JDP

Just been and picked up a new (secondhand) vehicle for my fish mad daughter. The 4x4 was to my north on the QLD border and with a window of two days bad weather we took the opportunity to head up and get it. I was thinking to myself how a 2800km drive to buy a car and get it home in two days would be pretty unthinkable back home in the UK, yet here its just what you have to do given how such a small population is so spread out. Got the car, grabbed a few hours sleep on the way home and just been out for an unsuccessful trip in my boat!!!!!.....why my daughter is offshore in the bigger boat cracking into the marlin now!! Is there a shortage of vehicles in the UK since the pandemic kicked in ? It seems to be getting very hard to get certain vehicles here and there seems to be a big hike in prices for both new and secondhand (cars and boats).

They normally come with wire, which I replace with braid.

These fish are far from picky, they will literally eat shiny sinkers.

Mamoi diamond clear is the best mono Ive used even as trace line Ive not found better. I get it in 1000m spools.

Mine already has everything it wants, its spoilt rotten.

The water looks surprisingly clear for a winter trip, cracking pollack. Don't think I would like to go back to all that cold weather gear though!!!

Much is towards budget like any other manufacturer. They produce some of their gear for those who can afford and only want the best but also gear that does the same job at a lower budget, like comparing a Shimano Saragosa to a Stella. Its not just the rod fittings but what goes into the blank itself. Its not just budget either, like any fishing, each style of jigging and target species has its own style of rod to make the lure work at its best. Take for instance their (egi) squid fishing rods, these are built for the dedicated angler who targets squid with specific weight squid jigs. Go to heavy or to light and the action of the lure will not perform as intended. The owners of the company regularly field test their gear this side of the pond, something they pretty much do all the time at locations where big fish are quick to find and test gear on. They don't simply make a rod size and hope it works, these are tuned to the style of lure fishing they were built for. I wouldn't recommend buying any of their rods outside of a lure class they were built for within reason. buying a rod intended for 80g - 120g but thinking you will go the next size up because you like heavier rods will not give you the same working action on those light lures. Jigging lures aren't simply all the same either, as you can see by the range and style on their site. These aren't simply pretty coloured weights to get down to the fish, each has an action and style with a tremendous amount of testing behind it (which others try to copy). Every rod is factory tested to the specification rating on the blank, so when a rod has a rating of say 32kg at 90' it has actually been tested to that. Most of the rods intended for big angry fish tend to be very parabolic allowing the angler to put huge pressure on fish without the hurt being transferred back to the angler, hence how my kids were knocking over big fish when they were very young. Their reels often have drag setting of around true 45kg and even more on some of their reels. These allow you to lock and drag some fish away from structure in the initial part of a fight or simply get the fish quickly to the boat before sharks wise up to the fight. Unlike most rod manufacture's TM rods seem to of gained a cult following where the second-hand market remains extremely high and holds value. You rarely see these rods for sale secondhand for more than a few hours on any social media. With all the above mentioned I do in fact use some of my JM jigging rods for livebaiting and pulling marlin and tuna lures etc. Just because they are built for a specific jig style and action doesn't mean you have to stick with that. Personally I would happily use a 150g jig rod with lures to 250g but not so much a 250g lure rod on lures of 150g. I recently bought a secondhand popping JM rod that my daughter instantly put claim to. She is thrilled using this rod compared with other high end outfits she can use on the charter boats she skippers and has already caught numerous bluefin and yellowfin tuna of around 150lb on it. By the way our 150lb tuna's look the same in size to the the ones many in the UK are estimating around 600lb!!!!!

There are so many rods made by them with varying budgets, with the higher end stuff being around $800 AU which is about 400 UK. They are a Taiwan company not US, or at least they weren't. In all honestly when I first started buying their gear there was very little that compared in these skinny powerful style rods, now there are numerous companies following their lead. Many of these other companies also make very good rods but are less than half the money, hence why I have the likes of the ocean legacy rods on my boat as well now. Jigging master built a reputation very quickly by making rods that stopped fish like big kingfish and dogtooth tuna (record fish) so now much of their high price is from that reputation and not because they are any better than some other very good rods out there.

I haven't seen anyone use these wind ons in a few years, thought most people gave up on them once the pr and fg knots started becoming popular.

