charleville
18-08-2006, 02:27 AM
As I was cruising through the calm water on the leeward side of St Helena tonight on the way home from Mud Island to Manly at around 8.30pm, I started to think about my old friend George Wardle. (real name) :-/
George was a bloke with a personality that took some getting used to but once you got used to it, you just had to love the guy. :) We worked together off and on for about five or six years in the 1970’s – Gosh! - that was 30+ years ago! :-? Years later he left Brissy to work in Canberra for ASIO or someone very similar. Gasp!! :-? :-? :-?
Anyway, George came to the big smoke from Innisfail and could be described as being a naïve country bumpkin of the first order. ;D He used to do really stupid things – like the time that he bought a brand new car and rubbed the entire surface over with engine oil to make it glisten in the sun – the only problem is that on his first outing in the car after doing that he drove through a dust storm. ;D ;D ;D
Then there was the day that with another mate we were driving along a six lane road with George at the wheel following a heavily laden truck that was doing all of 20 kph in a 60 k zone. :-? The lanes to our left and to our right were both empty but for some strange reason, George just had to follow that bloody truck for about five km in the same bloody lane!!! >:( >:( >:( It drove me and our other mate mad at the time. ;D ;D ;D
He also lived with bad luck. :'( He had just signed a contract for his very first house when he moved to Brisbane in his early thirties when on the very next day, announcements were published in the Courier Mail that a new road was to be built and lo and behold, George’s new house was to be resumed and demolished for the new road. :'( :'( :'(
He also had a funny way with words. He spoke in a flat slow monotone that had me often yawning when he just said “Good morning.” ;D ;D I don’t think that I was alone in that regard. ;D
Then there was his sense of humour. ;D ;D ;D Dry as… ;D ;D ;D He used to tell the most awful old clichéd jokes. :-/ You know - like the old one about the Scotsman wearing a kilt and being asked, “What is worn under your kilt?” To which the Scotsman replies, “Nothing is worn under there. It is all in perfect working order!” ;D ;D I must have heard that joke from George’s mouth fifty-eight bloody times!!! ;D ;D ;D
I was pondering that old joke of George’s tonight when I was thinking about equipment failure. :-/
Regular readers of my report may recall that over time I have paid the price of a lot of terrific fish lost in a lot of my fishing exploits because of equipment failure. :( (...and some of you older blokes will know how annoying equipment failure can be. ;) ) Unlike George’s old joke, however, none of this equipment was worn – but it failed anyway – and little by little, I have been solving the cause of each of these failures. :(
Like the el cheapo Chinese bait-runner reel that I bought at the ‘Tackle and Tinnie’ show this year. It served me really well for two months and then failed catastrophically. >:( I solved that by buying a new Shimano 6500 bait-runner a week or two later. 8-)
Then there were my failures with knots. :( I used to go to a lot of trouble pre-rigging my lines at home with leaders and swivels etc using locked half blood knots only to have the knots fail time after time when assailed by a freight train out in the Bay. >:( I took Webby’s and Cheech’s advice, per these pages, to do away with the swivels (well sort of – sometimes I affix one directly to ganged hooks). ;) As well, I have started using the Palomar knot instead of the locked half blood knot because I read that the International Game Fishing Association (whoever they are) claim that the Palomar knot is the strongest fishing knot available (and also, it is easy to tie at night in the dark.) I have not had a knot fail since using the Palomar knot and I have certainly given them some tough tests including tonight, as you will see. :) :)
I also lost a lot of bigger fish using hooks that were too small for my style of fishing. >:( Webby always advises to use nothing bigger that a 2/0 in the Bay but on other advice per this site, I went up in size, sometimes to 7/0 and have not looked back since that time. :) :)
My latest catastrophe though relates to hook strength, specifically in relation to ganged hooks. >:( >:(
I had two hook failures tonight that annoyed the hell out of me. >:( I was able to rescue the first situation and in fact I was lucky in that I did not lose the substantial fish that I had on at the time. 8-)
In that case the third hook in a gang of four Mustad 4/0 hooks broke at the eye whilst in the fish. :-[
In the second case, the hook straightened a little under pressure from a whopper of a fish that I lost at the side of the boat. :( I have to admit partial fault in relation to the latter incident - I had just had a massive fight with what was obviously a ripper of a fish and being on my own on a dark night, I could not see any colour in the water and assumed that it was too early to get the landing net in the water so I kept winding away with a lot of strain on the line when it went “Snap!” and the fish spat out the hooks. :(
The tragedy was that when that happened, I only then discovered that I had only about 1.5m of line out. That is, the fish was right beside the boat and I was really trying to lift it out of the water without realising it. :( The hook straightened enough for the fish to fall off and I started swearing very loudly and very profusely. ;D
Pictures of both of these hook failures are shown below.
As I thought about George on the way home, I also pondered the problem with the hooks and concluded that ganged hooks, by design, will always be weaker than some of the premium high strength hooks such as the Mustad “Penetrators”. That is, the steel used in a hook that has to have its eye squeezed closed with a pair of pliers has to be quite malleable by design. Thus it becomes obvious that that steel is always likely to bend and distort in ways that high tensile strength hooks won’t. Likewise, it is probably not possible to gang high tensile strength hooks. :-/
So what is the answer? My guess is that the answer for baits like whole pilchards is to snood a couple of high tensile hooks together and to forget about ganged hooks. I would really appreciate some expert opinion about this problem, please. :-/
Unfortunately, hook failure was not the only equipment failure tonight… (to be continued…)
George was a bloke with a personality that took some getting used to but once you got used to it, you just had to love the guy. :) We worked together off and on for about five or six years in the 1970’s – Gosh! - that was 30+ years ago! :-? Years later he left Brissy to work in Canberra for ASIO or someone very similar. Gasp!! :-? :-? :-?
