JDP

Not all anchors and ropes are equal. You can use lighter anchors such as sarca and rocna to keep the size and weight down in small boats but still have incredible holding power compared with most anchors. The same goes for ropes, depending on manufacturer you can get a rope of 6mm with greater strength than ropes of 12mm, also better uv resistance. If you are pulling an anchor by hand, then some people like thicker rope but if you use something like an alderney rig then thinner rope might be the way to go. As general rule the minimum length of chain in 8mm would be the length of the boat, so a 5m boat minimum of 5m of chain, if you use lighter gauge then more length. I tend to double my chain length as I anchor in depths over 100m, which my thinner ropes and anchor style allow me to do so with just 2x1 ratio's. Make sure you get either galvanised or stainless chain or it will soon become a rusty mess.

Are vibes popular back there ? Here they come in all shapes and sizes targeting most species and are extremely effective, one of those big improvements that came along a few years ago but still work well now they have moved into the soft plastic and hardbody vibe style. The downside here is they are so good that they demand a pretty high price, which can be costly when toothy things get them first!!! vibes like these in the picture have two hooking points so they can be used as drop lures or casting surface lures, their action is extremely vigorous.

The pre rigged use the hooks with a small lead on the hook, apologies for the pic, didn't want to open a new packet !!! The rusty hook in this one is ready for the bin. Zerek make a much better prawn style plastic which can be used as a weed less lure.

Like any other plastic and often split them up the middle of the tail. They only last a couple of gentle drops but its normally the drop that gets a fish. Some days not even the best action plastics will work.

I was on a trip 3400km north fishing a few years ago when my son saw a boat about 8m up in a tree which had been stuck there from floods for a few years. We asked the owner of the property why he had a boat so high up in a tree and he said it had been to hard to get out but served a good reminder of how high the floods can be. He said to my son he could have it if he could get it down but at the time we had our boat so couldn't bring it back even if he could get it down. A few years later I flew up on a trip with my son again and by chance met a guy who asked me to drive a ute back. As soon as I was asked my son asked if we could see if the boat was still up the tree and sure enough it was!!! It took him the best part of the day to get it down, it was the right way up in the tree so had filled with decomposed leaf litter and biting ants!!!! Now it lives in front of the lake on the bank at our place. From the top end of Oz to the bottom, our smallest boat but longest trip to get it!!!

I had a 'Para Anchor' which come in a couple of sizes to suit boats up to 10m. Must admit I rarely use a drogue at all but always have one onboard.

Here they catch all manner of species from bream, snapper,tailor, flathead and jewfish. You can buy them pre-rigged or like yours.

I have used these with success, not as good as plastics but when the fish are firing up well they work. Better on the environment too.

Early days at the moment still learning more about It and haven't been getting good weather. Unfortunately the only instructions are only on how to install it but I found some Garmin tutorials in French!!! which Ive managed to sort of get my head around. First impressions were disappointing as I didn't realise the adjustment forward and back (fore and aft) also has an beam width adjustment, which meant I was loosing even 10lb downrigger balls at about 15m because I had it set on 10'degree. Now I have set the angle towards aft more and beam angle to 40x120 degree's so Im able to track slow falling 3-5inch soft plastics in 60m of water. This is great as before I had no idea where these slow dropping lures were in the water until they got snagged in deeper reefs. Id be happy with just 60m even out chasing game offshore as this will often be the depth I drop a live bait (dropping to 4000m out there is out of the question). Big packs of whaler sharks will soon be among the kingfish, panoptics should help me save loosing a few jigs and hopefully fish to them, not to mention stopping the jigs just before bottom or exactly where the fish are. On my last trip I experimented with the beam angle and was able to work my jig right along the bottom without getting snagged once. I also saw fish approach the lure and hesitated my jig action to get two fish first two drops, both species we rarely take on jigs, I was impressed. I haven't started my offshore marlin fishing yet as the season normally gets going after Xmas when the warm currents reach us, then I will be experimenting deeper, even then the marlin are often high in the water column pushing bait towards the surface which should be interesting to see in live view. What Ive found with both Garmin and lowrance is that the depths they quote as max are normally easily achieved which I put down to the water clarity we often have. I feel anxious to get out on the water, not because Im missing the fishing but simply because using this is such a fun game changer. I would prefer a dedicated screen for it as the 10 inch is small if combining with charts etc.

Forget my question in the other post asking what boat you have!!!!...a beast with power 😃 A comfortable overnight boat with great access for a swim etc, very nice indeed.