Its amazing how many small skinny rod builders have popped up copying Jigging masters designs, even using the same name on some of the products https://www.jiggingmaster.com . It was these rods that allowed my kids to take on fish conventional rods and reels couldn't do some 15yrs ago. Jigging master are the pioneers in these skinny blank designs, I have 12 of their outfits from jigging to popping and even a beach rod, these are in my opinion as good as they get. The ocean legacy my daughter is using was just a cheap similar design, a rod I can lend to friends on my boat without the risk of them perhaps dropping a more costly JM over the side. When I first started mentioning JM rods on the old site people could get their head around the fact my young kids were catching large fish and also getting them to the boat quickly. As you could see in the above video, the angler pulled a nice sized thresher to the boat backwards with very little effort. Not only was the shark pulled to the boat backwards, its condition when release looked far healthier than any shark Ive seen pulled in on conventional sharking gear. Far more lighter, smaller and powerful rods that make easy work without getting a sore back from jigging and catching hard fighting fish all day. Even those depths of 500m are similar to some of the depths we jig. The action a jig has on these style of rods is far different from conventional rods we ever had the opportunity to use wrecking when I lived in the UK, these rods are designed specially to tailor the action of the jigs.

Change of tow vehicles for the boat rig. Sold the Isuzu Dmax and picked up a Mazda BT 50 3.2 470nm torque which makes ease of uphills.

Just been putting new leaders a few outfits using my jigging master bobbin. Once you master the start of the wrap and maintaining the correct tension you will wonder how you did without it.

This is a little cheap Oceans Legacy rod hooked into kingfish yesterday, you simply can't break them on fish (so far!!!!). Kings are the toughest scrappers lb for lb you are likely to catch anywhere.

Slow jigging today on the yellowtail kingfish was insane. In bed with a sore back from it now. What truly makes it even more fun was using the panoptics transducer, watching jigs and soft plastics getting smacked by kings was more addictive than catching them, loving that transducer.

I was just about to chuck a few left over mackerel in the freezer for shark bait from the beach tomorrow when I thought why not snap a quick pic of the fish you miss throughout winter. Mackerel at the moment are in numbers Ive never seen before, they reach from the surface to the bottom in 150m of water and as far as you can see shimmering on the surface. Did get some dolphin fish, kingfish and hefty sharks steeling some of our catch but it was these little mac's I thought you guys might like to see!!!!

Mine has several spools of line left on it to save unwinding those tension knobs all the way. I put tape around the bulk spools so the line doesn't come off as I wind any of the choices of line that are on it. Unlike almost any other methods people use no heat is transferred to the spool how ever hard you tighten down the pressure, so no risk of damage to the lines.

Not wanting to put a downer on the whole cheap and nasty downrigger thing but you get what you pay for. If you are after something that is effortless and quick to retrieve with controlled braking (clutch) then you might have to bite the bullet. Ive messed about with some small crappy down riggers until I bit the bullet and bought something that actually worked well without causing me grief.

No compromise anymore than the bolts that hold the A frame. Simply 4 screws in a piece of marine ply with silicon around the whole fitting. Water can get under the floor from the front anchor well, where the cables both go under the floor from the engine and where they come up through the floor n the centre console.

Not quite sure why a down rigger is a non starter on a rib, that's where I used mine the most. The model I mention has a quick release bracket and swivel mount that can be positioned at any angle. The pole extends over 2m even with 20lb of down rigger. In the first image you can see Ive made a simple bracket where the mount fits. The mount has two spring loaded pull buttons, one for swivelling the boom around to the position I want and the other for releasing the the down rigger from the bracket. In the second image you can see the down rigger with the booms fully in to their shortest position. On my new boat I simply bought the rod mount adapter and place it in any rod holder around the boat.

There are jiggers and there are jiggers. My daughters ex was the under 18 champion lure fisher, having him onboard jigging any kind of lure was a little hard to believe on just how successful his style was. I could pretty much give up if he was jigging, even with the same jigs and trying to copy his style. Now my daughter does the same to me but at least I get the odd fish while with her. When you watch some of these world champions on YouTube they seem to be able to jig almost any fish from any water where the rest of us would give up and say there was nothing there. I feel sure this would be the same around the UK where these expert jiggers would out fish anything us general anglers could catch. It always seems to be the most expensive jigs and micro jigs that are most productive!!! Before buying any jig styles, check out to see if there are any YouTube videos showing how to work them and if people are actually have success on them. Each have different styles of action, so an angler working every jig the same might be missing his chances of attracting fish. Its not just the jigs either, many rods are built for certain styles of jig to get the best action from them. Some jigs and rods are designed to simply work from a rod holder as the boat rocks about form wave action, these rods are often soft slow action.

