JDP

Have you seen this one ?

This is our drop bear hunting dog, used to camouflage in wilderness areas after fires for hunting drop bears. She's also deadly at chewing zips of anything I own if I leave her at home!!!

I received some of these bathymetric charts about 12 years ago from one of the survey vessels when it was only available to researchers. At the time I had to upload it into google earth and layer it on their mapping to get true lat and long positions from it and unfortunately it doesn't simply cover everywhere. Purchasing is done in sections of coast and far more expensive than other charts. Garmins G3 is not the same, which is disappointing having moved away from Lowrance. I was told however that Garmin own this and it will soon be available to Garmin users but in all honesty if people have transducers such as the GT51 they can soon scan sea floors for themselves even in relatively deep water.

Personally I like feeding them chunks so they get fired into eating rather than just following a scent trail. Something I see with timed feeders like bream, once they get a few chunks they don't seem to hold back in feeding. Funnily enough some sharks will behave the same in trails with just tuna oil, mako and hammerheads can be quite timed in a trail that has small more puree type burley and actually leave without trying a single baited hook but once they start on a few chunks of mackerel they become less and less cautious. In particular some of the hammerheads will only take mono rigs as they are so cautious. Im not saying puree won't work, simply what Ive seen from both above and bellow the water on some species here.

Cheap blenders work great on soft baits like pilchards and mackerel fillets but don't over blend as it will easily turn to puree. We can get 4lt tubs of pure tuna oil which can be added to any burley blend. Back when I worked on charter boats out of Yarmouth IOW, we regularly attached burley bags to the anchor and always seemed to do well in regards to catch.

My current boat doesn't have any music system and after looking into the pro's and con's I decided against fitting one in this boat. So on days where music is needed ( tends to be spearfishing sessions ) we take a JBL extreme 2 bluetooth speaker and stream what ever music fits the occasion from the phone. No holes or cables to interfere with transducer cables etc and easy to place anywhere in the boat, preferably next to the kids!! Another good thing is the fact the speakers are waterproof so we take them on the beach too, or should I say the kids bring them!!!

As well as the fitted burley pots, I have several other methods to drop burley deep. Some you can buy from tackle stores that can be attached to hand lines or spare rods, which drop to the bottom and open on impact. My most commonly used is my cannon downriver with a homemade wire baskets and concrete in the base. This is pretty big and can hold large fish frames. Burlying works very well, its something we also do when spearfishing. The downside is it can daw small fish called leather jackets that have parrot like beaks which they snip through line as if it was nothing. The other problem is the amount of sharks depending on where you use it. The sharks will often grab the whole wire cages I make and take off with them!!! Funny enough burley and sharks when spearing isn't an issue at all normally, as the sharks focus is on a scent and we are just seen as another predator hunting in that scent. An injured fish on a spear is a whole different matter though. Making burley for me can either be simply putting whole fish frames in the wire basket or smashing old bait and frames up small. I will often smash up old frames in a big tough tub then freeze it into plastic drain tubes about 50cm long. I take the tubes out of the freezer and let them warm for a short time so that the burley slides out like giant ice pops. These are then kept cool in my ice box until I want to put one in my burley cage. Being frozen they have a slower release. Another technique commonly used offshore on tuna species is cubing. This is where we buy large quantities of pilchards (up around 15kg of them) and simply cut them into pieces about 1in in length. As soon as a piece drops out of sight once its been tossed overboard another is then tossed, this goes on all day as the boat drifts in water from 1500m-4000m. These trails can reach several km long and when tuna find the trail they race up it right to the back of the boat where you can hand feed them. From then on small handfuls are scattered around the boat to keep the fish in a feeding frenzy. Using this method is normally a community effort where boats trying over a large area will share when the tuna have reached them so other vessels can move over, which helps keep the fish up at the surface. This sharing the catch doesn't apply to other kinds of fishing normally.