Most modern gps units allow you to make your own charts, which would be handy for that area given how the shingle banks move. Sidescan and forward scan is also handy in such situations, very few boats ventured that area years ago but those who did normally did well. What size boat do you have and is it powered by inboard or outboard. Outboards are handy in those sorts of areas as you can simply trim up and hop onto banks at low tide to flick lures quietly without the boat running. It also looks incredibly interesting on the charts as you head west along the drop offs in that area.

The more oily scented bait the better, like real dogs they use their sniffer to scrounge out food rather than eyesight and high speed attacks. I recon an old fishing sock should work!!!!

We used to pick up charter clients from Lymington years ago. The shingle banks were always an area I avoided to a point back then but with better charts and the ability to build your own charts I would love to map that area in order to work lures chassing bass there now.

In the lowrance menu I set my heading line in time rather than bearing. For me a 10 min heading line would give me a line ahead of the boat about 10km long at cruise speed, this not only came in handy for quickly estimating travel time but also gave me a line to line up on my charts and visually check my heading against land marks. This was how I became aware the line on my chart wasn't lining up with what I was seeing directly ahead of me. It doesn't sound like much but on long range trips I was not traveling in straight lines when I hit a goto position, which meant more fuel per trip.

Just thinking about it I ran my charts as heading up and magnetic north, where in my location we are 13.5'degrees in variation from true north. This was about the amount it was always out after calibration, which makes more sense now. You will also have a certain variation from true north that corresponds with your location. If it seems slightly out you could try switching between true and magnetic north on the lowrance to see if that sorts it out.

I used it with a hds 12 gen 3. Like you I only had it fro the electronic heading, which is well worth having in my opinion. That particular model had a few issues of freezing up the screen, wasn't an issue with the 9 and 7 though. It was a tough decision moving away from the navico group having been with them for so many years but Garmin do have a few things in their favour that swung my decision for my style of fishing. I know you showed some interest in live view for your units, if its anything like the Garmin live view you will love it. Its taking a while to get the best out of mine as there's a lack of info on what the settings do, so you have to experiment a fair bit with them. I now can't wait to get on the water just to watch my lures in live action among the fish.

Good place to boat from, short run to the channel and protection of the solent. Looking forward to hearing a few fishing tales, maybe a trevaly from the shingle banks!!!

I had three Avets, all had issues unfortunately. I had a couple of well known shark anglers here earlier in the year who both used the bigger end of the Avet reels. Don't know if it was just the calibre of sharks they got into over here but the drags were far from smooth, in saying that they did take on several sharks in excess of 500lbs (in one day!!).

When I had point one on my last boat it didn't matter how many times I calibrated it it was always about 10' out. Kept up to date with firmware updates etc but always the same result. I changed over to Garmin on the boat I have now and thought I would see if it worked networked together with Garmin, to my surprise it did. To calibrate it it I simply lined up our harbour mouth while around 10km offshore and checked it against the avionics chart and its now more accurate than when used with Lowrance. For that switch panel to get so bad was it exposed to saltwater ? Do you ever spray the connections with Yamaha lube or inbox etc to keep them in good order.

I take it you are the new owner of it, better you found it now rather than later.

Not that recent but I bought a ps30 panoptics transducer, also had g3 vision on order for a month now.

Most boats have built in buoyancy, so get recovered. This one is on the bottom in a tricky spot with boat traffic but Im pretty sure I could find it easy enough and bring it back up with air bags and a dive buddy of mine. Trouble is what to do with it at the surface and getting it back though the bar. There's most likely a heap of fishing gear scattered around it and the forecast looks poor most of the week.

The town is starting to fill with tourists (6 weeks of Xmas hols). This influx at this time of the year attracts hundreds of extra boats, with many owners lacking experience in bar crossings. Today the conditions were actually very good but still a 6m boater got it wrong sinking another boat and needing rescuing for the crew. I think the fact we get so many tourists from Melbourne who've been in lockdown has made them anxious to get out among the kingfish. Like I said though, conditions were good, going to be an interesting holiday period!!!

Its a bit of joke that every home has at least one boat in its front yard over here, in reality most have two!!! This is one of the areas I used to be a member of marine rescue at (now in a new area). Ramps like this are common around the whole country and boats capable of doing more than 10kts need to registered, my state alone has around 270,000 registered boats. On a busy day this ramp would have over 2000 launches in a day. When tuna are moving along the coast there will often be questioned of boats several km long into boat ramp facilities, many queuing and launching all through the night (tuna fever). Even inland dams and rivers are stocked with fish and attract huge numbers of boats.

I use boning knives for bait and filleting, unlike fillet knives these are often far cheaper and hold the edge much longer, hence why they are the most common butchers knife.