to weaken the line by a lot. Is this normal? i'm using 15lb lo stretch mono and it only seems to keep 30-40% of its strength maximum; as i'm running up to 6.5lb drag so this won't do. I'm using 3-4 winds in each dropper.Any ideas?

Hi Baitworms, welcome to the forum! I love the initiative and couldn't think of a better control groups than the SA fishing forums!I started out fishing with baitworms and they're probably my fave bait for catching anything that swims!I did stop buying them months back due to the expense and sometimes rarity of them, $8-10 for 4 or 5 worms is just too expensive for someone who fishes mainly for food, especially when a block of pilchards can be had for a good price.All that said, i would love to give your baitworms a go and give all the feedback you want; if you guys can make a large enough sc

Use the albrights as first option' date=' put a few extra twists in the line for the double uni.....look at a minimum of 6 twists in the leader and 8 twists in the brain.Tie a leader on' date=' tie the end of the leader to a small bucket, put one and a half litres (measured) of water in the bucket (that's 3lb) and slowly lift the bucket while holding only the braid.All should be well, if it lets go, let us know if the leader snapped, if the braid snapped, or if the knot simply slipped through.[/quote'']That's good advice ranger, I use 8lb spectra with 12 fluoro; 7 turns on the braid, 4 on the

Interesting thoughts guys.the blokes there seem pretty stand up and i got my mitts on the komodo reels and they seem quite nice for the money; as for the braid, time will tell, as up until then i was using a special nylon sewing thread instead which while better than most nylon, dulls in comparison to this braid.Having said that, all i wanted out of the braid was casting distance for SP's and i'm not to keen on tight drag settings, so it should serve me well for now, i don't have much basis for comparison as braid had always been too pricey for me.As for their reels, I won't bag them as i have

Hey guys n gals,just discovered a nice little family owned business off port wakefield rd called dorsal fin tackle, bought a couple bits and pieces off them and had my shimano reel spooled with their 8lb bulk braid!Braid seems like nice plaited spectra and cost only 24 bucks, making braid accessible for me! they also had a nice saltiga looking reel made to their specs (boss is a mech engineer) and some very nice and well priced local made rods too! will be looking at their komodo brand reels very soon, anyone tried these before? they seem well made and the drag is very smooth for the price; an

I'm also in the camp of not having caught anything on SP's. I've had some snook grab the tail and run but no actual hookups. They're a fun and accessible way to fish, especially with beginners that are funny about touching bait!Only issue I've ever really had with them is that you need super thin mono or thin braid to get any kind of casting distance with the smaller SP's; so i never really get many chances to use them.

Indeed true, from within 600M of the south breakwater of Outer Harbour to the outer edge of Port Noarlunga aquatic reserve is off limits for spear fishing. The Onk outlet and south of there spears are fair game. Also it seems they're ok north of outer harbour too. Looks like you would need to free dive if you wanted to do it metro, as you need to be up to 600M out and can't legally use one while wearing SCUBA gear.A little confusing, I wouldn't bother unless i was a die hard spear fisherman.

I'll leave the catching fish part up to you ugly! :whistle: Seriously though, I hope this does land a nice flattie, will be trying some inlets and maybe going down second valley way to give it a run!Also fishunter, I did try twisting up the handle, but my pliers weren't up to it as the metal was too tick. Time to put some locking pliers on the list of tools to get...

Hey guys n gals,Been doing a little research, particularly into catching flatties and sweep etc and settled on a DIY spinner lure and made it from a nice shiny stainless teaspoon. The beads can be swapped out for any type, and the lure can be set up for any bait by changing the hook size. In the pic, I'm only using wire for visibility, I actually used an 80LB polyester thread for the short line and 10lb fluoro on the long line on the finished lure, the thread gives much better action than when I tested it with 40lb mono, but you could use 20lb mono and it'd probably work well too. I used the t

Also, the needles are a no.2 harness needle available from D.S. horne Leather Merchant on Muller road, or wayne at Adelaide Leather and Saddlery in waymouth in the city. May or may not be able to get em at spotlight, lincraft; but not sure..

Hey guys n gals,Since Christmas came and went, I've had a bunch of champagne corks and decided to put them to use, been wanting to make these rigs for a while now and finally got around to working it out!Did some buoyancy tests and it seems a 1.5oz sinker works quite well, so i started off with one of them and attached 2 swivels for attaching the pre-snelled neptune no.10 limerick hooks I had lying around. after a minute or so thinking i found a way of attaching the cork, i used a no.2 harness stitching needle and pliers to thread the line through the cork and terminated it with lumo beads and

From what I know of flatties, they're mainly an estuary fish so on a rising tide you could try any river outlet, or maybe past the sand bar at tennyson if you can get to it at low tide. Baits are commonly pilchards on ganged 4/0's, soft plastics, certain lures and of course whole or half pillies. I have heard that the best ones are often caught on worms, a bit like mulloway.the general idea is that they are an ambush predator, they'll hide in gutters and at estuary mouths and wait for prey to come past, then ambush it as it comes along. They can also be in the shallows on any given beach too!

Hey dutch,I've always used gents or dough for tommies but have been experimenting with a double hook rig with a 1oz and achampagne cork to float the hooks off the ground away from crabs etc; of course there's no reason that you couldn't thread small soft plastics onto the hooks and rely upon the drift to impart action instead of it being your enemy.Also, have you looked into texas style drop shot style rigging? the top plastic is usually unweighted in those rigs and could work on the tommies? You'd need to burley up a good bit to draw them in, but that's nothing new eh?