Its weird how we so often get these giant hail balls. The damage they do runs into millions of dollars and insurance companies mostly don't cover hail damage anymore, so whole car dealerships can end up with costly repairs. We can regularly pick up brand new forecourt cars at 1/4-1/3 new price due to hail damage. Have a google search at some of the videos, its scary stuff when you are in a centre console at sea!!!

Roads and rivers flooded, hail bigger than tennis balls and strong winds. Tried to find a spot to fish this afternoon but conditions were too risky. Tuesday will be my next chance to get looking at this weather front.

Maybe when I next get a calm day to grab a few screen shots from deep water. I don't have the GT54 455 x 1200 ultra high as I don't tend to hit the sallow water that much but I do have the Gt51 260 X 455 and a Panoptix transducer. I am finding the 8410 screen pretty small and need to really watch the screen closely. The wide scan is more for finding structure that I then pinpoint and check out using the traditional sonar. In the past I would go out to all my old marks one by one searching for fish, most of these marks soon got poached and overfished. Now I search areas where I hadn't fished before which involves lots of slow scanning at around 4kt. On one recent trip I discovered a yacht of around 14m in 45m of water, which may be a vessel we were searching for with marine rescue 6 months ago. Another find was of a wreck called the Lady Darling which had been buried under sand for quite a few years, which I recently found is partly exposed again. This wreck has an interesting history, which Im trying to find if the 7,600 oz of gold was still onboard!! https://www.michaelmcfadyenscuba.info/viewpage.php?page_id=95

Yes no worries Andy, I did realise that. Brightness and contrast are key tools with side imaging and the 260khz is amazing even when I'm in water over 100m deep, the downside is that frequency is not great at detailing fish. The 1200khz on the 54 allows you to actually see exactly what species of fish are to your sides but doesn't have great range. You can end up with several transducers if you cover different depths. Ive seen a few people fall into the trap of buying the wrong transducers because they are part of a package deal, especially your side of the pond. Since my recent move over to the 260 it's like fishing new virgin ground, Im literally finding incredible amounts of new reef I didn't know existed.

Just a follow on from Andy's post on side imagining (don't seem able to post comments on his post). There is a heap of things you are missing out on in regards to that topic, some might greatly influence the way people purchase transducers for range and fish finding capabilities. Andy only mentions the 455-800 but there are also 1200 and 260 frequencies that are far more capable in both fish finding and structure finding, with the 260 scanning right out to 200m each side with good results on structure finding. After buying a Garmin 8410 simply because of the far higher res screen in comparison to my last 12 hds carbon Lowrance, which I was initially quite disappointed with. I watched all the Garmin free online seminars but still felt I was not getting the most out of this unit. I came across an online course and decided to to take a gamble and pay the coin to see if I couldn't fast track the knowledge base to getting more from my sounder and especially the sidescan side of things. The course had a fathers day special and my wife bought me the online training. I found it very worthwhile and can reference back over any parts at any time. The training is broken into modules and any response to questions has been very prompt. I looked at it in a couple of ways, firstly getting value out of the expensive electronics on my boat. Second fisheless trips still cost money, so being able to use the electronics to their best to find fish should soon offset the cost of the course. Anyway here's the link, part one might actually be free https://www.fishsmarter.com.au/courses/sounder-skills-1/ I found it worthwhile and its saved lots of wasted hours experimenting with settings, hours that I can now spend searching down my target species. I fast tracked and problem solved initial and now have an increased confidence on the water. From memory there are around 40 modules.

Rain stopped, bought a tester and all seems good. Results without engine running. Lowrance HDS head unit 11.8 Garmin 8410 head unit 12.2 Direct from battery 1 =12.59 battery 2 =12.60 With engine running. Lowrance 14.4 Garmin 14.8 Batteries 14.65 each.

Gee's just looked at the spec, that would be 2kg of reel when loaded with line. Anyone with any longterm experience using them ? my old penn international reels all started off smooth but soon degraded after a few mako's and tuna.

