Saturday 19th September 2015

Tackle specials and angling politics

from Downrigger Shop

Spring is sprung, the temp is riz, I wonder where the kingies is? Kyran says Eden:

 

​

 

 

Hi Andy, been a crazy start to spring down here at Eden, bait is as thick as I’ve ever seen it. Had a ball chasing kings on the surface on light gear Saturday. Big bust ups and good size fish. We were only armed with snapper gear so lost a few but ended up with 4 fish between 9 and 11 kg on 3000 reels.

 

​

 

Some long fights but plenty of fun.

 

​

 

We had 15.8 on sat, also quite a lot of smaller fish caught at Mowarry on jigs. Shaping up to be a top season!

 

Fantastic, Kyran! Now mate let me know your postal address? Because I will put a free sample pack of SPs in the mail, in the hope you’ll use them and send me a pic or two J Emad new to kingie fishing, and very excited as you’d expect. He stopped by on Wednesday afternoon for a downrigger and showed me a pic of this solid 90cm he caught recently off Sydney. Now mate the idea with sashimi is, cut a piece of the fish off first:

 

​

 

Duy Pham out there last weekend too:

 

​

 

Sep 13th, 4:01pm hey andy... just a quick report. hit up 12 mile yesterday for zip, stayed around for about 2-3 hours. lucky got the call from a mate the fish were on fire at the Peak. by the time we got there we got the tail end of the feed. landed 3 lost 2. biggest going 102cm other 2 were 75 and 78.

 

​

 

From the looks of it everyone was getting on em. Taking everything from live yellow tail, jigs and pillies. Just comes to show how important it is to share intel on the water.

 

Dang right! Good on you, Pham. Sydney’s keenest kingfishing family out there too, same spot. Will from team Bazley writes:

 

​

 

I caught these today. They were all caught on slimies.

 

Here’s Bazley Senior:

 

​

 

By crikey I could go some of this action. Missing out lately! Jess Vella reports in from Twelve Mile. Show your appreciation by letting others know how you go this weekend? Thank you, Jess:

 

​

 

Hey Andy caught 4 kings up 80cm after 10 30 am. seen them on the sounder early morning but they were not interested.

 

I’m hearing it’s hot and cold, Jess? And no longer tide oriented so, a bit hard to predict. Bob Greenhill ordered a Tanacom combo and took it to Browns on Saturday for a sea trial. The gemfish are almost gone, but he didn’t come home empty handed. Hapuka and blue eye should still be there:

 

​

 

First fish caught on new 750 yesterday at Browns. But no jemmies.

 

I’m guessing these warm currents have sent them south, Bob? Heading north and Greg Costello fishing the deeps too:

 

​

 

Hi Andrew, I caught this bar cod at South West Rocks a couple of weeks ago. Another fish to add to my list, not bad on the chew either.

 

Yep, very nice on the plate Greg. Thanks for the report!  Alan Goggin nearby at Coffs Harbour. The bloke never fails to amaze:

 

​

 

G'day Andrew how are ya mate? Hit the beach twice this week and got rewarded with two lovely fish. Nothing like standing on the beach in the dark when the rod explodes with a good Jew on the end! Cheers Alan

 

Gun fisho Sean Morgan (who’s blessed us with many reports from SWR) currently fishing 40 miles north of Broome and scoring big time, as usual:

 

​

 

1.21m Spanish on soft plastic … unreal.

 

Good lesson for us all, lads! If you fish hard, the magic will happen. Congratulations to Andrew Westlake in SW Victoria today:

 

​

 

A new highlight in my fishing life.

After 7.5 hrs we landed this tuna off Port Fairy yesterday.

Using a Pakula Guru Jet in the Blue Angel color, rigged by Peter Pakula himself.

He told me what to run and where, and his lure worked a treat.

A massive thanks to the crew: Roy driving the boat, Paul and Janaka on gaffs and ropes, for keeping me fed and for giving me a drink.

