Thursday 12th December 2013
Tackle specials and angling politics
from Downrigger Shop
Steady reports incoming, everywhere from Tassie to Sydney, saying blue eye cod are on the bite. Blake Matthews, off Jervis Bay:
That’s a ripper, Blake. Captain Rossco from MV Signa at Kiama’s been finding blues for his clients, too:
Sheesh. Maybe I packed away the Tanacom 750 combo too early, this year?
Always glad to receive a report from Tasmania. Leo Miller’s is no exception:
Hi Andrew, the weather was perfect yesterday so I gathered a crew and went off the bottom of Tas.
Striped trumpeter are good this time of year and we bagged out in 15 mins at the first stop.
Then went to the shelf and caught a heap of deep sea goodies.
All up 12 Striped trumpeter kept (landed over 25 tho and released smaller models), 10 Blue eye, 10 gemfish and 15 grenadier. Went 100km sth of boat ramp.
Blimey. Can you send some of those glass out Tasmanian conditions up our way, Leo? Closer to home, and Gavin Lau had a tough one in Middle Harbour. Made even tougher by a tantalising find at the end of the day:
Hey Andy we did not have much luck today. We started off collecting lots of nice slimies right opposite of Clontarf where they were busting. We thought we will be in luck today as we got some nice king candy baits. We made our way to south head along those cliffs but nothing touching the slimies and nothing much on sounder. We left too early as we found out later those 2 kayakers that ya saw last time again got into those kings after we left. DAMN!!! Overall it seems the Harbour is very quiet hopefully the next few weeks when the water heats up the kings will be inside. BTW 2 kayakers got into about 4 rats 60cm on squid strip and it was a feeding frenzy lasted only 10 mins. However when we back at Tunks we found a 112cm fresh frame and it wasn't from Matt Reid, as we saw him come after we were back at the ramp.
Fuzzy phoned for a few micro jigs, then sent through this pic. DOUBLE WOW:
Mate of mine, jew on micro jigs 35-40 grams.
Now that’s interesting. I’d never even heard of micro jigging jewfish until two weeks ago. Now I’m hearing about it almost every day. Kevin Preston still kicking goals out of Greenwell Point:
Hi Andrew still getting some nice reds around The Banks and a few kings. Heres a pic of a 3.5 kg Reddy I got today on a 5 inch peppered prawn
Very nice, thanks Kev. Oliver Evans is a bloke I run into everywhere – mostly, downrigging the Harbour or Longie. Now I hear he’s been targeting a new area of ops:
G'day Andy, I’ve just gotten back from Namotu island Fiji where I was living and guiding guests of the resort fishing for the last month. To say I had a good time is an understatement.
After hearing from the previous fisho that not much was caught I'm happy to say that every day I caught fish. Mahi, Spanish macks, wahoo, yellow fin, marlin and GTs.
Fishing from The Duck is included in the price of staying at the resort. However with a maximum capacity of 25 guests its pretty hard to get in. The owner Scotty also has a game fishing charter business fijifishingcharters.com
Looks like you made a lot of visitors happy over there, Ollie! Thanks for this excellent report mate.
At the other end of the size scale, Matt Loraway’s one proud dad:
My little man 20 months old with his first fish from down at JB. One very happy little angler, hopefully this has him addicted now!
Gold. I still remember my first fish with Dad – a toadie, at Barrenjoey. Not quite as big as your lad’s blackfish, Matt. J Out last week with a top crew of keen young blokes – one of whom, Mitchell, fished the night before, catching squid to save us time. Now that is above and beyond the call of duty.
I should mention the new arrangement which is working so well for us and might work for our readers, too. Traditionally a lot of fishos are pretty cagey about spots and techniques – some to the point where it gets a bit silly. What we are finding is that sharing intel is an investment which can double – or, triple - your reward. The day before each trip I pop a post up on the Facebook page as to where we’re going and what the general plan might be. Because I have to work late we’re usually last on the water so, we pull up just before the Heads and either phone or radio other blokes out there. So for instance I might phone Simon, who tells me he’s up on Long Reef. He says he’s been downrigging for an hour, hasn’t turned a reel, and hasn’t seen anyone else nearby hook up either. So instead of the 14 mile round trip to Longie which we intended, I tell him we are going to turn south and jig the Annie Miller. We get to the wreck, down go the jigs, and we’re into them. I call Simon and tell him to head south PDQ. In 30 minutes he arrives and gets stuck in too. This arrangement works particularly well with kingfish because they move around depth wise but when you find them, there’s usually plenty for everyone. Which brings me back to Monday. Coming down Middle Harbour with six beautiful big Arrows in the livebait tank (thank you, Mitch!) I got word from a client that kings were going nuts around the Colours – just like they were, last week. Over we went and deployed live squid off the downriggers:
Pandemonium resulted, as multiple kings hooked up
although all small, including this. One king on the tow hook, and one on the stinger:
Checked in with Ed and Peter who were out at the Twelve Mile, but were finding only jackets and couta. Matt was at Longie and reported lotsa kings but, all small too. With perfect sea conditions we went a little further north to jig the Coolooli. Here’s a pic of the original vessel (a bucket dredge) compared with our sounder screen as we passed over it, on Monday:
A double hookup first drop and, incredibly, both kingfish jumped off the hooks. I couldn’t believe it but knew that was bad news, because our experience was that with that spot is that there’s usually only a few in a very small area. But given that the bigger fish seemed to be in deeper water, we made a judgement call to travel on to the Birchgrove Park.
