24's + Livies....Paternoster the way to go?

[frankgrimes]

Hi Guys,

Been hitting the 12s,18s + 24's a bit the last few weeks, and been grabbing some yakkas on the way out from Scottish Prince.

Am I better of with a paternoster(with a fair bit of lead), and snell a couple of hooks so that I get the livies down to the bottom......as my "standard" livie rig (2 hooks snelled, with a running ball sinker), get's no-where near the bottom and ends up on a 45 degree angle from the boat!

Thanks fellas.

[ffejsmada]

Frank,
You're obviously talking about the Reefs off Surfers and Southport. When we used to fish them we'd use 24kg main line with a double attached. The double was tied to a solid brass ring. From there it was a short length of 80lb line about 300mm long with a big barrel sinker attached, then tied to another brass ring.
From that ring, the same 80lb line was attached, about 3 foot long, then came the 8/0 hook.
So we had double,ring,leader with sinker,ring,leader with hook.

We dropped to bottom, wound up about 10-15 feet, locked the drag and put in a near horizontal rod holder. Attach the safety clip. When you see that rod tip hit the water, you know you've got a decent fish on.

We fished this way from 12fathoms, all the way out to the traps in 50 fathoms, and we landed some snodger fish.

Forget the paternoster for livies, that's for bottom bashin in my opinion.

Cheers Jeff.

[Noelm]

I must admit, that rig is not my favorite live bait setup as well, but I have a mate who uses it and just has a very long leader on the bait dropper, if you have a problem with the bait wanting to come up high in the water, then I just use a good swivel, then about 2 feet of line with a big bean sinker, then another swivel and to that the trace and hook, the idea being the sinker still has some movement but is bewteen the two swivels so will keep down to the depth you set it, and I never use two hooks, but if you do and feel confident, then fine there is no real reason not, just my preference to use a single.