 

​

 

Thanks to Mick Rantall for spooling the reel and tying the double that didn't fail and for staying nearby in his boat and traveling home with us after dark. Lots of people contributed to this and I just could not have done it without them. A special thanks to my fantastic wife Belinda Westlake for understanding me enough to go out to dinner and let me catch up later "because I was on a good fish"

 

Typical of you to give the credit to others, Westy! What a magnificent fish. To Brisbane, and these muscle balls take off like a rocket sled. Russell Lowe out in the bay with his downrigger:

 

​

 

Andrew, tried a new lure Yozuri Crystal minnow 3d up here out of the bar from Moreton Bay.

We got a hit within a few minutes of slow trolling , turned out to be a Mac Tuna. Chris was wrapped so was I with the new lure first tuna for him and first fish on the lure.

 

Well done mate, the most taken-for-granted sportsfish in Australia. Just north to the Gold Coast, and Tony King pleased with our bent butt game combo:

 

​

 

Also attached are photos of the Yellowfin caught on your 24kg bent butt/20W spooled with your 24kg Braid and Mono top shot while trolling, the two Mahi Mahi in the photos, one was caught on the troll, the other was on a pilchard cast out on 15kg spin gear when a school followed the hooked fish to the boat.

 

​

 

So good. Leave some to ride the currents south to us, Tony! To the tropics, and Nick Phillipa reports from NQ:

 

​

 

Hi Andy, we headed out from Cairns for some action on the wider reefs, we ended up with 30 keepers but they were all quality fish.  Here's some pics mate, GTs etc released to fight another day, Nick.

 

​

 

Look at those flat seas. Dreaming of getting back up there. We haven’t heard much from our Man in Oman lately but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been on the water. Always good to hear from  Jan:

 

​

 

Hi Andrew. Got some nice Tuna. It took 1 hour 35 min to land. We were bottom fishing for snapper in 50 meter of wire and look at the size of the small rod. We used small live sardine for bait.

 

​

 

Dear oh dear. To boats, and a sad story to report:

 

Good day, Andy. Thought I send you a couple of pictures of what a 51-year old drunk moron did to my boat. Bummer... anyway, this incident confirms that a chain holding the boat at the bow eye going both forwards to the winch post as well as backwards to the trailer-frame works a treat to save your ass in a head-on collision and at least will prevent the boat from riding up your neck... anyone who isn’t doing that should consider adding a short length of chain with a buckle that prevents the boat from going forward.

 

​

 

The bloke in the Mitsubishi Mirage had the car for a couple of days only and decided on Saturday arvo to try out all the gears in our small subdivision. Short story he didn’t make the corner and mounted the parked boat head-on, and moved it about 40+ meters down the road into a light-pole and tree which stopped it from ending up in my neighbour's living room.

 

​

 

The moron also had a couple of teenagers in the car, one of which was sitting in the passenger seat... he wasn’t well but by a miracle he’ll survive without brain damage and facial fractures only.  Crikey, just as it was getting to be perfect after a year of tinkering... I need a new boat! Tight lines,  Stephan.

 

Unbelievable. We’ve seen some horrible mishaps in these pages but your experience takes the cake. Commiserations, cobber. On a lighter note, and thinking about tackle, this very welcome feedback on our light jig combo came in on Wednesday. Note: pics are mine:

 

​

 

Hi Andrew, I bought the micro-jigging outfit in April but sadly didn't manage to use it until last weekend. Then I saw your post on Facebook about tips on micro-jigging. Let me just say, you just gotta get out there and have a crack. I've never tried micro-jigging. I was invited to go fishing by a mate who has a boat. We went 8kms off Bellambi targeting snapper. He is not a big lure fisherman, we were using bait. I'm a newbie and wasn't catching much at all, one Maori wrasse compared to a few snapper landed by my mate. I was using gear that was too heavy and a Stradic 8000. Might be useful for Kingfish in the harbour but way too heavy for what we were targeting. I finally got the courage to bring out your micro-jig setup, with a 100gm jig.

 

​

 

Had no idea what I was doing, saw it a few times on YouTube... Honestly, first drop and I was on! Now, it wasn't a snapper, just a sergeant baker, but it was loads of fun, I was catching fish and it was much easier than the heavy boat rod. The colour change braid worked well and I could tell when I was close to the bottom. I caught two sergeant bakers with the jig in 30 min which is more fish than I caught in 5 hours... No previous experience with micro-jigging... Gotta be happy with that right? Great outfit, great price, great service, love your shop! Keep up the great work!

