Gone Fishing in Oz: My fishing gears

My little family has moved to Australia from the UK just a bit over a year ago as my Skilled VISA application has been approved after 2 years of preparation and 3 years of waiting... On approval we made the move 6 months later and landed in Casula at a friend's place without a job. With a 1 year old kid, you have to be careful with the expenses. I started to have some contracting jobs and was remotely working part-time for my previous employer (FT.com)

I got back into fishing after my cousin Tony took me for a fishing trip to the Saphire Coast (Merimbula, Tathra etc...). As a Christmas gift, he offered me a nice 6'6 Berkley fishing combo. I remember the first fish I caught were Yellowtail, Barracuda. We do eat the Yakkas they are good deep fried.

For a while, I used to fish the Georges River especially Chipping Norton, not knowing how unhealthy fish can be in the lake :-O. In one of my sessions there I met an old man who taugh me how to catch Herrings with a Sabiki rig. Seeing that I was a keen fisho he gave me some of his old gears: a bait net, 9 ft two rods, loads of sinkers and a torch. That was a real kick off for night fishing too. Herrings are also nice deep fried or filletted in Vietnamese style salad.

We then moved from Casula to Cabramatta West where we met Tina our landlady. A short while after, we moved again to Artarmon because I have found a stable job at SBS.

Balmoral Jetty was the closest fishing spot. At the time I also bought a Pen Rod Goliath from penfishingrods.com they are what we can call microlight fishing gears. You have to know how to handle a rod and play with the drag cuz even a yakkas will feel like a bream! Lot of fun really.

After we moved in, Tina, her partner Ron and her brother Chung came to visit us and went fishing at Balmoral and Cronulla. That was when Chung taught me how to catch beach worms to land some lovely Whitings. That was also when I switch from pier fishing to surf fishing!

Some people think that everyone living in North Sydney area are rich. It is true that virtually everything is expensive around here, but people living here do so because they work in the area and also for the life style that North Sydney offers. Rent in Artarmon is quite high and for a single income family it can be just at the limit of being tight. A lot of people we know would have stayed in the West and commute eveyday to workin the City, but I wasn't ready to do 2 hours a trip to/from work per day and my wife had enough of the boring life there. We'd rather tighten our expenses and have a better life style. Now I live 20 mins walk from work, 5 mins drive. That's a lot of hours saved per day to stay with the kid and missus or going fishing! Some weeks I would wake up everyday at 4.15am and head to Dee Why for a sunrise fishing until 7am when I head back home for a family breakfast and jump in the car for work. Some other weeks I would go at night or just take a break. Isn't that a dream life?!

So, being careful with our budget, I just can't justify buying $300 reels, $200 rods, not even half the price. But I needed to upgrade my gears for the surf, so eBay was my destination. In May, I ended up with a Saratoga Mawler Spin 11 ft rod + reel combo for less than $100. All felt good but the reel only lasted few sessions, after falling several times in water and sand, it just gave up on me. I reckon with more care and maintenance it would have lasted longer. But till today I'm still using the rod and it has performed way over my expectation. I replaced the dead Saratoga reel with Shimano entry level surf reel the Aerlex XSA 8000 for $99 from Otto's Tackle World in Drummoyne, these guys are great.

After a fishing session with Tina's family down south near Nowra, my gears got topped up with a 12 ft Shakespeare rod that Chung gave me and two Daiwa Regal 4000 BRi I bought from him for $100.

That is what I now use for all my fishing trips. For big surf fish I would use the Saratoga + Aerlex and Shakespeare + Regal. For whitings I would use the lighter Berkley combo or even the Pen Rod Goliath as most of the times whitings are hanging around just few meters from the shore.

Total expenses (on main equipments):

Berkley combo: $0

Saratoga + Shimano Aerlex: $193

Shakespeare + Regal: $50

Backup Regal: $50

Pen rod: $70

Total: $363

That would be approximately the price of a Shimano Stradic Ci4! And I'd say that the combo Saratoga + Shimano Aerlex 8000 would have been enough and would land very decent fish.

Here are some more photos.

The Berkley combo. The shark in the picture was caught with the Saratoga actually.