Alvey vs baitcaster

I've seen few fishermen using a baitcaster for pier fishing and just one for surf fishing. As I understand there are benefits in using a baitcaster such as casting distance and accuracy. But the cons is the learning curve.

I also met couple of people using an Alvey outfit and my cousin keeps bashing around with the pros of using Alveys. He then bought some Alvey gears from an old lady whose husband was a fishermen and gave me an old 630 A1 reel. 

I managed to have my hands on a old Shakespeare Sigma Series baitcaster reel and bought a cheap rod on eBay for testing it. After a whole session practicing it, I think baitcasters are not made for me, it feels ackward with the weight on top of the rod and too troublesome to learn the cast. I also fish more often late nights or early morning before sunrise so it makes it even harder to learn.

So my next target is the Alvey. I met a friend on Fish Raider / Facebook who is an Alvey user so I could borrow his outfit for testing and I immediately felt its potential. A bit weird at the beginning but much better than a baitcaster for my type of use.

So there I went on my favorite online store and got myself an Alvey ROD650GTS. It's a 13.4 ft telescopic rod which seems very sturdy. 13.4 ft is to my opinion the high extreme for me, but their next option down is a tad too short for my liking.

So there we go:

I'll be testing it soon in real life conditions, lets hope the fish are up for some good fighting.

Any tip is welcome!

Some of the reasons why I like fishing

What is so fun about fishing? Some people find it boring, having never caught any fish. It's true you do need to be patient when fishing as fish are not always there. Very good fishermen know how to read the elements and hit the road to their fishing spot only when it's the beast time but most of us don't have that skill. But we still enjoy our hobby very much.

What thrills me is multiple things. There is the adrenaline when a big fish takes your line and give you a hell of a fight.

But when there is no hook up at all, I really enjoy being on the beach especially at sunrise when it is less crowded or at night during a bright moon lit night. Then there is also the family out day having fun with the kid and wife and at the same time waiting for the reel to go wiiiizzzzzz.

When fishing at night, I often take a folding beach chair to sit and sip some nice drink and watch the stars or meteorites. When the moon is bright, the whole beach and sea is so beautiful to look at.

Those who never saw the sun rise have missed something:

So even when the fish are hidding, I still like to go out for few casts. What about you?

Cheap ruler tape

If, like most anglers, you are proud of your catches and like to share them with others, you will sooner or later want to also share their size.

Here are couple of product I Iike:

The Alvey rulers (less than $20)

The Pelagic Vinyl Measuring Mat (around $25)

I have a fish lip gripper that has a scale and tape ruler built-in but the problem with those tape rulers is they get rusty easily. Those products above are made of plastic or vinyl so will live longer. But they have a price!

An cheap alternative is to look at the products from Hong Kong or China. Even though a lot of their cheap stuffs are crap you can find relatively decent items or at least so cheap that you don't mind buying more than once.

What I like with chinese products is they have nice design, if only they can spend as much time on quality as on design I think they can kill the market.

Anyway, here is what you can get cheap for measuring your small to big fish:

These are soft tape rulers but hey you don't need fancy stuffs to measure a fish , do you? These are made of plastic so rust free and they cost $1 including shipping... And you can measure a fish up to 1.5m, should be enough for most weekend anglers.

Winter highlights

I started fishing last summer, at the beginning I didn't have much luck except with catching bait fish... As I moved home from Cabramatta West to Artarmon, I also moved on from fishing the Georges River to fishing the sea. My first spots were Balmoral Jetty and Manly Wharf:

Summer ended with my first big Tailor:

So after a quite fun summer fishing, I experienced a quieter but still fun winter sessions. There have been a lot of going home empty handed but being out there with nature was enjoyable.

Here are my winter sessions highlights, all caught in Dee Why, Narrabeen or Mona Vale.

Mr Cat Shark goes back to the sea:

My first Australian Salmons

A nice Trevally:

My first Jewfish:

Another Aussie Salmon:

A Shovelnose Ray (released):

My biggest Tailor:

My biggest Aussie Salmon:

Berkley GULP Minnow 3"

My favorite softplastic would be the Gulp Minnow 3" in Nuclear Chicken.

I've caught many Flatheads, Flounders Leather Jacket and Trevally with them. Even big Yellowtails would sometimes grab them.

 

 

Yellow Tails

My favorite bait for surf fishing big fish is pilchards. I usually buy them frozen and would keep them for several sessions. Old left over will become stink bait for beach worming.

The problem is they can be expensive in the long run especially in times like these last three weeks when fish seem to be gone on holidays.

The second great bait is yellowtails or yakkas. They are great as live bait but still very good frozen. When too big they can be used filetted on a gang hook. And best of all, you can catch them for free.

Yellowtails are easy to catch, but it can be frustrating if you don't have the proper hook and bait. You can fish right next to another fisherman catching loads of them and catch none.

So what's the secret?

