JDP

Quiet day on the tuna so headed inshore for a quick lobster hunt. Water temp at 14'c so still not warming up much. Came across this hefty lump of a cuttlefish fish.

Do it the same as a multi, I do all my spin reels this way with braid or mono, no twisting and no issues at all. I do use a bee's knee's line loader to apply the exact tension I like.

Over here most people use both multi and spin with the handle on the right unless they are left handed, where they will then have them both on the left. Being a pom and brought up with multi on the right (being right handed) and my spin reels on the left I decided to recently buy a left handed multi as I find my rod twitching action is better and easier with the rod in my right hand after a lifetime of twitching spin outfits in the right hand. It came quite naturally being able to use the multi on the left even though Im right handed, in fact it seems far more natural than using a spin reel to wind on the right!!! Big game drag, pull and fight I find a big multi (Tiagra'a etc) easy with rod in the left cranking with the right. Micro jigging finesse work, rod in right crank on the left.

Crud weather and caught plenty through the week, still giving away bluefin tuna and my daughter rocked up with six deer yesterday that took all day to process!!!!! Fathers day here today, planning on kicking back and watching a movie.

Offshore catching tuna today, yesterday diving for lobsters. Gee this lockdown is tough!!!!

I didn't have any problems lighting mine and at the time the only brickets were the small round hard coals which back then everyone complained about the fuel smell from. Mine was called the Cobb pro which had enamel sides as well as the cook plate, where yours looks to have far more stainless than the one I had (yours looking far better).

Must admit most of the things Ive bought for the new boat have been a bit disappointing due to poor quality control. Almost everything comes from China and though they look good in catalogs you often need to adjust or fix them to get them fitted. Four items fitted to my transom recently. Transom quick release steps, bracket that permanently fits the boat had bolts to big for the holes which needed re-drilling. The release mechanism adjuster adjusted itself loose and needed the four bolts that go through the transom to be removed and makeshift adjustments to fix the issue. The plastic caps on the ends of the step tubes fell off also!!! Removable stainless burley pot was much the same in that the bolt holes needed re-drilling and the pot didn't fit the quick release bracket without a fair amount of bending and adjusting. Both jobs should of been a case of 4 bolt holes drilled and simply tighten the bolts but ended up being best part of a day. By this time I was over the Chinese junk and after looking at some adjustable transducer brackets made in China I decided to buy some Italian stainless brackets which took six weeks to arrive in the post. On arrival I was tempted to simply toss them in the bin as they are flimsy nasty brackets worse than the cheap Chinese ones I had looked at here. A trip to the hardware for some aluminium brackets to try and beef them up has left the job looking bodged. Theres also no way these would handle being in the water underway at speed. As for those cob ovens, I bought one about 15 yrs ago, at the time there was an option for a stainless steel model. Even the stainless rusted slightly in the salty environment and the enamel cook surface soon lost its coating and rusted. I found it to be to baulky for my small boats and even trying to find somewhere for it to fit on 4x4 camping trips. It wasn't just the cob oven but the charcoal I needed to carry and the time it took to get the coals hot and ready to cook with. However for use at home I loved mine but you do have to use natural charcoal or you will get a horrible fuel taste from those hard coals that have a mix of fuels in them that make the food taste like paraffin!!! So the best thing would have to be the white plastic chopping board costing $5 for three, which I cut one to fit over holes in the console when fitting the new electronics!!!

I couldn't even look at it properly, had to scroll past very quickly🤕

Killed my simrad evo 3 and cracked the glass on the 8410 on the run home in the rough stuff yesterday, don't make them tough enough!!!!!

Yes Im much to ugly for the camera!!!! I rarely take any pictures while fishing on my own, tend to only bother if I have the kids.

Don't take all of what you read or hear to be completely true. At anchor with no current today I caught no fish on micro jigs but when I was being pushed by the wind drifting and my line so far out the back I could barely feel bottom I was catching fish. I find you need either current or wind to push you over structure giving the fish that quick option to grab it or miss out. Drift to fast and it does get tricky but I find trimming the engine up slightly and engaging in and out of reverse against the current to help feel the jig hit bottom works well. The biggest mistake most people make is using heavy line which makes using small lures almost impossible to stay in contact with. The smaller the lures the slower they tend to flutter down, also most of the fish hits will happen on the fall. You don't need high end rods or reels, today I way using a tiny little ugly stick kids rod with a 3000 spin reel and 10lb braid.

There were a few stunning looking fish that took the jig, lucky for them they are so rarely caught I released them.

Got a few fish on the drift today micro jigging but could only get them to take baits once at anchor, not saying this would always be the case, just how it was today for me.

From the plotter screen click into the the menu. Then scroll down for the more options. Then chart options. Photo transparency slider all the way up. High res bathy ticked. Shaded relief ticked. Should now work with depth contours and shaded relief. I have an evo3 and a Garmin 8410 both with these charts.

