Technology & Estuary Fishing

[PinHead]

Way back in 1968 when I started fishing, everything was a lot more cut and dried than it is now. The rods were cane with the new fangled fiberglass rods coming onto the market. There were no ratings for the rods as there are now, one selected a rod by the “feel” of the rod. Alveys were the reels of choice with a few early egg beater designs around.

We used to wallow in the mud along the banks of Doboy Creek digging blood worms or else digging worms at the mouth of Wynnum Creek. Yabbies were pumped at various locations with one of the most accessible place being Pt. Halloran. For flathead fishing, mullet fillets were cut into shapes to resemble small fish. Chook gut and mullet gut were another bait of choice for bream fishing.

Boats were usually only small dinghies with small 2 stroke outboards.

Nowadays the technology involved has made the recreational estuary fishing market a gold mine for suppliers.

Rods – so many brands with that many ratings that you need to write an encyclopedia of makes and models.
Reels – ditto on the rods. So many brands and models with varying features such as numbers of bearings and all with the price tag according to these.
Baits – soft plastics and lures have taken off in a big way and also made the manufacturers a fortune.
Boats – fiberglass, pressed alloy, plate alloy, plastic – mono hulls, cats, tri hulls – once again an absolute poultice of suppliers and makes, models and price tags. With casting deck, without casting deck, live bait tank, kill tank and on and on the list goes.
Motors – 2 stroke, 2 stroke, electric.
Electronics – sounders, GPS and every other gadget than can be thought of – and again all at a price.

My question is: for estuary and southern bay fishing – are all these items necessary and do they increase catch rates ? Aren’t some of the simpler and less expensive methods adequate or have some of the skills of fishing gone and we are relying more on these items to assist in catching fish?

Everything advances but in some instances the so called advancements are really just a money making exercise for manufacturers and for us humans …we have to keep up with the Jones’s or just have the latest technology to look the part even though it may not improve our catches. Have we been indoctrinated into thinking we must have these items to be successful at fishing?

[Chimo]

Hi Greg

IMM no doubt about it, its a case of marketing and apart from screw top wine bottles and twist off stubbie tops and maybe the better sounders like Furuno so we can find marks at nite and find our way home without running aground I doubt that most of it is really all that necessary.

By the way Telstra rang me yesterday to try and talk me into a new Next G to replace my CDMA and I told them that all I want is a phone that you can ring people on from remote spots like out at sea. Needless to say no sale. I told him to call me when they had the signal strength comparable to CDMA and they were going to continue my current deal and give me a new phone . GOM I suppose.

Re you fishing Q maybe its one GOM talking to another GOM; Im sure we will be told if this is the case.::)

Cheers
Chimo

PS Boat show Friday?

[choppa]

memories are good,,,, but i tend to agree,,, as i had this same ""point"" when i was chasing bamboo blanks to prove a statement that you can build a good reliable rod with ease without having to spend an absolute fortune on what is on offer in the stores

90 mile beach in victoria was my salt water breaking in,,,, and thats all we used to chase gummy sharks,,,, bamboo stick,,,,alvey,,, and a good hurricane light,,,

makes you wonder how much technology is really relied upon in the event of an emergency,,,,, theres a young bloke at work who didn't even know what the southern cross was,,,,let alone find it???????????

choppa

[finga]

Good thread Greg.
Mate I have more then enough technology in the tinny but it's more for safety then anything else.

The GPS is in case somebody is need of VMR and I can then use the VHF to tell them exactly where to come to. I also use it for checking fuel usage and to see how far I've gone for the day as well. But that is just because it's there. Not because I need it for that. I don't use it for marks when I'm in the tinny. No point really channels move, sandbanks move blah, blah, blah.

The sounder is mainly used as a depth meter and to find dropoffs. I rarely use the sounder in the tinny to find fish. The bloody thing lies :-/

Rods.... well I have just a few of them suckers ranging from a $3 special from Redlands recycleland to :o. But mainly use the old reliables.

Reels.... A 4" Alvey for the little boat but I have an egg beater usually there as well. I love the Alvey for bream..... Take it, take it, take it.....gotya ;D

Bait....stinky bait is good. Rubber don't work for this little black duck.

Boats... I have a tinny

Motor.... I got the Honda just for the electric start. I need it so I had to get it.

I'm looking for a really old 33hp motor though (if anybody knows of one) to put on my 13' 1970 Stercraft Beaver. Why you ask?? 'Cause I want to. :)

[PinHead]

Hi Greg

IMM no doubt about it, its a case of marketing and apart from screw top wine bottles and twist off stubbie tops and maybe the better sounders like Furuno so we can find marks at nite and find our way home without running aground I doubt that most of it is really all that necessary.

