Tandem kayak fishing from Davistown/South Kincumber to Empire Bay

Yesterday after work  I picked up my mate Dom at Artarmon and he stayed with us in Wyoming for an early morning kayak fishing.

For this first tandem kayak fishin trip we decided to head down to Davistown on the south side of Kincumber and paddle around to Empire Bay.

I was pretty quiet but we managed to catch a long-tom, 5 flatheads with one keeper of 42cm on soft-plastic on a pen fishing rod, a 27cm bream trolling a crank bait and two nice squids.

It also was the first trip out with my Garmin Echo 201DV fishfinder on a DIY mount I made for the yak.

Great day out!

Brassy Trevally (Carangue Mouchetee) from New Caledonia

I'm currently in New Caledonia visiting my family in Noumea.

At the same time, it's a great opportunity to do some fishing as NC is very good for this sport. I took with me a YongSung Power Carbon Alpha 3.9m cargo iso rod.

First day catching 11 garfish with my mate Thai who came with us. This spot is a little jetty at 10 minutes walk from my parent's place.

We also went camping on a remote island not far from my place. What an experience. Lots of mosquitoes but it was so good to be with friends and family out there in the nature. We caught a bream and several fingermarks. The next early morning, we even spotted a shark not far from the shore.

The day Thai's left NC flying back to Sydney, I hooked up with a big fish on a metal slice but the 8lb line was too weak and my drag was too tight, so the line broke. On the second day I hooked up with another one but the fish spat put the soft plastic Kamikaze shad.

On the third attempt, it was a quiet start, it was 3 hours before low tide and the sky was well covered but not raining. I had bought a popper and more metal slice but it was so quiet that I decided to target smaller fish using a Gulp 3" prawn. I lost all my jigheads to the snags so ended up using a regular hook with two splitshots above it. No seagulls or jumping baitfish today, I was starting to doubt I would get any results today. But after 2 hours of persistance, something took my lure. I thought it would be a local grouper but it wasn't heading back to the rocks, instead it suddenly pull my line out to the depth. I could not stop it from going deeper and deeper. The fish just peeled my line from my Okuma Lebra (lever brake reel) 2500 spool which I've upgraded with some 15lb braid line as I didn't want to loose another fish.

After 7 minutes of fight, I managed to bring the fish to the surface, it was a Brassy Trevally of a very good size. Not wanting to take any risk of loosing it, I used my DIY landing net (potatoes net bag) I safely landed the fish.

This was the fishing spot (Port Moselle), I was standing at the corner of the rocky edge on the right.

The fish measured 66cm, but as it was cut at the throat, I think it's more or less 65cm.

I hope I will get the opportunity to get more fish like this before my return.

Hope you guys had a lovely Christmas, best wish for the last days of 2014!

Update:

The brassy trevally could actually be a young bluefin trevally

Nice Drummer in Terrigal

My alarm was set at 5am, but I woke up in panic and it was 6.15am! I set the wrong alarm, weekdays instead of weekend one...

Got to Terrigal at around 7.30. I realised I forgot my bucket and burley box. That's a great start...

I soaked some bread and hand throw them. But I was too lazy today and water plus cold weather is not great. It was also raining but i was hoping it was good for drummers. After an hour walking around I finally got to the end of the first platform, my favourite location. An Iso fisherman was seen on the opposite platform he then went away half an hour later. Two other fishos came and started to burley around with bread, sweet! Free burley for me hahaha. I went around the hole and started to cast around. I was running out of time, so best for me is to chase the fish. After 10 mins I got a spat out, casted again and yoohoo!!! The rod bent as I've never seen! It's a difficult ledge because it's a sort of big amphitheatre with bit staircases and The good spot usually 20 meters away and snagging easily happens. But fortunately for me this time I managed to steer the fish away and brought it back to me. It definitely was a drummer by the feeling on the rod. After maybe 5 minutes I got the beast at my feet and used the net for the first time to land my catch.

A 40cm drummer, I estimated as the Ikiboard was too short to exactly measure it. I left the fish in a pool and went for another quiet 30 minutes before killing the fish using the Ikigun.

I did take some video footage but it was a failure, I switched off the camera in the middle to save batteries and forgot to turn it back on before the catch. I recorded the Iki Jime process but my arm was hiding the action... So next time.

Here are the pics:

Huy

Homemade telescopic burley scoop

I've been using a pen fishing rod for quite a while and just love it. Now that I discovered Iso fishing, I think of the pen rod as a mini Iso rod. It is similar in the sense that it is all about finesse and light tackle.

I have few spare parts provided by penfishingrods.com in case I brake something which mostly happens by human mistake (stepping on the rod...) and very rarely while fighting the fish.

For my Iso fishing I used a small cooler bag from Coles, it has a hard inside which makes it perfect for a portable burley box that I can put over my shoulder and be very mobile and have my hands free for the rod.

Until now I used a kitchen scoop to throw the burley, having lost my DIY burley scoop during a night session.

I didn't build another burley scoop because I wanted it to be able to be stored in the burley box so I can close the lid and not having an extra accessory.

The problem with the kitchen scoop is it is not great for throwing the burley further than 4 or 5 meters away or the burley will spread around.

So I bought a burley scoop head piece and used pen rod spare parts to build a telescopic scoop that would fit in the box but would also extend for distance casting.

Great end of the week with breams and drummers

I'm on annual leave since Wednesday as I have family members coming to visit us in Wyoming. Yesterday morning I went to catch some fish for our diner tonight. So I went to  to Half Tide Rocks, nearly 40 minutes drive from home! I was hoping it will be worth the effort.

After a walk to the point, I went and choose my fishing spot and started the burley ritual and did few cast right in front of me. At first there were small bites and few misses. But then big breams were coming for the burley! It was really cold, 8 degrees when I arrived. I made it 2 hours and kept 3 breams for diner.

I have recorded about 1h20 of the session but used iMovie to make some time shifts effect to fast forward boring parts.

Here is the intro video:

And this is the full version:

The keepers:

Then I went back home and took my wife and boy for a lunch and then drove the missus back home while father and son went for a ride to three different playgrounds. On the way to the third playground Thien-San, my boy, felt asleep so I drove to Narara Creek where I can park the car just one meter away from the water so I can fish and keep an eye on him.I started burleying in the middle of the creek but then nothing, not a single bite. So I decided to burley closer right in front of the little bush and bang bang bang! 4 more breams to end this awesome day, here are the two legal ones but I released them anyway:

This afternoon, I took the cousins to Terrigal beach, as the kids were playing with my wife on the beach, my cousin, his wife and I went on the tiny rock platform on the right hand side. I didn't think well of the location, but it seemed OK to the view of the weed beds and rocky bottom but we didn't want to go too far away from the kids anyway so we stayed around.

Luckily after the burley took effect, breams and Blackfish were caught one after the other until it was time to go back home as the little one was hungry.

Once back home, I posted a report on OzIsoFishing forum and the more experienced members told me the two fish I thought to be Ludericks were actually Drummers! My first pigs on my Iso setup!

What a wonderful week really! I'm not sure if it's because of the Iso fishing technique, or because Central Coast is just the fishing heaven as most are saying or maybe a bit of both, but this week has been really fun and I learned a lot about this awesome fishing technique.

I gave my wife the rod so she can have some fun fighting a large bream, but unfortunately he spat out the hook right at her feet.

Here are some more pictures of this afternoon taken by my auntie:

And of course, we had a great diner. I cleaned up the fish, my wife cooked them and my auntie did the salad, what a yummy diner: