When to Berley up for Squire

[Livo1964]

Hi All,

A mate and I have been fishing all around Mud island for a while now with not much success. Like everyone else that fishes Mud, our target species is squire/snapper. We seem to have no problem in catching undersized squire but not much success with the legal fish. My question is this, we spend a lot of time looking for "fishable" areas on the sounder. We find what looks to be good drop offs but they don't seem like they are holding fish. All we see is a nice rocky drop off bottom. (I don't know if not seeing fish has to do with the quality of our sounder or our ability to read it - probably a bit of both!!) Do we burley up to attract fish to the area (My belief is that we would be wasting our time doing this - my mate thinks otherwise) or do we spend more time looking for better areas that hold fish? (this option is easier said than done as we've been looking for some time now with no success) Our sounder is a Hummingbird 717. I've read the thread on sounder images and what to look for but we never see anything like some of the images on that thread. We've fished dawn and dusk, with bait, light tackle but only seem to attract undersized fish.

Any help on the burlying issue would be appreciated.

thanks

Livo

[spelchek]

There is an excellent article in this months QLD Fishing Monthly on interpreting sounder images and general sounder usage. Might be of assistance - certainly taught me a thing or two.

[SummerTrance]

If your fishing with bait, burley is definitley the key. Get a trail going and keep adding it slowly while you fish. Also you dont always need to look for drop offs. Just look for rubble bottom areas. Goodluck.

[two fold]

berley is a key for sure when fishing for snapper mate, I swear by it!
purcho

[RAT-KING]

It depends wen anchored I believe always berley! Wher I come from in SA u dont need to berley 9/10 fish are holding to structures ( they're there u just need berley to make them bite) but Mud doesn't have that many major structuers (not that Ive seen) so a constant trail of a fine mist so u dont fill them up is the best bet! remember ur not jst berlying up the snaps ur berleying the bait which the snaps r attracted to!!! Cheers Simon

[castlemaine]

OK, so here's another question along the burleying trail. If you burley and fish are non-existent or sparse how long do you stay in that spot before you move on. I would think you've wasted your burley if you've moved on before an hour. Cheers 8-)