Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2018 i Fishing World

MOST fishos take inspiration from others. Usually it’s the person who catches the most or biggest fish. Often, as a youngster, it’s your parents; the people who introduced you to the world of fishing. As you grow, the inspiation and guidance comes from elsewhere. As a fishing magazine editor I see endless photos of inspiring catches every time I flick through these pages. Looking through old magazines is another great source of inspiration. Those black & white pages from the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s take you back to the pioneering days of Australian sport fishing. Back then there was no social media, the internet or even decent cameras. Instead, highly skilled communicators and accomplished anglers inspired and educated Aussie fishos through words. As a kid in the ‘80s and ’90s…

FISH FACTS: PLASTIC PROBLEMS Over the past decade or so there has been increased awareness in the broader community of the fact that everything that is dumped in our waterways and oceans does not simply disappear. In today’s world with human populations continuing to increase exponentially ● By Dr Ben Diggles ENVIRONMENT: COMMERCIAL INTERACTIONS Every so often the old commercial versus recreational tensions surface again. Things seemed to have settled a bit in recent times with both sides agreeing they wanted access to larger areas of the proposed national marine protected area estate and convincing the current Coalition government to wind back restrictions. ● By John Newbery…

THIS year marks 20 years of aluminium boat building for Formosa Marine. From humble beginnings, Formosa Marine now sees itself as one of the mainstay brands of the Australian recreational boating market with a distribution network Australia wide. According to company representatives, the key to the longevity, growth and reputation of Formosa Marine has been the constant onward development of the company’s product range and designs to meet the customer’s demand for high quality build and performance in a hull that can be tailored to their individual needs. A Formosa Marine built hull is marketed under the Tomahawk and Sea-Rod brands of plate boats offering a full range of models from open to cabin hardtops, sizes from 4.55m Classics to the latest 7.4m heavy duty Offshores with true self-draining decks.…

Late last year I wrote a piece on catching large flathead in the shallows on soft plastic stick baits. This method had been developed by my friend Chris Metcalfe and was proving very effective on big flathead over 70cm long when fished in quite shallow water. This article generated considerable interest and plenty of other keen anglers have had success with similar lures in estuaries well away from the Gold Coast. This article here is aimed at giving another update into a few new things we have tried, and a few rigging developments that have helped us over the last year when it comes to catching flathead on lures. In simple terms there are two types of flathead fishing with lures; vertical methods and horizontal methods. A typical vertical method…

Each month we will select five lucky winners for our Grin & Win section. Grin & Win winners will each receive a cool Shimano cap and Squidgy DVD! E-mail your entry and contact details to: pictures@fisho.com.au Please include your name and age and details of your catch. Also provide a postal address so winners can receive their prize. Good luck! Visit the Shimano Junior Anglers’ website at www.shimanofish.com.au…

There's no doubt cats have an undisputed capacity to tackle rough water, plus great inherent stability for offshore fishing. However, the success of cats offshore has tended to type-cast them as a specialised craft with twin-engine power that is bit aloof from everyday boating. Now a new cat from across the Tasman "Ditch" promises to change the game somewhat. The Kiwi 6.3m Blackdog is a twin-hull Cat that runs happily on a single motor, which helps to reduce the starting price plus lower running costs. You can buy the Blackdog Cat with twins but she performs so well with a single motor you probably won't bother. And keeping in mind the reliability of modern outboards that's good news especially if you're plan is to do as much inshore fishing as…

As I write this piece I’m sitting in my office as the far outskirts of a tropical cyclone batter Hervey Bay with 30 knot winds and intermittent rain squalls. The weather has been unpleasant for two weeks now but before that I managed a quick trip chasing tuna on fly that reinforced a most valuable lesson I learnt many years ago. We managed a few longtails on soft plastics and metals without a problem but then we came across a big school of mackerel tuna that we feeding on 5cm whitebait. They had the bait rounded up and were tearing the surface to shreds feeding on them with silver showers of baitfish spending more time air born than in the water. The macks were absolutely gorging themselves. I had a…

HELD on the Daly River each year at the end of the wet season run off, the Club Marine Barra Nationals is a fun and exciting invitational barra tournament hosted by the Palmerston Gamefishing Club. There had been a short but intense wet season this year and the fishing in the river had been reasonably good. In the 5 days prior to the Barra Nationals we caught well over 100 barra up to 86cm so things were looking good for catches during the event. Each season sees new methods tried, new technology tested and new honey holes discovered. I learnt a lot in the 2018 event from watching some very impressive crews. In the past the majority of boats spend most of their time trolling lures through the most productive…

The Capricornia Cays National Park (CCNP) is one way that the DIY camper / fisherman can pull of a breathtaking GBR island holiday that is both affordable and doable. For the sports fisherman there is no shortage of options of tropical reef fish and pelagic species. A holiday out on one of the camping islands will without doubt, blow you away … in more ways than one! “Expect to tangle with red-throat and grassy sweetlip and coral trout during the daylight and add red emperor in deeper water at night.” WHAT AND WHERE Just so you know, a coral cay is a small, low-elevation, sandy island on the surface of a coral reef that forms when ocean currents, laden with sediment, slow against old reef or emerging pieces of rock,…

