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

Iso Tsuri (磯釣り) a rock fishing style from Asia

It's now nearly a year and a half since I've started fishing in Australia and less than a year doing occasional sessions from the rocks. Back when I was still living in Artarmon, my favorite locations were North/South Curl Curl and Manly. I did tried to catch some school Kingfish without success but regularly brought home some nice Tailor, Salmon or Bream. But my main fishing was from one of the Northern Beaches so my rock fishing gears were actually beach gears which does the work as they are 11ft and 13ft rods with either a spinning or 650 Alvey reel.

But recently, my mate had me tried his Iso outfit and I caught a just legal Black Drummer off Avoca ledges. It was quite an experience. I then tried again with my own gears but the Alvey outfit was way too heavy and bulky for float fishing and my spinning outfit was better but a tad short when I needed to stay away from the ledge to avoid the swell. And then holding it for long period is a strain on the arm, as the 8000 reel's weight is not negligible.

After two weeks of looking around for more info about Iso fishing (there is not that much english info out there), I decided to go to Shin Shin Tackle shop in Eastwood (owned by one of the admins of Iso Fishing Life Style website & OZIsofishing forum) where I met Gabriel a well known figure in Iso fishing in Australia. Thanks to his kind help, I've decided to go with a mid range outfit that is not too heavy as I will be targeting Breams & Blackfish but not too light either as I'm also interested in Drummers and occasional pelagics. Although my experience with the pen fishing rods would help me handle decent size fish on light gears, I didn't want to worry too much at the beginning as Iso style is a lot different, as Gabriel said it's like speaking another language. Maybe in the future I will save to get myself a lighter rod.

So here is my shopping for the day: a Yong Sun 2-53 (size #2, 5.3m in length when extended) and various Iso accessories (floats, swivels, stoppers).

So what is Iso fishing? "Iso tsuri" means rock fishing in Japanese. It's the main style of rock fishing back in Asia. From what I understood, in Asia, it's much more difficult to catch a fish. Maybe because it's over populated and everyone try to catch fish and a lot of people even keep undersize fish. So fish are shy. So in order to up their chance to hook up, asian fishermen came up with this style rock fishing that rely on finesse and presentation. Everything is calculated with detail. They also have specialised tackle: floats, ultra long landing nets etc...

I'm a complete newbie to the subject so the best I can do here is give you some links. But here are the basics:

• The fishing rod is long, usually 4.3m or 5.3m, some of them can even be zoomed from 4.3m to 5.4m. This length is to provide ability to steer and control the fish off the ledge but also allows you to stay away from the edge when needed, for safety.
• The fishing rod is light, I think my 5.3m rod is around 242 gr, this allows you to fish long hours without getting wrist strain. The more expensive the lighter the reel
• The fishing rod is balanced, with this length there need to be a good balance, the weight is usually at the back of the rod so that if feels even lighter. The more expensive the better balanced the rod.
• Use of smaller tackle: smaller hooks, smaller floats, smaller swivel, smaller line, splitshots. This is important as you want to hide them from the fish's view. Using fluorocarbon leader is also a must. You want to encourage the fish into taking your bait, right?
• Use of burley to attract targeted fish in the vicinity.

For more info, hit these links:

http://isofishinglifestyle.com.au/learn-iso-fishing.html

http://www.fishingworld.com.au/news/iso-the-new-age-of-rock-fishing

http://www.fishing.net.nz/how-to/iso-tsuri-techniques-part-1

http://www.fishing.net.nz/how-to/iso-tsuri-techniques-part-2

http://www.british-rockfishing-association.net/rockfishonline/ISO

Watch these big Silver Drummer caught on Iso gear:

As for the gears, I highly recommend you head to http://isofishinglifestyle.com.au/ and if you can, pop to their store in Campsie or Eastwood. And check out their Iso FishingTV videos on Youtube.

First month in Central Coast

After months of house hunting in the the northern areas of Sydney, my wife and I decided to move to Wyoming near Gosford on the Central Coast as the houses are bigger and cheaper and the life style is just great for rising a child. And on top of that, there are a lot of popular fishing areas :-D

I haven't been personally very lucky for this first month but with some friends we did manage to bring back some nice catches.

On my first session, I went at the discovery of Brisbane Water and fished near MV Lady Kendall II and got a nice bream caught on frozen beach worms.

My family did enjoy walking along Brisbane Water, it's quite a change from Artarmon, so great being able to be near the water.

Some friends then came up and visit us staying the weekend at our place. We then been told by a local fisherman that the railway bridge is an awesome place where people have caught some nice jewies. So we went there at night trying to catch some, but unfortunately we didn't have squids, just frozen pillies, instead of jewfish we caught a lot of breams one of which was over 1 kg. We were using frozen pilchards as bait and the big bream was caught with a whole pilchard on a gang of size 3 hooks!

I now live in Wyoming and Narara Creek is less than 10 minutes drive from home, my first attempt there got me a big eel and four nice breams on my pen fishing rod. I really like this little rod, even if it feels a bit like a toy, which it's probably is if you compare the built quality to normal size rods, it is however a very capable fishing rod that brings you much more fun than regular outfits. It took me 10 minutes to land this eel, half the time to fight it back to the creek's edge and another half to make it enter and stay in the landing net. The pen rod was bending and screaming and at the end of the Berkley Nanofil 4lb line, I could feel every single movement of the beast that tried to swim away on my far left.

One of my rock fishing buddy came along and we headed one morning to Avoca. Alarm clock set to 4am! There we went, I was surprised how large the rock platform was and the view of Avoca beach was just amazing. We stayed until 11:30am and near the end my mate caught one Bonito and two Mack Tuna. I managed to catch a black drummer on his Iso Tsuri fishing rod.

I'm now hooked to Iso fishing! More about this subject very soon.

So overall, living in the Central Coast is really a big change, in a good way. We live near fishable waters, the life peaceful, nice neighbourhood, the house is massive and costs less than a one bedroom unit down in Sydney. The drawback, there is always drawbacks, is the commute time, I still working in Artarmon, so my commute is mainly biking from home to Narara station, then take a one hour train to Artarmon and bike to the office, it usually takes around 1:20 each way. Driving would take a bit over an hour on a good day. But for the moment it is worth the effort.