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Hang a low powered light (5-10 watt) over the side of the boat and float a small hardy or similar bait fish preferably live, just below the surface.
Hook the hardy through the top lip and have a long handled bait scoop handy, the squid will come to the surface and squirt around trying to get the bait off the hook. Dark nights are best.
Don't try to scoop the squid, hit it over the head like serving at tennis
and twist the net at the same time. Wait until it is swimming away from you and then strike.
Keep the squid in the water until it has expended it's ink and then bring it aboard.
Size doesn't matter, use whole and fresh and still with the ink on the squid.
Straight onto an 8. 0 hook and let the line run freely, don't impede the first run. I usually use a heavy hand line and just place the spool on the floor of the boat under a corn sack. Neap tides and one hour either side of the slack water.
Let the bait go downstream for 15-20 meters before dropping the sinker
Best jew bait in estuaries. Don't pull the line on the first run let him swallow the bait, may take more than five minutes to get a hook up.
A jew may take a live fish bait in one run so be prepared to strike when you think he has swallowed the bait.
Very few jew will be hooked in the lip.
Most of them will be school jew so wipe your next bait over the face and gills of the one you have just caught.
You will often get yellowtail pike and gar up under the light and you can either fish for the pike or try the net. You will get gar up all the time and they are also good live bait for jew.
I am on the fresh squid band wagon as well, but lately we have been using more strips of fresh mullet with very similar results. Plus the advantage of it lasting longer on teh hook. But has to be very fresh.
I always use fresh peeled prawns. Not the frozen, packaged bags of prawns you find in bait freezers at the servo. Those are too small and fall off the hook. I buy fresh, medium green prawns at the fish shop opposite Woolworth's at Garden City; $9.99/kg. I usually have two rods going and I cut the bigger ones in half, after peeling them, for both hooks. The tail section of the prawn can be threaded onto the hook like a worm, with the tip of the hook just sticking out of the end of the tail. I catch EVERYTHING on them; bream, whiting, flathead, mangrove jack, etc. Can be used in both salt and fresh water. In fresh water, I've even caught bass on them.