 

Too kind, Allerina! Grateful for your positive review and please let us know when you take your first kingfish on that combo? Quite sure that’ll happen soon. For any readers interested, the combo shown above is $145 including PE1-3 rod and size 3000 reel with ten ball bearings and carbontex drags – prespooled with 6 kilo colour change braid. The next size up is a 30-pound combo (see pic below.) 4500 size reel with carbontex drags and prespooled with 15 kilo CC braid. That one is $190 for rod reel and line. Both sizes can be mailed meaning cheap delivery. Call or email for more pics and specs?

 

​

 

That looks good! Brad fits and polishes one of our reel knobs for a plain chrome look:

 

​

 

Changed my mind again & went for a spun alloy look haha. Chucked it in the lathe took two seconds. Haven't finished inside the little holes but you get the idea. Matches the Nero perfectly.  Kind regards  Brad

 

Yours truly has been doing it tough fish-wise so I was pretty responsive to a generous offer from old mate Drax. He sent me a pic of water going over the spillway at Warragamba Dam and asked if I would like to join him for a run up there, to fish for trout:

 

​

 

Are the Kennedys gunshy? So out to Penrith the Sunday morning before last, and found him ready to go:

 

​

 

This was a first for me, super keen to try something new. Not impressed with the Neapean on the way up being murky and muddy, but when we turned into the Warragamba River the water turned a beautiful clear green. We kicked off with a downrig session:

 

​

 

Drax was our first ever downrigger client and still has one of our original electrics:

 

​

 

No hits and not much marking on the sounder, which wasn’t a promising indication. But we stayed positive and kept going up to a weir a couple of kilometres short of the actual wall:

 

​

 

This is how it usually looks:

 

​

 

With dry shingle beds, weir showing in the bottom left hand corner:

 

​

 

We moored up and started working our way up the bank, casting into likely spots as you do.

 

​

 

I don’t want to be around when this rock finally topples over:

 

​

 

The base of the weir was a huge eddy which looked super fishy. The water comes out from a pipe or channel on the true left:

 

​

 

But the only thing we found on fins were these carp

 

​

 

Some were monsters

 

​

 

But we couldn’t find any trout. One thing that was a surprise was the water was pretty warm at 16 or even 17 degrees. Maybe too warm for trout, and too cool for bass? On the Facebook page Greg S mentioned that big eels have been eating the trout up there, which are presumably stunned or possibly killed by their ride down the dam wall. I’ve seen some giant eels down Bombala way but never ones as big as what we saw today, swimming through the clear water. So maybe that was a factor? The tails were like a kayak paddle. We worked our way back down, fishing features like this waterfall:

 

​

 

And separate to the fishing I was hella impressed with the 80 pound Motorguide electric fitted to the boat. Grabbed the remote control and wouldn’t give it back:

 

​

 

So the primary target not found, but we had a ball on Sunday. Only cloud over a great day being we hit a rock on the way back down the river, and tore a big part of the skeg off:

 

​

 

Even that mishap couldn’t spoil the buzz. Thanks mate I really enjoyed the day.

 

 

To politics and the big news locally is the ban on parking boat trailers (without moving them) for longer than 28 days:

 

​

 

Yes, the article above says three months, but at the last moment the NSW government reduced that by two-thirds to 28 days:

 

​

 

And passed the legislation on Wednesday night, before those they’d negotiated with had time to protest. Maritime Minister Duncan ‘Double Demerits’ Gay – whose first thought every day is, ‘how can I make life more difficult and expensive for boatowners’ – introduced it to the Upper House:

 

​

 

Lads, I hate ending the report on a downer. But we must be on guard against the constant attacks on our rights from the likes of Gay & Co. Let’s not forget this is the same oxygen thief who, when pleading for our votes at the 2012 election, promised to get green tape and red tape off fishos and boaties backs? And as soon as he got into office did exactly the opposite. If you’re outside NSW, watch for any signs your politicians are going down the same route. Because tax n’ waste is not limited to this State by any means. And when election time comes around, remember this treachery. They promised three months and delivered one month. That tells you all you need to know about politicians’ promises. Until next week and as I always say, please keep sending in the pics and reports we all appreciate,

 

Andrew Hestelow

Managing Director

Spring is sprung, the temp is riz, I wonder where the kingies is? Kyran says Eden:

 

​

 

 

Hi Andy, been a crazy start to spring down here at Eden, bait is as thick as I’ve ever seen it. Had a ball chasing kings on the surface on light gear Saturday. Big bust ups and good size fish. We were only armed with snapper gear so lost a few but ended up with 4 fish between 9 and 11 kg on 3000 reels.