Nothing found, so it was back to White Rock for a standard downrigging session.
The kings went nuts. All small, so we geared down as far as 6 kilo to match them.
Poppers, hundred gram jigs, big soft plastics, at times we had four on simultaneously. They love the Halco Roostas:
A keeper trevally came off a downrigged squid too:
After a great couple of hours we were still hankering for something bigger but had no bait left. So it was back down to the Artificial but, having blown a fuse in the sounder and not having a replacement aboard, we were flying blind as regards finding the slimy mackerel schools. Which was a shame because Matt Reid scored this fish of the day on a live slimy, for one of his clients:
112cm and 102cm at Old Mans Hat
Nice one. Back out there this week filming Phil’s twin downrigger setup on his small inflatable:
I’m fascinated by this new trend where blokes like Phil, Klaus, and David Vassalo are downrigging solid kings out of boats 12 feet long – or, smaller. Update in next week’s report. His adventures are amazing, but a tad worried Al’s gonna get bitten one day.
Had an awesome experience swimming with a hammerhead that was released unharmed - crazy creature. Cheers Al
With Christmas just around the corner we’ve been racking our brains here at Downrigger HQ, trying to figure what present we can give to the clients without whom we wouldn’t even be here.
The Daiwa 4500T is our number one reel, we’ve shipped hundreds of them over the last two years:
They’re sent to clients with the factory drag washers which are not carbon fibre but are pretty dang good. Tim, our shipping manager, has precut a stack of carbontex drags to fit this model and then wiped them down with Saltiga drag grease which we got from our Man In The East. If you’ve bought a 4500T from us and remember when, send me your postal address by email? We’ll pop a free set of correct size replacement drags in the mail, along with a how to page. Two minute job, and you won’t believe how smooth your reel’s drag system will be. Dan Abadir’s always finding interesting stuff on the Net and forwarding it on for our readers to view:
I found this posted on the shimano FB page. Wow ha?
Definitely, Dan! Unmistakable major wows. So’s this, the incredible story of a tugboat with 12 crew aboard – which rolled and sank off the Kenyan coast. Three days later a dive team descended to retrieve corpses. They find one crewman alive, in an air pocket, with the whole thing recorded live on helmet cam:
Fish NSW out now, the big Christmas edition. Yours truly has a story in there too. J Get it from your local newsagent, it’s full of good articles, including a corker on land based game fishing:
To boats, and a new Mercury 150HP 4-stroke went on the ‘Carolyn Jane’ in September 2012. Last week we passed 500 hours usage on the outboard, which I mentioned on Facebook. Here’s service costings, might be of interest for those considering an upgrade:
Oct 2012 – 20hr service $617
Feb 2013 –100hr service $617
April 2013 – 200hr service $769
June 2013 – 300hr service $475
Aug 2013 – 400hr service $728
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Nov 2013 – Water in fuel $549
1st year – Sept 2012- Aug 2013 $3206
Total 500 hours service costs $3755
Lots of chat (3500 views, 50+ comments) on the Facebook page, with most readers pretty shocked that I spent this much, in one year. And there’s not doubt $3700 is a lot of money. Here’s two samples. Chris Sun:
Andy, if you’re just idling a lot of the time (i.e. when downrigging), those hours dont count towards service hours. Marine mechanics will tell you differently but i have access to oil analysis and servicing my engines at 250 hours with approximately 50 of those being load hours has less contamination than 100 load hours
Matt Fraser:
I service my own engine every 100hrs a 200 Etec, 3yr 300hrs service parts: water pump, thermostats x2, plugs x6, fuel & oil filters, anodes, de-carbon spray, synthetic gear oil and a few other small items is about $280. I don't always change the plugs. I check the gaps ,clean, test and replace them, and the water pump doesn't need doing every 100hrs either, they are the most expensive parts in the service, about half the cost. The thermostats can be checked, tested and replaced also, another $70 odd. The savings can be made when doing it yourself as you can check and test, but not really viable when labour costs enter the equation. With the savings I purchased the Evdiag software for the laptop and a workshop manual which covers every aspect of the engine. These always come with me in the boat along with 4 spare fuel filters, a fuel line extraction pump, a set of pre-indexed spark plugs, thermostats and enough tools to cover anything that I am capable of doing myself.