The rod:

Any short rod will do. I love catching yellowtails on my microlight fishing rod the Pen Rod Goliath from penfishingrods.com, they add fun to yakkas catching. Those miniature rods are so sensitive that makes yakkas feel like breams fighting! There are a lot of fishermen catching yakkas on handlines with a lot of success.

The rig(s):

I would go light fluoro 4lb or even 2lb line. A small hook, size 10 is about right, long shank is ideal. A medium to small split shot sinker or if you don't have any and hand you can use a small swivel instead. Some people would even fish yakkas without sinker but I prefer using a small one as it is easier to cast. Sinkerless rigs are more suitable when fishing with a hand line.

Alternatively, you can add a small float above the split shot sinker. With the float you will be able to target yakkas if they hang around a bit further away.

A third rig would be a Sabiki rig. They are dead cheap and very effective.

The bait:

Baits for yellowtails are in order of preference: small cubes of pilchards, minced beef, bread.

Minced beef can be hard to hook and would fall off as it touches the water, but with experience you will manage to roll the minced beef in small ball, then wrapp it around the hook and massage it till it sticks well to it. As the yakkas eat the bait it will shake it off which will act as burley and make other yakkas go wild. You will need to rebait often. But you should hook up often too.

My preference goes to pilchard. With one pilchard I should be able to catch 20 to 30 yellowtails.

For a Sabiki rig, usually you will not need any bait at all. The sabiki hook have small flies on them which will attract the yakkas as you move the rig up and down the water column. But there are days when yakkas are a bit slow, so tipping the Sabiki hooks with a bit of bait will help kicking off.

The location:

My favorite location is Balmoral Jetty at night. Yakkas are there by hundreds.

Alternatively, instead of catching yellowtails you can catch herrings with the same technique. My spot for them used to be Floyd Bay in Lansvale, but since I moved to Artarmon, it is now too far for me.

In Balmoral Jetty, they seem to like days when there is no wind and the water is calm. Fish during a rising or lowering tide about one hour away from high tide.

Yellowtails like to hang around wharves and jetties. So just pick one not too far from your place.

Here is a little video:

Beach worms

In fishing, after having bought my main gears, what costs me the most is buying lure ans baits. When you are a beginner it is easy to buy what you don't need or loose lures to snags so you end up going for another trip to the store. The bait I'm buying most are pilchards. They are just all rounder baits used whole or filletted or in strippes / cubes. I also sometimes get some worms.

Realizing lately how much they cost me I'm looking for other ways to get baits.

With the weather getting warmer, collecting sand worms / beach worms is on of the free way to get quality bait.

I'm not writing a post on how to catch them, there are enough blogs and video out there, Google will help you.

I read a lot of fishos saying Gulp Sandworms are awesome, but I must be doing something wrong cuz never caught anything with them... But anyway live worms are just leathal to species like breams or whitings. You can even get the big jewfish with worms.

I will never buy frozen worms again, having tried them they don't seem to work for me.

If you're on budget, these are baits you can get for free if you put the effort on catching them.

Tomorrow the low tide is at 10am so I'll be beach worming in Dee Why at 8-9am. I'll be teaching the technique to some mates.

Steamed Whiting with vegetables and glass noodle

I've been asked to add more posts and photos about cooked fish, so there we go, this is my first post in a series about the way we eat fish in my home.
Most of these meals would have been prepared by my lovely little wife, I will try to add my own stuffs into the series, but I'm too much of a lazy bastard at home so be patient :-D
So for this first post, lets start with a simple recipe. We don't have a name for it so lets call it the "Steamed Whiting with Vegetables and Rice Noodles", that sounds like those dishes in a chinese restaurant, doesn't it?

First, scale and clean your freshly caught whiting. As this is a family meal and the fish will be covered with other items, presentation is not primary so we'll cut the tails and fins off, it will be easier to handle while eating.

In a container, pour some hot water and put in some glass noodle and leave it to expand for about 30 minutes.

In another container, prepare some fish sauce with a bit of sugar and stir to dissolve, we usually don't have exact measurement so taste your sauce before carrying on, you can add a bit of water to tame the saltiness of the fish sauce a bit.

Then find yourself a container that can go in the microwave oven, we will be using a glass one. Put some onion slices and spring onion slices and add your whiting on top. Pour over the sauce you have prepared earlier. Cover with a mix of slices of tomato, slices of onion, slices of spring onion, slices of wood ears mushroom. Sprinkle some black pepper on top. You should start to smell a nice perfume now. Cover the whole thing with the glass noodle.

Air tight cover the whole container with cling film and cook in a microwave at max temperature for 5 minutes to max 7 minutes depending on the size of the whiting. Cooked too long and it won't be tender anymore.

Alternatively, if you have a proper steam cooker then use it.

If you try this recipe then please give us some feedbacks/photos, if you encountered difficulties or have questions, hit the comments and we'll try to help.