 

​

 

Some long fights but plenty of fun.

 

​

 

We had 15.8 on sat, also quite a lot of smaller fish caught at Mowarry on jigs. Shaping up to be a top season!

 

Fantastic, Kyran! Now mate let me know your postal address? Because I will put a free sample pack of SPs in the mail, in the hope you’ll use them and send me a pic or two J Emad new to kingie fishing, and very excited as you’d expect. He stopped by on Wednesday afternoon for a downrigger and showed me a pic of this solid 90cm he caught recently off Sydney. Now mate the idea with sashimi is, cut a piece of the fish off first:

 

​

 

Duy Pham out there last weekend too:

 

​

 

Sep 13th, 4:01pm hey andy... just a quick report. hit up 12 mile yesterday for zip, stayed around for about 2-3 hours. lucky got the call from a mate the fish were on fire at the Peak. by the time we got there we got the tail end of the feed. landed 3 lost 2. biggest going 102cm other 2 were 75 and 78.

 

​

 

From the looks of it everyone was getting on em. Taking everything from live yellow tail, jigs and pillies. Just comes to show how important it is to share intel on the water.

 

Dang right! Good on you, Pham. Sydney’s keenest kingfishing family out there too, same spot. Will from team Bazley writes:

 

​

 

I caught these today. They were all caught on slimies.

 

Here’s Bazley Senior:

 

​

 

By crikey I could go some of this action. Missing out lately! Jess Vella reports in from Twelve Mile. Show your appreciation by letting others know how you go this weekend? Thank you, Jess:

 

​

 

Hey Andy caught 4 kings up 80cm after 10 30 am. seen them on the sounder early morning but they were not interested.

 

I’m hearing it’s hot and cold, Jess? And no longer tide oriented so, a bit hard to predict. Bob Greenhill ordered a Tanacom combo and took it to Browns on Saturday for a sea trial. The gemfish are almost gone, but he didn’t come home empty handed. Hapuka and blue eye should still be there:

 

​

 

First fish caught on new 750 yesterday at Browns. But no jemmies.

 

I’m guessing these warm currents have sent them south, Bob? Heading north and Greg Costello fishing the deeps too:

 

​

 

Hi Andrew, I caught this bar cod at South West Rocks a couple of weeks ago. Another fish to add to my list, not bad on the chew either.

 

Yep, very nice on the plate Greg. Thanks for the report!  Alan Goggin nearby at Coffs Harbour. The bloke never fails to amaze:

 

​

 

G'day Andrew how are ya mate? Hit the beach twice this week and got rewarded with two lovely fish. Nothing like standing on the beach in the dark when the rod explodes with a good Jew on the end! Cheers Alan

 

Gun fisho Sean Morgan (who’s blessed us with many reports from SWR) currently fishing 40 miles north of Broome and scoring big time, as usual:

 

​

 

1.21m Spanish on soft plastic … unreal.

 

Good lesson for us all, lads! If you fish hard, the magic will happen. Congratulations to Andrew Westlake in SW Victoria today:

 

​

 

A new highlight in my fishing life.

After 7.5 hrs we landed this tuna off Port Fairy yesterday.

Using a Pakula Guru Jet in the Blue Angel color, rigged by Peter Pakula himself.

He told me what to run and where, and his lure worked a treat.

A massive thanks to the crew: Roy driving the boat, Paul and Janaka on gaffs and ropes, for keeping me fed and for giving me a drink.

 

​

 

Thanks to Mick Rantall for spooling the reel and tying the double that didn't fail and for staying nearby in his boat and traveling home with us after dark. Lots of people contributed to this and I just could not have done it without them. A special thanks to my fantastic wife Belinda Westlake for understanding me enough to go out to dinner and let me catch up later "because I was on a good fish"

 

Typical of you to give the credit to others, Westy! What a magnificent fish. To Brisbane, and these muscle balls take off like a rocket sled. Russell Lowe out in the bay with his downrigger:

 

​

 

Andrew, tried a new lure Yozuri Crystal minnow 3d up here out of the bar from Moreton Bay.