First attempt said the images were to big, so loaded them again after resizing only to find it posted both lots!!!!!

Not much to report as the fish seem to of shut down with the cold water. Normally winter sea temps don't drop bellow 16'c in my area during winter but we are in the sixth week of bellow 13'c. Summer temps are hotter and winter sea temps colder. Fished for about 6hrs covering 129km of travel without loosing a bait until I stopped on a shallow lump close to home in 25m. Every drop resulted in fish on the micro jig, with no consistency to species. It was pretty much a different fish each drop, with even my first red mullet on a micro. At one point I had hooked a small snapper only to have a large squid attack it on the way up, this encouraged me to quickly get a squid jig down tom the bottom which was soon snagging and few tasty calamari. I did hook a pretty solid snapper at one point but pulled the hooks on it which made me keen to head back out today for a second chance at it. Today was pretty quiet on edible species apart from some more good sized squid. Decided to anchor for a change but this soon had rays and woebegone sharks honing in on my burley pot and baits close to it, ok if you like heavy sluggish fish!!!! My daughter had taken her little rib out as well now that the boats she drives commercialy are stopped due to covid restrictions. She creeped right inshore close to the beach for her bag limit of salmon. Cracked my Garmin 8410 screen pushing the boat to hard through chop when the wind picked up on the run home. Also the simrad evo 3 packed it in too, they don't make them tough enough!!!!!

Had a big day searching for fish today covering 129km. Part of it was trying out another prop, anyway the fishing was dead until I tried a small shallow bump in 25m of water. From 9am until around 3pm couldn't lose a bait then from 3pm on I couldn't get a micro jig to the bottom. The species were varied, including my first red mullet on a jig. There was no consistency to the catch, it seemed almost every drop produced something different but when a large squid held onto a small 1kg snapper to the surface I decided calamari was now the target. Each drop produced a good sized squid of around 500g each. Depending on the weather in the morning I hope to head back as there was a decent fish that got away that I would like a second chance of. I will anchor the spot tomorrow and use the downrigger to get some burley on the bottom. If all else fails I might give the beach a try with the almost full moon phase. By the way, pretty impressed with the budget 4 blade turning point prop, out performs three far more expensive solas props.

E10 of course, why waste the expensive stuff.

When you use them you soon realise why but quite literally bird watching magazines have compared them as good as $3000 binoculars. Over the years Ive bought many pairs including two sets of rubber armer coated canon ones just before leaving the UK, both of which are now broken and both about the same price as the ones I mentioned earlier. Quality and lifetime warranty's means you buy once and experience something the likes of the canon or many other bins can't provide.

I have bought two sets of Vortex hd vipers for myself and eldest daughter which I rate higher than optics 4x the price that Ive used. For my youngest daughter who carry's more camera gear I opted for Celestron tail seekers as these are smaller and lighter weight. None float but all pretty good water resistance and life warranties https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/products/Binoculars/ci/1010/pn/2?filters=fct_customer_rating%3A1_5_stars Postage and service from here is excellent, been using them for around 30 years.

Loads more videos of the raven and still no cat, so possibly it was just travelling through the area. I did capture this cute long nosed bandicoot from one of the night captures.

Deep V with max power, get there quick and have a heap of fun along the way.https://cootacraft.com.au Have a look at the other video with the link on the story of Cootacraft boats to see some of their faster models. Go 19ft with a supercharged 450 🙂

Plenty of electric cars, outboards and inboards already in use, as well as bio diesel engines. As for other ways to improve how we live, Ive been looking into these homes as my next move https://www.atomic6.com.au open the pricing to see the designs and costs which are bellow half the cost of a traditional build. I don't think the term global warming is used much anymore, its now Climate change. We currently have sea temps at bellow 13'c locally, coldest in the past is around 16'c. In summer we are getting water temps about 2'c higher than average and day temps close to 50'c, hence the fires.

Im using those small ones on snapper, for UK wrecks I would be most likely using something more like the 100-200g black magic flipper jigs, these have been working deadly for the past two seasons on kingfish for me. They work well on tuna, in saying that tuna are far from busy fish.

First full on fishing trip with the new boat yesterday. Plan was to target snapper over reefs systems 27k north of the launch site. No luck on those which may of been down to unusually cold water just bellow 13'c, however this didn't stop the razor gang (leather jackets and coota ) that seem to love snipping off my favourite jigs and soft plastics. From the reefs I planned to head out beyond the continental shelf in search of anything from tuna, sharks to deep dropping. Again things were tough going only managing two deep sea search out of 450m deep. I wasn't alone as every boat on the radio was having a very quiet day. Covered 95k for the first trip and encountered numerous pods of dolphins and humpbacks. Thats fishing though, lots of slow days for the few productive ones. The cold water was full of salps, a type of jellyfish that stuck to just about everything.