Wednesday 17th September 2014
Tackle specials and angling politics
from Downrigger Shop
Spring! The season means so much to so many. For gardeners, tending flowers in bloom. For lovers, walks along the beach and nights together by the fire. For Dan Pietroangelo, copping a face full of ice cold salt water while jigging kings at the Solitary Islands:
Hi Andy 1 of the endless kings in Coffs Harbour over the weekend, all on the jig. Every drop produced quality fish, we kept 5 lost count of how many went back including this guy.
‘Endless kings.’ What a magical way you have with words, Dan. Lachlan Oldfield and Co went to Lord Howe Island to find gold:
Hey Andy here are the shots! This king was 142cm on Dave Gardener's Greenback charters. Dave also said to mention that he uses your braid, thus this fish was caught with your braid! We caught heaps more kings and heaps of Trevally, the average size king being 90-100cm. This guy was a blue Maori cod:
Looks so good, Lachlan! And what a backdrop, in the photos. Crafty went to the Island too and sent me a spectacular short video showing a kingfish hitting his jig so hard it staggered him. Check this out, solid gold:
This might bring back a few memories Andy. Used your jigs out there and the kings love em!! do you recognise the rocks in the background ??
No mate I don't - but only because I'm so old that there's been substantial weathering and erosion since I used to fish that spot. Tasmanian fishing so good, if you can pick a good weather window. Leo writes:
People are still getting small SBT down here but not many and even less further south as we found out last weekend. We went to Mewstone near Maatsuyker island mainly looking for striped trumpeter. We got 13; Simon’s being the best at 8kg. Cheers, Leo
Islands! Where the action is. Gaven Mead headed north for some popping:
Hey Andy, went fishing with Bali Sports Fishing while in Bali on holidays this week, didn't have any luck with jigging but landed 1 x nice GT for the day on a popper. Will be planning to go to Lombok Island for a few days on our next trip to Bali to hopefully have some luck with your jigs
Good luck mate and please let me know how you go? Adam Tsipris and posse headed for Kiribati where the weather was hot and the fishing even hotter:
Hi Andy, I have attached William’s email with link to photos from our recent trip. There is a big pink (coronation) trout caught on one of your 100g jigs. We also caught yellowfin on the jigs, barracuda, red bass, sharks etc etc.
Glad they worked so well for you Adam! Thanks so much for these top pics champ, they’ve got my pulse racing. Last but not least in South Pacific news, and The Other Adam writes from Nauru, to tell me his four year old caught a sailfish last weekend. Sheesh!
Titus, my 4 yr old cleaned up the other day with his first sailfish, that went 20.5kg that he caught on a Williamson Speed Pro 180 skipjack coloured diver and a Shimano TLD 30-2 speed. Gideon my 2 yr old next to him is quite impressed :)
I’m impressed too, well done Titus! Russ Lowe at 1770. What a top spot that is:
We got a mixed bag of reefies off 1770 today, the weather calmed down. Liveys and fresh strip baits worked best, plastics only got nibbled. Coral trout for dinner.
Good to hear from you Russ! Jim Fleming and bride headed north for the warmth too:
Hi Andy, my lovely wife and I had another trip out to Fitzroy and Lamont Reefs over Thursday/Friday. Sunset @ Fitzroy Reef Lagoon
Thanks James! Green jobfish, haven’t seen one in much too long. Back home, and most effort seems to be directed at scoring a feed. Matt Loraway used a BYO cutting board at his local ramp on Sunday. Good call, the cleaning tables can get pretty grotty:
Plenty fat flatties in. 60m line off Sydney Andy
Very nice mate. I need to have exactly the same type of run and put some vacuum packed fillets in the freezer. Same story for Chris Colvin, tasty mixed bag. Well done:
Good day Sunday. Snapper on the chew. Best one went 2 kilo. Dropped a further 4 kings. Good feed for two of us!?