We got a hit within a few minutes of slow trolling , turned out to be a Mac Tuna. Chris was wrapped so was I with the new lure first tuna for him and first fish on the lure.

 

Well done mate, the most taken-for-granted sportsfish in Australia. Just north to the Gold Coast, and Tony King pleased with our bent butt game combo:

 

​

 

Also attached are photos of the Yellowfin caught on your 24kg bent butt/20W spooled with your 24kg Braid and Mono top shot while trolling, the two Mahi Mahi in the photos, one was caught on the troll, the other was on a pilchard cast out on 15kg spin gear when a school followed the hooked fish to the boat.

 

​

 

So good. Leave some to ride the currents south to us, Tony! To the tropics, and Nick Phillipa reports from NQ:

 

​

 

Hi Andy, we headed out from Cairns for some action on the wider reefs, we ended up with 30 keepers but they were all quality fish.  Here's some pics mate, GTs etc released to fight another day, Nick.

 

​

 

Look at those flat seas. Dreaming of getting back up there. We haven’t heard much from our Man in Oman lately but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been on the water. Always good to hear from  Jan:

 

​

 

Hi Andrew. Got some nice Tuna. It took 1 hour 35 min to land. We were bottom fishing for snapper in 50 meter of wire and look at the size of the small rod. We used small live sardine for bait.

 

​

 

Dear oh dear. To boats, and a sad story to report:

 

Good day, Andy. Thought I send you a couple of pictures of what a 51-year old drunk moron did to my boat. Bummer... anyway, this incident confirms that a chain holding the boat at the bow eye going both forwards to the winch post as well as backwards to the trailer-frame works a treat to save your ass in a head-on collision and at least will prevent the boat from riding up your neck... anyone who isn’t doing that should consider adding a short length of chain with a buckle that prevents the boat from going forward.

 

​

 

The bloke in the Mitsubishi Mirage had the car for a couple of days only and decided on Saturday arvo to try out all the gears in our small subdivision. Short story he didn’t make the corner and mounted the parked boat head-on, and moved it about 40+ meters down the road into a light-pole and tree which stopped it from ending up in my neighbour's living room.

 

​

 

The moron also had a couple of teenagers in the car, one of which was sitting in the passenger seat... he wasn’t well but by a miracle he’ll survive without brain damage and facial fractures only.  Crikey, just as it was getting to be perfect after a year of tinkering... I need a new boat! Tight lines,  Stephan.

 

Unbelievable. We’ve seen some horrible mishaps in these pages but your experience takes the cake. Commiserations, cobber. On a lighter note, and thinking about tackle, this very welcome feedback on our light jig combo came in on Wednesday. Note: pics are mine:

 

​

 

Hi Andrew, I bought the micro-jigging outfit in April but sadly didn't manage to use it until last weekend. Then I saw your post on Facebook about tips on micro-jigging. Let me just say, you just gotta get out there and have a crack. I've never tried micro-jigging. I was invited to go fishing by a mate who has a boat. We went 8kms off Bellambi targeting snapper. He is not a big lure fisherman, we were using bait. I'm a newbie and wasn't catching much at all, one Maori wrasse compared to a few snapper landed by my mate. I was using gear that was too heavy and a Stradic 8000. Might be useful for Kingfish in the harbour but way too heavy for what we were targeting. I finally got the courage to bring out your micro-jig setup, with a 100gm jig.

 

​

 

Had no idea what I was doing, saw it a few times on YouTube... Honestly, first drop and I was on! Now, it wasn't a snapper, just a sergeant baker, but it was loads of fun, I was catching fish and it was much easier than the heavy boat rod. The colour change braid worked well and I could tell when I was close to the bottom. I caught two sergeant bakers with the jig in 30 min which is more fish than I caught in 5 hours... No previous experience with micro-jigging... Gotta be happy with that right? Great outfit, great price, great service, love your shop! Keep up the great work!