LOWRANCE'S FishHunter Pro is a portable and castable fishfinder. The unit itself is a round all-in-one transducer ball, about the size of a grapefruit. The idea is you cast or dangle the unit over the side of your canoe or boat - via a lanyard - and transmit images back to your smartphone. There's a Lowrance app, which turns your phone into a portable fishfinder and offers many of the same features as a conventional sounder. The app is available for both iPhone and Android platforms. Why would you need one of these? The FishHunter Pro is a really clever idea; I've found it useful in a canoe where attaching a conventional trasnducer isn't possible. It's also a great idea for kayaks or tinnies. Not everyone wants to drill holes…

WA commercial operators are continuing to talk up the edible qualities of Australian salmon to rebuild the salmon beach haul fishing industry. It has been in decline for 30-odd years since the closure of the state’s last canneries but the old beach haulers still want to get out there and harvest the fish, which are generally released by rec fishers. Recently they enlisted a number of celebrity chefs to discuss preparation and cooking methods to maximise salmon’s appeal but the catch is still mainly used for rock lobster bait, a terrible waste of a prime sport fish. Now Perth-based Mendolia Seafoods is looking to revive its old sardine-based canning business which went under in the 1990’s when the mystery herpes virus wrecked sardine stocks. The company is re-opening a new…

NSW DPI’s Game Fish Tagging Program got a call from a Queensland seafood wholesaler who reported a very exciting recapture. One of its longline boats, FV Calibre, had caught a tagged swordfish while fishing the Fraser Seamount off the southern Queensland coast. The fish had been released more than year earlier by NSW-based swordfish tagging champion, and Fisho writer, Chris Cleaver, who tagged the swordy while deep-dropping the productive fishing grounds off Mallacoota, Victoria. Chris tagged and released the estimated 18kg fish on 13 May 2017 whilst fishing at 500m using a strip bait. The broadbill was recaptured earlier this month by FV Calibre, which was fishing the wide grounds off Fraser Island, and was processed at a weight of 26.7kg with an estimated whole weight of 36kg. The fish…

I love a good road trip, especially when there’s an exciting new fishing location to explore at the other end. Hurtling down the Monaro Highway towards Far East Gippsland, listening to Dire Straits and Fleetwood Mac, we were full of optimism about the fishing that awaited us. Most people who’ve fished this pristine pocket of Victoria are familiar with locations like Mallacoota, Bemm River and Marlo. Few, though, probably know much about the small waterway we were heading to. Tamboon Inlet is at the mouth of the Cann River, about an hour south of Mallacoota. Surrounded by dense forest, it’s a relatively isolated estuary that receives a lot less fishing pressure than the more popular systems to the immediate north and south. There’s no town at Tamboon—just a campground and…

TO my way of thinking lure fishing for our wonderful Murray cod has some similarities to batting in cricket. Many of our most famous test batsmen such as the Waughs and Michael Slater were notorious for getting out in '90s. These are really fantastic efforts, but ultimately disasters that left them agonisingly short of that much sought after ton, the mark by which all test batsmen are ultimately judged. I too now seemed to have been blighted with the curse of the 90s, landing three beautiful Murray cod up to an excruciatingly close 99cm on a recent trip to the New England granite belt region with my good mate Dan Guilfoyle. I caught my first Murray cod trolling the dam wall at Lake Glenbawn way back in 1988, but have…

HAVE we lost our sportfishing origins? I know a lot of anglers who believe they’re sportfishos but I also fish with a lot who don’t really think or care about it. I’m old enough to have been involved not long after sportfishing in Australia came into vogue. I’m too young to remember when the Australian National Sportfishing Association started in North Queensland in 1967 with guys including Vic McCristal, Jack Erskine, Eric Moller, George Bryden, Ed Pratt and John Mondora. That movement spread Australia wide over the following decade and now 200 ANSA clubs exist cover the country. The Australian Angler magazine put together by Ron Calcutt was the sportfishermen’s Bible back then and went on to become Fishing World. I was fortunate enough to meet Ron in the late…

LAST November, Tohatsu’s Australian distributor Lakeside Marine took delivery of a new model outboard it says is the lightest of its type, from any manufacturer. The new MFS20E/15E/9.9E is being marketed by its Japanese manufacturer as a perfect four-stroke alternative to light old technology two-stroke outboards, which are set to be phased out in 2019 due to tight emission regulations that come in to force in Australia. Tohatsu has for many years produced carburettor two-stroke models in this low power range that have earnt a solid reputation for reliability and durability. The 18hp derivation, currently the M18E2, has been a very popular choice with owners of small to mid-size tinnies. The lightweight two-cylinder 18 has long been favoured for its holeshot performance and grunt for its low capacity. Notably, the…