How to catch a feed of fish in Moreton Bay (bait fishing)

[PNG1M]

Thanks Charleville...I was thinking that sometimes I'm guilty of waffly posts but I can breathe easy. Mine are more like one-liners compared with your detail.

It's good though, and I too will be taking out the Thesaurus - and here I am trying to complete my final Dissertation in creative non-fiction for my M Lett with CQU. Instead, I'm surfing Ausfish...crikey! I guess that's what procrastination can do.

I wonder if I could print your comprehensive tips & info and laminate it (for water protection) & keep it in the the tackle bag for reference from time to time. And I could get my kids to have a read of it too... then they could help pick out the gems & maybe learn a thing or three.

I like the way that even though the thread title mentions Moreton Bay, the information can be applied to many diverse locations, with plenty of 'food for thought' in there.

[charleville]

Thanks Charleville...I was thinking that sometimes I'm guilty of waffly posts but I can breathe easy. Mine are more like one-liners compared with your detail.

Heheheh! The funny thing is that I keep thinking that I should have written more. Especially in the last bit about concentrating because it is a bit motherhoodish as it is and I really should have told of how I usually sit with my fishing rod perched in two hands in such a way that I am ever ready to give a quick sharp pull to set the hook when I think it is time. That takes concentration.

That level concentration also means that I never ever feel the aches and pains of age - ie my arthritic knee and the like - when I am out fishing.

On the other hand, maybe the article is already long enough.

I wonder if I could print your comprehensive tips & info and laminate it (for water protection) & keep it in the the tackle bag for reference from time to time.

Mate, the world owns it now. Feel free to copy it as you wish.

I reiterate though that I am not an expert fisherman; just a well practised one. The experts can add a huge amount of extra info which puts them into the superstar, trophy winning class. I just go fishing to catch fish and enjoy the awesome outdoors.


I really wrote the piece because it is obvious that so many people struggle to catch any fish at all, let alone their moving into the top percentile of fishers like the experts are.


The blokes who talk at the fishing seminars at the various boat shows and dealer promotions will add a whole lot more info, all of which is good but first it is nice for people to just catch a feed of any sort.



Many thanks for your nice comments and goodwill.


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[BaitThrower]

good info thanks

[mudrunner]

great post mate.

im a swivel user. my concern is line twist. nothing funny about a birds nest in your reel....

are you saying that having no swivel rarely results in a 'birds nest'?

and wouldnt a running sinker pin the bait closer to the bottom instead of have a swivel keep the sinker back and therefore allow the bait to float around a bit?

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[ozassassin]

Great post, lots of very good info there for the memory banks.
Thanks for your time to put together such a informative thread.

Eric

[charleville]

are you saying that having no swivel rarely results in a 'birds nest'?

I never seem to have any problems with "birds nests". Never. But of course, fishing from a boat within the shallow waters of the bay means that I am not usually casting out very far so I do not really have much line out anyway except when a fish runs. Nor does it mean that the cast requires a lot of energy as it would if I were beach fishing and trying to get out as far as possible in each cast.

Certainly the line gets twisted but the worst part of the twist always appears in the first ten metres or so and if it starts to get too much twist in it, I just snip that bit off. After a while, I just replace the whole line..... and that was my point in that the cost of new monofilament line equates to the cost of the petrol used on, maybe, one outing and so I am not so worried to have to replace line from time to time.

On the other hand, I often have hook-ups with fish that leave me puffing at the end of a fight (eg the jewfish under my signature below). I lose more of those fights than I win and they are always lost at a knot so the less knots for me, the better.

Having said all of that though, I would still only replace my lines once per year or maybe twice if I have done a lot of fishing. However, the lines do get a fair bit shorter over that time as I snip a bit off every now and then.

I have occasionally just let the whole line out behind the boat when motoring home and let the twists find their own way out. I cannot remember the last time that I did that, though.


I use both a six inch Alvey on a 9 1/2 foot rod with 15 lb line and a spinning reel on a 8 ft rod with 20 lb line as my working rods and line twist on those is never a serious problem. I certainly never ever get birds nests. I recall getting them years ago when I used to get a bit keen and overload the capacity of my Alveys with as much line as I could get on but I don't do that these days. I also wonder if by using a larger Alvey than I did years ago, whether that has any effect. I just don't know.


Where line twist does get noticeable is on the baitrunner reel that I toss out an unweighted pillie on out the back of the boat. I toss that line out as far as I can and leave it there so obviously the pillie will swing in the current around a fair bit. On that set of ganged hooks, I do link in a swivel to the eye of the first hook but even so, that 30 lb line does get pretty heavily twisted after a while.


In that case though, birds nesting of the line is not the concern for me. It just does not happen. The real concern that I have is the diminution of the strength of the line simply because it is becoming so deformed. That sort of twisting would "work harden" a piece of steel and make it stronger but I doubt very much if it would do the same with monofilament nylon.

The only real nuisance that I suffer from twisted line is that a heavily twisted line will make the line snake itself around the end of the rod when I am re-baiting such that I occasionally have to unwind the line from the tip of the rod. Hence my comment in my first post about how easily carbon fibre rods will snap if you bend the tip by hand in the same arc as you would a solid fibre glass tip.

and wouldnt a running sinker pin the bait closer to the bottom instead of have a swivel keep the sinker back and therefore allow the bait to float around a bit?
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Yup. I reckon that would be right.

However, I also notice that I get snagged a lot more when I have used a trace and swivel because most of my fishing is in reefy places. Having a sinker right on the hook seems to keep the hook from digging into the reef more than I have found when I have used a trace so I usually get more actual fishing time when I don't have to replace hooks etc as regularly.

