Homemade berley scoop

Something I rarely do but I should do more regularly is to use burley/berley. Most of the time the water I'm fishing is very wide, so the chance of a good fish finding my bait is little unless I'm lucky to be in a spot where fish are hanging around. The purpose of a burley is to attract the fish in the neighbourhood but not to feed them.

The subject of this post is not the burley itself, but a DIY berley scoop. I'm planning to explore the world of Iso fishing and burley is one important aspect of it. As you are fishing from the rock, the burley need to thrown accurately and sometimes at a distance, that is why Iso fishermen use a berley scoop with a long handle.

A good burley scoop costs around $30 - $40, the cheapest I've seen is around $19. Alright... fishing is an expensive hobby hey!

I've spent enough and need to save to buy an Iso landing net (it's a lightweight, telescopic 5 to 6 meter long landing net), because an Iso rod wouldn't be able to lift a big fish off the water and from the rocks you have no other easy way to land your fish. So this is another opportunity for a DIY project :-)

So I need a scoop and make it long enough. So I went to Coles and see what I could find and saw this:

OK, it's more a spoon than a scoop but it should do the work. To add length to the handle, I've used a piece of wooden stick I've found in the corner of the garage and used a length of soft rope to attach it to the scoop handle using the same knot as you would use to make a float stopper knot which is similar to a Uni knot. I left a length of rope at the end of the handle to be use as a leash to attach the scoop to the bucket, it's probably be a bit short so I might need to extend it a bit in the future.

The spoon is not very deep as opposed to a scoop, but let see how this homemade burley scoop works. Another option is to use an old ice-cream scoop instead.

Total cost: $3

Fishing kayak rigging part #3 - Car roof rack and first test

It's been a week I've bought this new kayak and today will be the first day I'm taking it out on the water. But before I can go I need a way to transport it. although it can fit inside my Honda Odyssey 2004 the problem is I can then only take my son on the childseat and my wife would have no space to sit, but most importantly, the kayak is so wide that it will hide my left side view making it a dangerous drive.

My car already has roof rails but no cross bars, seeing their price brand new, I decided to make my own. So I went to Bunnings again, and bought four U bolts and two Cypress pickets, they are 65cm wide and 1.20m long and thick enough to carry the kayak. Back home I started to measure where I should drill the holes for the bolts. All nearly perfect on the first attempt, the holes were just a tad too small so I had to tweak them a bit.

Here is the kayak before going to water:

I couldn't film myself yet as I haven't yet created my camera pole and then my wife was busy running after the little one so that will be for the next time.

Here is a footage of the missus trying giving the kayak its launch inauguration:

After the session, a little shower is required to remove all dirt. I bought a 2m garden hose with a universal tap adapter, very handy.

Next step, the camera pole. I used to do a lot of photography and have this monopod that can be extended. I will be putting my Nikon P7100 inside its underwater case and that will be my action cam hehe. I will check where to mount it, the easiest would be the rod holder that I have attached to the milk crate. We'll see.

Fishing kayak rigging part #1 - Rod extenders and anchor pulley

Before going out trying my new fishing kayak, I need to get some more items and rig it up with some accessories. So today, after work, I headed to Bunnings to buy some PVC tubes and other stuffs. Man, everything is so expensive in Australia! Hic! Oh well, I won't save too much but that's not bad.

I bought some 25mm and 32mm PVC tubes with some tees and caps, trolley wells, axels, bolts, 3mm ropes, snap hooks and 20mm pulley.

For this first update I wanted to build a kayak trolley that would fit inside the scupper holes, an anchor pulley system and couple of extensions for the fitted rod holders.

To my surprise the 25mm tubes were not 25mm! The sticker and painted text is saying 25mm but when I measured the inner diameter it was 30mm? what the ... ? Oh well, will take them back and exchange for 20mm ones then.

So I ended up making the anchor pulley:

The loop at the bottom will be replaced by a metal ring when I'll find one.

A snap hook at the front and back allow me to attach the pulleys to the carrier cords that comes with the kayak.

I now need a metal ring and an anchor.

And the rod holder extensions. I just want the rod to be a bit higher so they won't get too much splashed with water.

The 32mm (I measured 38mm on these..., don't understand the difference between advertised diameter and actual one) PVC tubes slides in perfectly, I added a 45 degrees elbow so the rods would stick out at an angle. Each of the tube sections are about 25cm long.

Fishing kayak rigging part #2 - PVC trolley

So 25mm PVC tube is not really 25mm in internal diameter for god knows what reason...

I went back to Bunnings for an exchange and took the 20mm instead, which are about 23mm...

After an hour of calculating the dimensions, sawing the tubes with multiple adjustments, I finally built my kayak trolley in about an hour.

Here is the result:

I just need to apply some PVC cement to finalize it all. I will also probably buy some pool noodles and wrap it around the horizontal top tube to protect the kayak's hull.

All these DIY creations are not my designs, I found some tutorial on the internet and adapted them to my needs.