Dang right it is, look at those nice reds. Murray M jigged Texas Reef on Saturday 13th September:
Andy, headed out to Texas again on Saturday, Kings were hard to find. Ended up with a couple of keepers and this Gem Fish? or is it a Barracuda ? Actually caught a couple of the Gems all on jigs but threw them back as we thought they were cuda. Picture is Richard (first time jigger) with the Gem
Barracouta ol buddy, once one of Australia’s primary commercial food fish. To boating, and sad to report some unpleasantness this week. Sydney’s coastal suburbs are heavily populated meaning it's hard to find a parking spot for your trailer boat. Most boaties get around that by leaving their trailers outside parks to avoid complaints. But now some nark is vandalising trailers. A client wrote:
I park my trailer boat on the roadside in my suburb at a spot i chose so it wouldnt inconvenience anyone. At the moment I have the mayor overriding council traffic committee meetings and ignoring resident survey results and trying to change street signage on a personal crusade to get my boat out of there, also some charming person dumps rubbish in my boat each week or two. We are talking litres of beef stew, kilos of off prawn bait, roast chickens, a dead possum! Etc etc Cops of course have been useless and wont investigate the guy i suspect. he dumped a receipt with credit card details in the rubbish but the boys in blue cant seem to connect the dots on that one. and I can't catch him on camera so far. If I secured the boat cover better he'd probably just slash it. There is another spot I can move to but it looks quite vulnerable to theft and vandalism there so not sure what to do. Any of ur customers facing similar probs?
Yes they are. Ben Dalton added:
tMate, had 3 of my trailer tyres slashed next to Queens Park. I live in Bondi, it's the closest parking to my unit. Currently 3 other boats sitting there with slashed tyres. It's lose / lose. Don't know who the exact culprit is. Trying to figure out a return favour without stooping as low as that scum bag. In the meantime, I moved my boat - and scum bag wins!
That is beyond annoying. I'm guessing the only way to go is a trail cam, focused on your trailer? If there’s a suitable site to mount it, of course. If you capture any stills send them to me for the shame file. And on the topic of trailerboat security, I finally wrote a how-to for the GPS Tracker. Here’s part two, operating after installation. The whole process takes five minutes online:
With your ALDI SIM package (included with your Tracker) on hand, go online to www.aldimobile.com.au and click the ‘Activate a SIM’ tab:
The SIM card is already installed in your Tracker but you need to activate it and recharge the account with $10 from your credit card. That means your Tracker can only be accessed from *your* mobile phone. Enter the details shown on the card enclosed with your Tracker, and follow the prompts. It’s an easy process. Firstly, enter the activation code into the appropriate field:
Click through, then enter your contact details in the fields as shown. ALDI will send your account number and password to the email address you nominate. When the email arrives, your service is activated. All that’s needed now is to recharge the SIM card to give you 365 days of credit. Go to www.aldimobile.com.au and click the recharge tab.
Enter your mobile number and password into the ‘Login To Recharge By Online Payment’ field:
Then select the ‘Pay As You Go’ tab. Use your credit card to add $15 credit. This will give you 365 days of coverage:
All done! Enter your Tracker’s phone number into your mobile phone address book.
Then send it the following SMS (in capitals, no spaces): URL#
You will receive a Google Map by SMS showing your Tracker’s location:
At $120 including SIM card and delivery, the GPS Tracker is a great way to protect your pride and joy. Send an email for more details? Tony Scarano stopped by for some tackle on the weekend. We got to talking about the great bluefin season he's had and I begged for a pic or two. Here's the family boat for starters, top rig indeed:
And here’s one of the crew with an SBT scored off Sydney at the height of the season. Nice:
Up at Byron Bay last weekend for my nieces wedding and took the opportunity for a catch up with old mate John Verano. He's just finished a major rebuild on his Haines 585 Prowler and invited me on a run to Hervey Bay in November. Already losing sleep thinking about how good that will be:
Back to Sydney on Sunday night and just in time for a Browns run on Monday. I could not *believe* how cold it was at boat launching. The crew rugged up like a polar expedition:
So over this icy winter we’ve been having. Pretty much straight to the Mountain, only five boats there. I was marking fish in pretty good concentrations but between ourselves and the other boats it was obvious things were quiet:
We did find gemfish – but small ones:
A client told me later on Facebook that he had a ball on the eastern side, with makos. We didn't find any but that could be because I had almost no burley. So back into the Twelve with fingers and toes crossed that we could jig some kings. That plan worked:
Seventies and seventy fives, nothing huge. But very welcome, all the same:
To politics, and readers will remember the story of shark fisherman Bill A and the SWAT-type raid Vic Fisheries planned, to bust him at Point Lonsdale Pier. Bill is now booked for a three day trial in October, with six Fisheries officers giving evidence. All because his line (in a fast tidal run) drifted from the pier into a marine park 50 metres away – when he was ordered by Fisheries to stand away from his tackle. What’s this about? The back story is that Point Lonsdale Pier is a super popular fishing spot which swarms with fishos on weekends and holidays:
Because of the fierce current, fishing lines drift into the marine park all the time. Multiple times each day, no-one cares and no-one gets prosecuted. So why did Fisheries organize an NCIS raid to bust Bill?