I use a canon stx10, an extremely useful thing to have. Ive had cheaper models but the STX has an extendable boom and a swivel mount head which makes it easy to position so it stays clear of the engine even in tight turns. I use it for dropping live mackerel at exact depths I want the bait and this is very easy to monitor on the sonar, as are the fish that check it out. Its also handy for dropping burley wire cages Ive made, weighted with concrete in the base. I even have burley cages with GoPro mounts. The stx has a drag system so that it doesn't damage the unit if it gets snagged or chewed by sharks. There are numerous styles of fixing for the boat to accommodate different angles and positions, mine is mounted to a stainless rod holder mount so it can be slotted into any of my rod holders around the boat. The rod holder mount also means its easy to move it out of the way or simply leave it at home on days I don't need it. I removed the wire line and replaced with 200m of 150lb colour change braid, the hum from the original wire attracted to many sharks so I dare say you lot will want to keep it. Who knows wire might even attract the elusive dogfish shark!!!! As for light line, yes they are fantastic for that. Dropping soft plastics 80-150m with a quick release clip and slowly manoeuvring the boat over a known structure or wreck ect keeps the lure in the strike zone permanently. Down rigger leads for me are between 5-10lb but there are times you may need to double that if you want to keep the sinker ball in your sonar. In very deep water I simply drop the engine in and out of gear to slow the boat and keep the down rigger weight under the boat. Another use for mine is to pull game fish teasers behind the boat on faster trolling species. Something to note is when Im at anchor and I drop a burley cage with old fish frames is that it drifts back with the tide if its pushing hard but as soon as it hits bottom I can retrieve some line which pulls the burley cage back so it sits directly under the boat (back in the sonar if you keep yours on, I tend not to). When its directly under the boat I can then choose the size weights on my fishing outfits to control how far behind the burley pot I want them to be. Baits dropped to close to the cage can often pick up the more rubbish small fish that try to raid the burley while better bigger fish hold back a little further (like snapper). Having used then over here for several years I would have no hesitation using one on the species I used to target around the southern parts of the UK.

Never found it interesting at all even though my family (parents) were devoted football fans. Same goes for cricket and any other sport. Even when I entered events such as motocross and trials I couldn't see the attraction of watching it or following top riders. I enjoyed riding but as soon as I sold the bikes that was the end.

Going a bit further into the tec gear is getting a free diving watch. With these you can set alarms for certain depths and keep an eye on your down time etc. These will also let you know how long to remain on the surface between breath holds, as well as training programs in many of them. For me my dives tend to be quite short at first but build up after the more dives I do in a day, normally starting with around 30-45 seconds at around 8m but increasing to around 1.30sec after a while. I can get down around the 20m but my time down there is only short compared o my daughter.

My daughter does around 2-3mins at 20m deep, way beyond my capabilities.

It's recommended to work as a pair. It's a very efficient way of covering ground and much safer way to dive for many reasons. Safety is one reason, the person waiting on the surface is able to keep an eye out on boat traffic and assist their buddy if they need it with a fish or blackout ( extremely rare unless hyperventilating etc). One person may find a rock crack with lobsters at the end of a breath hold which they can send their buddy down onto after they have surfaced, generally you double your surface time to dive time before going back down, so 1 min under 2 at the surface sort of thing. In saying the above, my daughter is a terrible dive buddy who gets distracted and shoots off on her own. I find diving with her it's best to follow her with the boat rather than try and stay with her in the water. Boat buddying is common where a boat operator stays about 40-50m away and protects the diver or divers from boat traffic etc. This is also a good way to work with several spearfishers as they can drift with currents and cover large distances, which for my daughter is often over 10k in a day. If boat buddying try to avoid putting the engine in gear if anyone has gone bellow the surface, the sound of the gears engaging will often spook fish the diver was targeting.