 

Too kind, Allerina! Grateful for your positive review and please let us know when you take your first kingfish on that combo? Quite sure that’ll happen soon. For any readers interested, the combo shown above is $145 including PE1-3 rod and size 3000 reel with ten ball bearings and carbontex drags – prespooled with 6 kilo colour change braid. The next size up is a 30-pound combo (see pic below.) 4500 size reel with carbontex drags and prespooled with 15 kilo CC braid. That one is $190 for rod reel and line. Both sizes can be mailed meaning cheap delivery. Call or email for more pics and specs?

 

​

 

That looks good! Brad fits and polishes one of our reel knobs for a plain chrome look:

 

​

 

Changed my mind again & went for a spun alloy look haha. Chucked it in the lathe took two seconds. Haven't finished inside the little holes but you get the idea. Matches the Nero perfectly.  Kind regards  Brad

 

Yours truly has been doing it tough fish-wise so I was pretty responsive to a generous offer from old mate Drax. He sent me a pic of water going over the spillway at Warragamba Dam and asked if I would like to join him for a run up there, to fish for trout:

 

​

 

Are the Kennedys gunshy? So out to Penrith the Sunday morning before last, and found him ready to go:

 

​

 

This was a first for me, super keen to try something new. Not impressed with the Neapean on the way up being murky and muddy, but when we turned into the Warragamba River the water turned a beautiful clear green. We kicked off with a downrig session:

 

​

 

Drax was our first ever downrigger client and still has one of our original electrics:

 

​

 

No hits and not much marking on the sounder, which wasn’t a promising indication. But we stayed positive and kept going up to a weir a couple of kilometres short of the actual wall:

 

​

 

This is how it usually looks:

 

​

 

With dry shingle beds, weir showing in the bottom left hand corner:

 

​

 

We moored up and started working our way up the bank, casting into likely spots as you do.

 

​

 

I don’t want to be around when this rock finally topples over:

 

​

 

The base of the weir was a huge eddy which looked super fishy. The water comes out from a pipe or channel on the true left:

 

​

 

But the only thing we found on fins were these carp

 

​

 

Some were monsters

 

​

 

But we couldn’t find any trout. One thing that was a surprise was the water was pretty warm at 16 or even 17 degrees. Maybe too warm for trout, and too cool for bass? On the Facebook page Greg S mentioned that big eels have been eating the trout up there, which are presumably stunned or possibly killed by their ride down the dam wall. I’ve seen some giant eels down Bombala way but never ones as big as what we saw today, swimming through the clear water. So maybe that was a factor? The tails were like a kayak paddle. We worked our way back down, fishing features like this waterfall:

 

​

 

And separate to the fishing I was hella impressed with the 80 pound Motorguide electric fitted to the boat. Grabbed the remote control and wouldn’t give it back:

 

​

 

So the primary target not found, but we had a ball on Sunday. Only cloud over a great day being we hit a rock on the way back down the river, and tore a big part of the skeg off:

 

​

 

Even that mishap couldn’t spoil the buzz. Thanks mate I really enjoyed the day.

 

 

To politics and the big news locally is the ban on parking boat trailers (without moving them) for longer than 28 days:

 

​

 

Yes, the article above says three months, but at the last moment the NSW government reduced that by two-thirds to 28 days:

 

​

 

And passed the legislation on Wednesday night, before those they’d negotiated with had time to protest. Maritime Minister Duncan ‘Double Demerits’ Gay – whose first thought every day is, ‘how can I make life more difficult and expensive for boatowners’ – introduced it to the Upper House:

 

​

 

Lads, I hate ending the report on a downer. But we must be on guard against the constant attacks on our rights from the likes of Gay & Co. Let’s not forget this is the same oxygen thief who, when pleading for our votes at the 2012 election, promised to get green tape and red tape off fishos and boaties backs? And as soon as he got into office did exactly the opposite. If you’re outside NSW, watch for any signs your politicians are going down the same route. Because tax n’ waste is not limited to this State by any means. And when election time comes around, remember this treachery. They promised three months and delivered one month. That tells you all you need to know about politicians’ promises. Until next week and as I always say, please keep sending in the pics and reports we all appreciate,

 

Andrew Hestelow

Managing Director