Well for their team, everyone’s a winner. The Fisheries officers get double or maybe triple time and the following day off. The Fisheries Minister gets his ‘gotcha’ press release and in this case Bills’ line hadn’t dried before there were pictures of his confiscated gear in the Geelong Advertiser. But after some research there’s a third reason. Check this out:
We’ve just had a very interesting disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. Our request was for disclosure on how many people had been charged over this issue while fishing from the Point Lonsdale Pier since the Point Lonsdale Marine Park was declared in November 2002.
The answer was that three other people, other than Bill, had been charged since the declaration of the Point Lonsdale Marine Park in 2002: They occurred on December 2013, May 2014 and August 2014.
The information I obtained, a week or so back, from the Geelong magistrates court at a cost of $55.00 is as follows:
On December 29, 2013, Daryl Geoffrey Millar was given a ticket for $289 for having his line out more than 50 metres from the pier and allegedly in a marine park.
On May 2, 2014 Daryl Geoffrey Millar was charged with the same offense for a second time for which he went to court and was fined $750 with $97.55 costs.
Now the third, which allegedly occurred in August 2014 (last month) is contentious, because – coincidentally – August 28, 2014, was the date of Daryl Geoffrey Millar’s court case. So; are DEPI including this as the third such offense?
Bear in mind that people cast out, or let their line out more than 50 metres from the Point Lonsdale Pier, almost every single day of the week and have done so since I was a kid. So these are obviously very selective prosecutions on people using game fishing tackle to catch sharks from the pier.
The only people they target are shark fishos:
It’s not about fishing lines in marine parks at all, because if that was the concern they could make ten busts a day. It’s about Vic Fisheries prejudice against shark fishing, and their willingness to bully. Bill’s a high profile shark fisho, with some enormous bronze whalers to his credit:
Bill will be defending this matter – not just for himself, but for all fishos who are sick and tired of being bossed around by bullying bureaucrats. It’s wrong, it stinks, and we’re going to stay right on top of this story until Bills’ court appearance in October. Dan Stanilovic says angler push back has resulted in good news, for SA fishos. Thanks for standing up for anglers, Mr Hamilton-Smith:
Petitions just about to tick over the 5000 mark as I write this, thanks for your support, worth noting that the petition opposing the bill still under 3500 after many weeks. That’s one down one more to go. Senior sources have confirmed the now independent minister is set to vote with his former Liberal colleagues to water down contentious marine park sanctuary zones.
Don’t thank me my friend, this win is due to your energy and commitment. Dan B on the spot at the pro marine parks rally in Byron Bay last Sunday. Note that Paul Spooner is the likely ALP candidate next March. Meaning, until Labor remember their original base of average Aussies, a vote for the ALP is a vote for the Greens:
Gidday Andy, here's a photo taken at 11.35am at the 'Save our Sanctuary Zones' rally at Byron Bay today. This anti-fishing protest commenced at 11am and the political activists were snapped packing up shop half an hour later.
Hosting the event was Paul Spooner, Byron Shire Councillor whose 2nd job is canvassing for NSW Labor pre-selection. Another attendee was Ian Cohen the ex-NSW Greens MLC. I'm not sure but I think the toddler may have been the keynote speaker. Cheers, Dan
Good on you, Dan. Who’s running for preselection against Spooner? Any pro fishing candidates? Maybe we could offer support. Don’t want to overestimate our influence but looking at how few turned up for the rally that’s what the local greenies are doing. Lads, I know I sound like a broken record but please keep the reports and pics coming in? I get so much positive feedback, countless readers look forward to and enjoy receiving the report. But it all depends on your generous contributions. Don’t stop thinkin’ about tomorrow,
Andrew Hestelow
Managing Director