Recall though that I have said that I will try to fish without a sinker as much as possible. I cast up current or out to the side of the boat and usually a bit up current so that my bait floats down rather than sinks down. That means that there is plenty of time that the bait spends suspended above the bottom before it actually reaches there.

Even when I need to use a sinker, I go for the absolutely lightest possible. My style of bait fishing is active fishing. I do not just toss a heavily sinkered line out and leave it there and hope for the best. My bait is always moving which means that as the current takes it back behind the boat, I reel it in and toss it out again.

The exception to that is when the current is really fast and I have to use a big sinker but I tend to move on when the current is running too hard. I do have a downrigger and would use it if I was really keen to fish fast currents but my style of fishing is to feel for the bites and you cannot do that with a downrigger.


I should add that it was based on advice received a few years ago on Ausfish to a question of mine about knot failures that a couple of the very best fishos came back with the response, "lose the swivels". So I reckon that I am not the only person fishing the Bay without swivels.


Many thanks for your questions.


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[Hornblower]

The best thread I think I have read on here yet - fantastic stuff Charlie...

Now can anyone help me, I have worn out seven pairs of glasses and three sets of eyeballs reading it - in need of new pairs of both now...LOL

Again though in all seriousness - well done!

[Kero]

What a great read! You make it sound so easy. Now I'll just have drift around the bay in the middle of the night until I see your boat and I should be right!:wink: Thanks for taking the time to write this.

[castlemaine]

The old 'KISS' rule.
Somehow I'd forgotten it and have complicated it for myself.
Thanks Charlie, I needed a reminder to go back to the basics.
Cheers.

[big moose]

Thanks for the great read charleville ther are some real gems in there in fact i can remember vaguely my grandfather saying some of those exact things 40 some years ago.
cheers mate

[charleville]

i can remember vaguely my grandfather saying some of those exact things 40 some years ago.

Ah yes - there is no rocket science in anything that I wrote but that is the whole point I think, and which other people have picked up on - as castlemaine mentioned in what he said below ...

The old 'KISS' rule.
Somehow I'd forgotten it and have complicated it for myself.

Now I'll just have drift around the bay in the middle of the night until I see your boat and I should be right!:wink:

Heheheh! I shall have to sit sideways and then you won't see me.


Thanks for all the nice comments, fellas. Much appreciated.


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[sleepygreg]

Agreat tribute to you Charlieville. So many people on this forum ask the simple questions...only to be put down by many 'experienced' members. It is a refreshing change to see someone prepared to go back to 'basics'. We all had to learn somewhere, and not all of us have the advantage of coming from 'fishing families' where those same basics were handed down through the generations. I was lucky, my great grandfather, grandfather, and father were fishermen of the old school who taught me the basics. This didnt set me up as an 'expert', but made me aware of the 'basics' of fishing.

Once you have a grasp of the 'basics', you can apply them to any fishing situation. Whether it be bait fishing or using artificials.....fish hunt for food...structure is where they find that food...different fish are attracted to different structures....because that is where their favourite food is....the when is important. Damn..once you learn the basics..a whole new world of exploration opens up. But the key to it all is......learn the basics.

I see many people asking questions about soft plastics....but i will ask them....have you had success with bait? If the answer is no...then i would suggest they probably wont have much success with placcies. You need to understand how and why a fish feeds. Artificials are meant to imitate a fishes prey..and you must fish them accordingly.

Thank you for your thought provoking and inciteful post.

Greg

[charleville]

I see many people asking questions about soft plastics....but i will ask them....have you had success with bait? If the answer is no...then i would suggest they probably wont have much success with placcies. You need to understand how and why a fish feeds. Artificials are meant to imitate a fishes prey..and you must fish them accordingly.

Thanks, Greg.


I must admit that I had a little chuckle when one of Ausfish's most prolifically successful, soft plastics anglers, Chief, caught a stunning snapper on bait yesterday in the Brisbane River. I have been grinning all day about it, actually. So there is probably a lot of merit in what you suggest.http://www.ausfish.com.au/vforum/sho...d.php?t=163277


I have tried soft plastics but reverted to bait fishing simply because the experience is more enjoyable to me. Bait fishing is more of a tussle of the minds between angler and fish, in my view.


Nonetheless, I do appreciate that a battle of wits is also true in relation to soft plastics' fishing and that that contest between man and fish is simply of a different nature to bait fishing at a mechanical level and is obviously very satisfying to the soft plastics enthusiasts.


I do tend to be a bit disdainful though when I attend fishing seminars and hear such overt promotion of soft plastics by expert anglers who are sponsored to deliver such messages to the exclusion of all other possibilities and indeed, often without a fundamental examination of the fish habits that would be conditional to the successful deployment of the soft plastics.


Likewise when I visit a store like BCF and see the unbelievable amount of expensive retail space given to soft plastics, it makes me think that there must be some extra-ordinary profits being made on those bits of brightly coloured plastic. I reckon that an awful lot of people might, as you say, be better served by doing an apprenticeship of sorts in bait fishing before they are driven by extravagant and sustained marketing campaigns to plough lots of money into soft plastics.


But to each his own. Good luck to the people who are as hooked on soft plastics as I am on bait fishing.

Indeed, I am sure that bait fishos can learn a lot from thinking about soft plastics techniques. That is why my bait is always moving when I go fishing. It never sits anchored under a lot of lead on the sea floor.






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[Steve82]

Bruce, Your post was a great help

Thanks heaps

[Steve82]

Thanks for taking the time to put such effort into your posts it has been a great help.

Cheers