Not getting any reports from me, another weekend of crud weather but on the bright side on this water temp chart there's a warm front of water pushing towards us with good yellowfin along its front. The yellowfin should be in reach next week.

No this is the ps30 which I will mainly use for jigging to hopefully distinguish between the schools of very small fish that snip lures off with their beak like mouths. Im hoping with good clean water to be able to use this mostly in 60m of water, might also see how it goes with a max depth set at around 60-80m in extreme deep water to see is it will pick up tuna in the cube trail under the boat. It wasn't something I had planned to buy but I saw it at such a good price I could'nt knock it back!!!.. I find that most transducers work deeper than what is stated on the box's over here, which I put down to correct transducer placement and relatively clear water. I used to get 500m out of a Lowrance stock standard low cost transducer, though I am finding the Garmin GT51 needs very careful positioning to get good results due to the smaller cone angles. My thoughts too, plan was to run it on the hose and test before the next trip. Looks like I have a bit of time to get that done with more poor weather on the way.Wind rain and hail!!!

No haven't bought a tester yet, went to borrow one from a mechanic today but he was out for the day. Im a bit far from anywhere that sells testers local and already done a few big drives over the last few days (a bit over driving at the moment!!).

Checked mine out today, no cables that look anything like that, what brand of outboard is that from ?. Checked all connections and re- lubed with Yamlube, just need a break in this weather now as I have a panoptics transducer I'm keen to test among other things.

When you say sea trials, is this just testing the rib or are you testing your rib ?

It's not common at all, cold southerly winds pushing up from Antartica and a huge warm patch of water off the QLD coast causing us the rain. On the upside what most people would call summer in the UK ( temps of 27-37'c ) last around 9 months in my area and when we do cool down I often head to the tropics for a month or so.

Cheers for that, will check it out as soon as it stops raining!!! 12'c and rain for about 5 days so far. Summer

Ive been in a few in the past but not driving them, there are even a few tour operators that drive boats like this!!!..it's funny but the fella who's boat I'd been in wasn't racing to the pub, he virtually had the pub in the boat with us. My daughters ex powered his little tinny with a 40hp etec which would run at a crazy 110kmh. Another crazy boat Ive been in was another of my daughters sponsors, the boat was the Cootacraft villain. My first trip in this 70kt offshore spearfishing boat was crazy but not the fastest of the boats they build. Give me 22-24kts anyday over this crazy stuff!!!

Yes that's something I noticed with Lowrance too, the fact that two 500lt bait pumps have cooked in two trips doesn't indicate it's simply a misreading on the head units. It's not really a worry, I could run the power to the battery through a ctec dc to dc charger which I removed from another vehicle, this can also regulate any solar I use on longer range trips for powering the 12 volt freezer. The other option is to get the mobile auto electrician to check it out, who I believe is having the same issue with his Suzuki 175.

I was 17 at the time, having said that I still tend to go by peoples word and trust them which regularly backfires on me. If people are liars and cheats then that's something they have to live with, not me.

Its really amazing how quickly a hull can absorb water into products such as marine ply which you would thing with the name marine ply they would hold up longer. I had a similar boat which I bought from a guy in Southampton. The boat boat had been kept on a trailer until I purchased it, with the boat being just under 5 years old. It was kept by me both on a mooring or pulled onto a beach at Fort Vic IOW if I wasn't going to use it for a week or so, which also meant not having to use antifouling. A particularly rough day crossing the bridge at the Needles almost sunk it with one wave. The wave took out the windows and split the transom down both corners. After managing to get the boat back and out of the water I was amazed to find the transom rotten and the foam under the floor black and sodden with stinking mould and water. Not quite the long term investment I had hoped after owning it just 5 months!!! Ive seen a fair few more of these waterlogged on forums over the years, hopefully you can make it more watertight than the manufactures have. Out of interest when you say there's a metal plate at the stern, I assume this is on the outside ? Can you see if the lower engine bolts had pulled in from the other side. They usually pull in a little if the ply is soft.