Good advice, lads. But note – I can barely change a light bulb, much less a spark plug.
And as Clint Eastwood said, a man’s got to know his limitations.
To politics, and a great letter in this month's Afloat magazine, about (NSW Maritime Minister) Duncan Gay's obsession with lifejackets. Don Hartley says we should follow the money trail, always good advice with NSW pollies:
The back history of NSW Maritime needs a little explanation. Lately I’ve been hearing some horror stories about that department, some serious, some not so serious. Not serious would include issues like the swarms of corroded and unused boats on public moorings which keep legitimate boaters on the waiting list for years:
More serious are stories like those I hear from boat crew, or via email. Last week, a crew member told me he had been fined for sitting on his life jacket rather than wearing it - way up the estuary, in glass out conditions. Another told me second hand of his friend who had been sitting for his coxswain’s ticket and had been mercilessly bullied by the sour old testers, who are notorious in that regard. Yet more serious is that NSW Maritime has an extensive record of corruption at the highest level. Three years ago, their in-house solicitor was found to have been running a conveyancing business out of her government office-for nine years. 4,568 faxes were found to have been sent from Maritime fax machines.
The corrupt solicitor at Maritime, Tonette Kelly, earned $120,000 per year and had five houses, when the Independent Commission Against Corruption came calling. ICAC found she had not lodged tax returns on her private business. Of the three whistleblowers who tried to alert management about the scam, two were sacked and one was suspended. Her punishment? A $5100 fine and a three year bond. Meaning Toni’s conveyancing business was a pretty good investment all round. She celebrated with some red latex pants, hopefully not paid for out of Maritime’s petty cash box:
Meantime, Maritime CEO Steve Dunn abused the police officer investigating Kelly’s corruption, then went over his head to bully the policeman’s superior officer:
An even bigger scalp was claimed when then Maritime Minister Paul Macleay resigned after being caught viewing porn on his Parliamentary computer. But how could Kelly have gotten away with running a conveyancing business out of her Maritime office during the Sydney house price boom - for nine years? Here’s a clue:
‘Then minister Joe Tripodi’ is now dealing with his own corruption inquiry, at ICAC:
Have I left anyone out? Oh yeah, Steve Dunn. From last week’s Sydney Morning Herald:
Right. Two days after starting work, Eddie Obeid was on the line. What was he calling about, Steve?
Mmmm. Two days, three leases. Did Tonette Kelly do the leasing paperwork, Steve? By the way, Steve Dunn is the bloke Bodgy Hodgy used to shut down the NSW Game Council only four months ago:
How is this relevant to us, as fishos and boaties? Because Eddie Obeid is a previous NSW Fisheries Minister, and inflicted fishing licenses on us all - and Steve Dunn was his CEO:
LOL. ‘My charismatic mentor, Eddie Obeid.’ Last week, ICAC released a video of investigators removing $31,000 worth of charisma from Eddie’s office safe. The cash was skimmed from Obeid’s three cafes at Circular Quay – the ones Eddie called Dunn (or as ICAC calls him, Mr Fix It) to extend:
The point is that the current NSW government came into office promising a new way forward for boaties and fishos. For the angling fraternity they committed to Restoring The Balance. Instead, NSW Fisheries Minister Katrina Hodgkinson promoted hardcore greenies like Bill Talbot to senior positions in her department. She appointed the tainted public servant and Obeid gofer Steve Dunn to shut down hunting on public lands. She authorised disastrous decisions for fishos like the ban on squid fishing in north Harbour, stacking marine park advisory committees with greenies, and cutting bag limits by 60% on no scientific basis whatsoever. And the reality is there’s not much we can do about it – until the next State election, in March 2015. At that point we need to make sure our votes go to candidates who can be trusted, rather than cynical professional pollies like Duncan Gay and Bodgy Hodgy. Until next week my friends and as I always say, thanks so much to our readers and especially, to our contributors. Please keep the stories and pics coming in? I get the compliments but all credit is due to those who so generously share their experiences on the water. Cheers,
Andrew Hestelow
Managing Director