By the way Telstra rang me yesterday to try and talk me into a new Next G to replace my CDMA and I told them that all I want is a phone that you can ring people on from remote spots like out at sea. Needless to say no sale. I told him to call me when they had the signal strength comparable to CDMA and they were going to continue my current deal and give me a new phone . GOM I suppose.

Re you fishing Q maybe its one GOM talking to another GOM; Im sure we will be told if this is the case.::)

Cheers
Chimo

PS Boat show Friday?

I am going Thursday. I have to work the friday night and most of that weekend.

[Poodroo]

Good thread Greg. Technology is undoubtedly going ahead in leaps and bounds in the fishing world and I reckon that it does increase your catch rate so long as the person using the new technology is well educated on how to use it. I think there are many variables in fishing and things change on a daily basis so regardless of technology there will be poor days, average days, and sometimes fantastic days. Boat traffic on weekends I find would probably make fish a bit shy so generally mid-week fishing is normally better but not always. Some of the old technology methods are still good and worth hanging onto I think.


Poodroo

[gone_fishing]

cant beat technology
was was great 10 years ago is yeh not bad now when it comes to gear
performance from motors electronics safety gear etc etc

[Luc]

Each to his own.

I'm more than happy with mid priced fishing gear. For the fishing I do, even if my budget could afford it, I see no point in paying mega dollars for rods & reels (Game fishing gear not included in my comment).

I honestly can't see that a $300+ spinning reel will give me a substancial improvement compared to one around the $100 mark. I've seen & played with spinning reels that came with a $1500 price tag and could not see myself bothering to use one.

Luc

[theoldlegend]

Oh dear, oh dear Greg.

What on earth has brought this on? Are you going like me where one gets very despondent for no reason at all? I thought that you were bigger than this. I know that you are. You have a very lovely lady called Sue and also very good children that have made you a grandfather. I know that you love them very dearly. I know you. You are a good person.

Yes, I can relate to all of the stuff that you alluded to. Very much so. I can remember the old man and me pulling up yabbies with a 3 foot piece of 6 inch down pipe with a couple of holes in the top where you stuck your thumbs over the holes in the top and sucked everything up including your own bum. Bloody hard work.

I can also relate to your comments about the first of the fibre glass rods to hit the market in those days. They were heavy, unwieldly, but they were the ducks guts. Show ponies were the first to use them. The old man got one, and we wern't allowed even to touch it.

It's a bit like when I read recently on the chat boards where a person had a problem between a couple of spinning reels that went for about $1000 and $850, buit just didn't quite know which one to get. Geez I wish I had that sort of stuff to spend.

Now mate, I've just had a thought.

Remember Herm? She's very good value. Excellent lady. I got a phone call when I was running hot with this thread and I'm afraid I've lost the plot after the phone call.

Hang in there,

TOL

[manchild]

Technology you say?Tell that to a bloke i saw once at stockyard point .All other fisherman was fishing for hours with very little results and they were literally hundreds of them.This bloke ,piss drunk, forget to undo the arm on the reel so he casted in about 3 metres into about 3 feet of water .People were laughing of course till he pulled out a 3 foot ghost shark with the same movement.He had an old fibreglass rod and a rusty reel ,he said he never fishes ,just picked up the rod from his fathers shed and thought it would be fun to try.All the others or most of them had hundreds of dollars worth of rods and equipment.So there goes that theory about technology or skills for that matter.Sometimes or most of the times its just luck.Ohh yeahh and he was the only bloke ther enjoying himself and not worrying about all those "important things" such as tides, light consitions and so on.
cheers
George

[manchild]

Nearly forgot ,the most succesful fishing i ever had was in the army.We did survival exercise for 6 weeks ,all we relied upon was our skills and experience.None of the fishing was done with any rods or hooks and there was no technology in site for a few hundred miles.We caught more than we could possibly eat .
George

[juju]

I started with no name line wrapped around a coke bottle.......can you still get coke in glass bottle?

[ashh]

I started with no name line wrapped around a coke bottle.......can you still get coke in glass bottle?


lol thats much like my first fishing experience as a youngen, line wrapped around an empty coke can, was fishing off the pier at Monkey Mia WA , mum says just throw it in. So I did...the can aswell lol, this was back when there was no such thing as paying to feed the dolphins and all that was there was a small shop and the caravan park.

