Fishing the surf with penfishingrods.com

I'm taking a self imposed challenge of catching something decent from a surf beach using a Pen Rod Goliath from penfishingrods.com, unfortunately I will need to try again as this time I caught only undersized fish:

King fish & Aussie Salmons from Manly

I recently planned several early morning sessions with a fishing buddy I met in Balmoral. We are trying to catch some kinggies off the rocks. So for me it's wake up time at around 3.30am and head down to one of the wharfs in Mosman. 4 am ish, yakkas are getting caught on prawn or minced beef. I use either a hand line or a pen fishing rod.


Usually 4 yakkas are enough for me as I have to leave the spot at 7am to go back home and get ready for work. My mate stays till 10.

5am we're in North, South Curl Curl or Manly.

Yakkas on a float and bottom rig and there we go.

After few weeks we were getting donuts or the usual bream and trevally, but finally last week, an hour after I left, my mate caught a 1.10m @9.4kg King fish, when I caught a small Aussie Salmon before leaving.

He was definitely happy of his catch :-D

It was caught on a squid strip, was whole but a small fish ate the head before...

Here is his setup:

8000 shimano baitrunner oc reel

10-15kg 12ft timber wolf rod

30lb braid 

50lb leader

7/0 double snell rig

It took 10 mins of good fight.

Here's my salmon:

Went back today, caught another Sambo, lost another one on a 2nd line (double hook up) due to a bad knot on the snap :-( and a flathead who tried to swallow a yellowtail on a bottom rig.

My setup is:

Alvey 13ft 650 GTS rod

Alvey 650 A1 rod

15 lb main mono

30 lb fluoro leade

Size 6/0 suicide hook

11ft Saratoga Mawler rod

Shimano Aerlex 8000 XSA

10lb braid

30lb fluoro leader

Same hook

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.