Anyway, George came to the big smoke from Innisfail and could be described as being a naïve country bumpkin of the first order. ;D He used to do really stupid things – like the time that he bought a brand new car and rubbed the entire surface over with engine oil to make it glisten in the sun – the only problem is that on his first outing in the car after doing that he drove through a dust storm. ;D ;D ;D
Then there was the day that with another mate we were driving along a six lane road with George at the wheel following a heavily laden truck that was doing all of 20 kph in a 60 k zone. :-? The lanes to our left and to our right were both empty but for some strange reason, George just had to follow that bloody truck for about five km in the same bloody lane!!! >:( >:( >:( It drove me and our other mate mad at the time. ;D ;D ;D
He also lived with bad luck. :'( He had just signed a contract for his very first house when he moved to Brisbane in his early thirties when on the very next day, announcements were published in the Courier Mail that a new road was to be built and lo and behold, George’s new house was to be resumed and demolished for the new road. :'( :'( :'(
He also had a funny way with words. He spoke in a flat slow monotone that had me often yawning when he just said “Good morning.” ;D ;D I don’t think that I was alone in that regard. ;D
Then there was his sense of humour. ;D ;D ;D Dry as… ;D ;D ;D He used to tell the most awful old clichéd jokes. :-/ You know - like the old one about the Scotsman wearing a kilt and being asked, “What is worn under your kilt?” To which the Scotsman replies, “Nothing is worn under there. It is all in perfect working order!” ;D ;D I must have heard that joke from George’s mouth fifty-eight bloody times!!! ;D ;D ;D
I was pondering that old joke of George’s tonight when I was thinking about equipment failure. :-/
Regular readers of my report may recall that over time I have paid the price of a lot of terrific fish lost in a lot of my fishing exploits because of equipment failure. :( (...and some of you older blokes will know how annoying equipment failure can be. ;) ) Unlike George’s old joke, however, none of this equipment was worn – but it failed anyway – and little by little, I have been solving the cause of each of these failures. :(
Like the el cheapo Chinese bait-runner reel that I bought at the ‘Tackle and Tinnie’ show this year. It served me really well for two months and then failed catastrophically. >:( I solved that by buying a new Shimano 6500 bait-runner a week or two later. 8-)
Then there were my failures with knots. :( I used to go to a lot of trouble pre-rigging my lines at home with leaders and swivels etc using locked half blood knots only to have the knots fail time after time when assailed by a freight train out in the Bay. >:( I took Webby’s and Cheech’s advice, per these pages, to do away with the swivels (well sort of – sometimes I affix one directly to ganged hooks). ;) As well, I have started using the Palomar knot instead of the locked half blood knot because I read that the International Game Fishing Association (whoever they are) claim that the Palomar knot is the strongest fishing knot available (and also, it is easy to tie at night in the dark.) I have not had a knot fail since using the Palomar knot and I have certainly given them some tough tests including tonight, as you will see. :) :)
I also lost a lot of bigger fish using hooks that were too small for my style of fishing. >:( Webby always advises to use nothing bigger that a 2/0 in the Bay but on other advice per this site, I went up in size, sometimes to 7/0 and have not looked back since that time. :) :)
My latest catastrophe though relates to hook strength, specifically in relation to ganged hooks. >:( >:(
I had two hook failures tonight that annoyed the hell out of me. >:( I was able to rescue the first situation and in fact I was lucky in that I did not lose the substantial fish that I had on at the time. 8-)
In that case the third hook in a gang of four Mustad 4/0 hooks broke at the eye whilst in the fish. :-[
In the second case, the hook straightened a little under pressure from a whopper of a fish that I lost at the side of the boat. :( I have to admit partial fault in relation to the latter incident - I had just had a massive fight with what was obviously a ripper of a fish and being on my own on a dark night, I could not see any colour in the water and assumed that it was too early to get the landing net in the water so I kept winding away with a lot of strain on the line when it went “Snap!” and the fish spat out the hooks. :(
The tragedy was that when that happened, I only then discovered that I had only about 1.5m of line out. That is, the fish was right beside the boat and I was really trying to lift it out of the water without realising it. :( The hook straightened enough for the fish to fall off and I started swearing very loudly and very profusely. ;D
Pictures of both of these hook failures are shown below.
As I thought about George on the way home, I also pondered the problem with the hooks and concluded that ganged hooks, by design, will always be weaker than some of the premium high strength hooks such as the Mustad “Penetrators”. That is, the steel used in a hook that has to have its eye squeezed closed with a pair of pliers has to be quite malleable by design. Thus it becomes obvious that that steel is always likely to bend and distort in ways that high tensile strength hooks won’t. Likewise, it is probably not possible to gang high tensile strength hooks. :-/
So what is the answer? My guess is that the answer for baits like whole pilchards is to snood a couple of high tensile hooks together and to forget about ganged hooks. I would really appreciate some expert opinion about this problem, please. :-/
Unfortunately, hook failure was not the only equipment failure tonight… (to be continued…)