[Davemclean]

technology is no substitute for experience and skill, last August, it was a beautiful summers day, so I packed my 13 foot float road and reel, loaded with cheap but reliable momo, the whole outfit had cost me £25, about $60 I think, and headed off to my favourite spot on my favourite river, I was the only one there, until this bloke arrives carting his gear in a bloody wheel barrow, he had brought 4 top of the range rods and reels and mountains of terminal tackle, the whole lot must have set him back £10,000, and he laughed at me, with my trusty, very cheap combo, and he didn't land one fish all day, he got bites but he wasn't hooking up, I cast in, and hook and land a fish of 3kg, returned safely, I get 3 more of that size, I then hook a big old lump of a fish that fought for half hour solid, and I land a 4.5kg barbel, every cast, I land a fish, at the end of the day, I had 150 fish on my cheap float rod combo, and he had landed nothing at all

[PinHead]

LOL TOL..I am never despondent..life is too good to waste time on that.

I started thinking about it when at the tackle and tinny show...some sales guy asked if I was interested in buying a boat we were looking at. I told him it was too expensive..his response was that it has a casting deck, live bait tank, kill tank and comes with all the electronics..all in a boat about 4.5 m long.

This got me thinking...what advantages are there in a casting deck other than some storage space underneath. Kill tank - esky. Live bait tank - nothing wrong with yabbies in a plastic bucket.
As for the electronics...no need for any when fishing in the estuaries...you can see any banks by the water flow etc.

It all seems to stem from some clever marketing where some people seem to think that they cannot catch fish unless they have all the "right" gear.

[sandyd]

lol thats much like my first fishing experience as a youngen, line wrapped around an empty coke can, was fishing off the pier at Monkey Mia WA , mum says just throw it in. So I did...the can aswell lol, this was back when there was no such thing as paying to feed the dolphins and all that was there was a small shop and the caravan park.

Line wrapped around an empty coke can, had a little laugh as it just goes to show the different ages on here. I remember line wrapped around a coke bottle or even at times a stick.

I was brought up fishing with a father who was passionate about fishing with little money to fund his passion so we never had the ritzy things.

A small dingy and motor is what we used to get us out to the reefs and Islands around Bowen, or the creeks at Kangaroo point where we have a hut.
A Hand line is all we used and with this we caught some awesome fish. Home made sinkers from nails dad collected from friends and customers and live bait that we pumped, netted or speared.

Many a time we ran out of water and us kids had to get out and push the boat of the sand bar as we did not have a GPS and even if they where around we still would not have had one.

Did we miss out on anything by not having technology? No we had a life style that people can only dream of these days. We had a tight family unit who spent time together as a family, we where shown that to have fun you don’t need lots of money, just great people around you.

We had fun.

[theoldlegend]

Yes Greg,

I think you're on the money there. Horses for courses I suppose. I can see a need for the electronic stuff if you're going out wide, as it's just about a necessity from a safety aspect, but as you say, in rivers and in close in the estuaries, is there really a need for it? Don't know. A person could line up a tree, or a chimney or whatever and most times get pretty close to the mark. Now you can get right on the spot.

I guess it's the ever changing society in which we live; life is being lived at a faster pace, people are more uptight, technology is changing faster than we can keep up with it, so on and so on.

The fishing gear is a lot more sophisticated than what it was, which is probably a good thing in a way, but it all comes at a price. However, I guess that most of us can generally afford to pay for what we want.

I too can remember the old fishing cord wrapped around a Coke bottle, but some of the more affluent amongst us actually had a wooden hand held gadget that reminds me of a marlin spike. Fishing for mullet in Kedron Brook after school, catching the train to Pinkenba with the old man and then walking to Myrtletown, all that stuff is now a memory.

At the end of the day, it's probably what best suits a person's wants and needs.


TOL

[sandyd]

..all in a boat about 4.5 m long.

This got me thinking...what advantages are there in a casting deck other than some storage space underneath. Kill tank - esky. Live bait tank - nothing wrong with yabbies in a plastic bucket.
As for the electronics...no need for any when fishing in the estuaries...you can see any banks by the water flow etc.




:helpa:You seriously need to talk to Owen. We where talking to a friend who sails the Brisbane to Gladstone yacht race every year and he was telling me that his old hand held GPS is accurate to 100m and here we are with a 4.5 tinny and a GPS that is accurate to a couple of meters, is this an over kill or what?

[bushbeachboy]

I find that I like my technology. A sounder is very helpful when fishing new territory for the first time, but not just as a depth meter. I have found many small underwater structures that hold fish, and no indicators of them from the surface water flow.

I absolutely love my graphite rods for light fishing duties, and braided line helps in these situations.

I have a plastic boat complete with casting decks, and the storage underneath is well worth having.

My 2 stroke outboard is equipped with electric start and power trim, goodies that I don't need, but like to have.

Having said all that, I still pump yabbies and put them in a bucket, fish with bait about 95% of the time, and also love my heavier fibreglass rods for catching bigger specimens. My outboard is old-tech carby, but I love it.

IMO I don't think we should knock technology, just use whatever parts of it suit us personally, and enjoy it.