Kaotik_Monkey

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 I can say is Yippee!My fav presenter Lee Rayner finally getting acknowledged.If they can take the basis of Adventure bound i.e. A lot of advanced technical stuff, being sponsored but not in your face about it and do some legitimate every day fishing like they have previously done.I see a big future. Adventure Bound format + HD Quality + Lee Rayner = Sounds good to TT!

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

Had another session later this arvo. In a different spot. The action wasnt that great but did manage to pull out an 38cm bream.. Got a few St's aswell but was pretty quiet considering the action i had yesterday.Leigh got a 30cm bream and a few ST's too.Whitebait did the damage and the same rig aswell......

Zman grubz in motor oil with a 1/8 jig head goes alright

Went to OH yesterday with my step dad in the yaks, we caught a heap of puffers and undersize ST's but we also managed a few nice ST's. It was my first time fishing that area, looking forward to fishing it more

Yes circles are deadly. I use twin circles on every bait I throw at snapper except for whiting heads where I will use a single 6/0. All my circles are Gamakatsu Octopus circles and are set in strike/fighting drag whilst sitting in the rod holder or if im holding the rod at the time.Quite often when fishing in amongst ruggers its possible to leave your rod in the holder and numerous ruggers will tap at it until finally one that is big enough will swallow the hook and load your rod up.All of our big reds are caught this way, but normally with big baits ie whole tommies, big chunks of squid or half slimey Macks.Shallow water is no different, but if reef fishing and the fish are smaller in size we normally still run twin circles but downsize the bait a little.In my opinion there is no need to have your stinger hook as a standard mustard pattern. Ive had great results for many years running twin circles snoozed 10-12cm apart.For me though, I never let a snapper run with the bait. Circles by design are meant to be load up in the corner of the mouth and normally they set with fighting drag the moment the fish turns or moves away and the hooks pull tight in there mouth. By letting them swim away your just giving them more time to drop the bait. But again this is just opinion. I even fish circles unweighted in shallow water with reel in gear. as soon as the fish hits it and runs you get an instant hook upI also agree with Moggy that once the fish is hooked. it pays to give the rod one firm lift to set the hook properly, but only after you feel the fishes weight on your rod. And of course there is nothing wrong with running single circle hook rigs as well.

I know that as soon as I click on one of Kelvin's reports, I am in for a good read and so far I have not been let down. GREAT SESH!

Took my mate and his father-in-law fishing today. They were quite keen to get a suitable outfit each and first stop was Fishering Wholesalers. I was pleasantly surprised to be greeted by Mark in the store and he put us onto the goods. I picked out a pair of Daiwa Airds for my mate and Mark matched them to a Daiwa Seabass rod. I haven't used these before but they were similar to my seajiggers and did the job great today. We grabbed some braid and Mark spooled both reels. We left with a pair of great landbased rods and a few odds and ends, very happy with the service.Headed to a spot down south and soon we were set up and fishing. After 2 hours of catching baby ST I was getting a bit worried. We caught 2 decent mullet but they both shook off the hooks as we lifted them from the water. The keeper bag was empty and I considered moving spots. Another bait change and suddenly I was onto a better fish. It turned out to be a 42cm mullie. We put out a few more pilchard cubes and suddenly the school moved infront of us. We pulled in a 60cm fish and another just undersized before getting a double, then a triple hookup. Most of the fish fought great on the light gear and braid and we had a heap of fun. Ended up with a few keepers and released another 7 or 8 undersized.

Pulled a few bubba redfin on fly from a stinky puddle on Sat arvo:

My god there's been.some good fish posted in this little thread!! :woohoo: great fishin'Don't forget to start a whole report thread of yer own now and then yeah I returned to some favourite old port river rocks this morning. Boat battery was dead, but enjoyed a relaxing little session land based.Not too much to write about... Bream were fairly quiet but managed a good one that made my day.Pic doesn't do it justice, but gave a great account of itself...

Today I caught my first ever SNAPPER over 60cm actually measured in at 75cmI went and showed ugly thats how rapped I was, got him to take photos for me, it weighed in at 4.05 klgI know by any means it is not huge but to me it was :woohoo: Photos will follow at later dateIt has taken some time for me to catch a decent fish, persistance eventually paid offBack out again Sunday

hi fellas I went for a flick with fellow member snake as we regularly do , and I got lucky with a 43.5cm bream on plastics . I thought 8t was going to be another small mully but to my surprise landed the biggest bream I've caught so far with lures .ill post the pic up as soon as I figure out how to in my phone .

headed down to the Coorong with Jimbo today in SS Banga... ill make it short cause there will be video and a report but we ended up with 14 between us. biggest was 46cm by me but was good fun and good for our first time fishing there....good fun on 1000 size reels and 3lb leader

G"day LF, give the thought of disregarding the jetties and hordes a miss and try the local beaches and rocks around wallaroo, Hughes, Turton ect, avoid the masses and maybe unlock a very nice piece of your own utopia.Went to Ardrossan, in 3 days never set foot on the jetty and came home with an eski full of bream , mullet, Tommy and flathead fillets.Cheers

Hi all,I am new to this forum but hopefully have something to offer the angling community and something to gain for my research.I have just completed my PhD developing culture protocols for marine baitworms (Flinders University). We can now successfully grow and produce sandworms and have reached the point of planning some market research.We plan to visit jetties and boat ramps later in the year (probably after July) with free samples of our worms which will be handed out in return for the completion of a survey (online or hard copy). The survey will report upon the following: how easy they are to load on hooks, how well they stayed on hook, if they stayed active once on hook, if they are effective, what species are caught (and how many of each species), would you buy these worms, were the worms still alive at the end of the trip, would you have liked more worms than provided with, would you recommend our worms to friends. Have we missed anything??? I am jumping through administrative hoops ATM with ethics applications so it will take a while before we get the go-ahead.I just thought I would throw the idea out there and see what response we might get. Also seeing as we are at the development stage I would like to ask if anyone has any good ideas about how to get feedback on our worms.I look forward to some interesting replies.Sam

I only joined this forum today and i've already learnt so much! Just wish i had seen all this before i purchased my new reel of ebay though it's on it's way, i'll let you'll know how it goes.

For bream on lures/plastic you want a graphite rod, bout 6'8"-7'2", about a 1500-2000 size reel and 6lb braided line....this outfit would also suit whiting on poppers, although possibly something slightly longer (7'-7'6") would benefit for long casts on the flats for whiting.First thing you have to keep in mind is that ALL these light graphite outfits are fragile, so treat them ALL with care!Just so happens that I've currently got two bream outfits advertised for sale here on the forums, both of which would perfectly fit that bill.
The first is a top end outfit and no doubt out of your league if you're just starting out, but the little Okuma outfit would be a perfect starting point, it's a good little light outfit, already spooled with braid, and at the price I've listed it you certainly wont find even an unspooled entry level outfit for that price.If you want something new, an entry level combo will set you back about $150, plus about $30 extra for a spool of braid. Have a chat at your local tacklestore, and they will show you a suitable range to choose from.....have a look at the Shimano Catana/Sienna combo as a starting point.

Shade and structure.

I believe the bends in the river are usually pretty good. Also if you can spot any structure in the water that's usually a good spot for Bream as they tend to hide in fallen logs/overhangs/rocks etc. Generally you need to flick your plastic right in tight to the structure. Others who fish the Onk more often will have heaps better info than me though.