admacdo

I say. That's the shiznit! Thanks!

Not long distance casting for carp. Just long distance casting to see how far.

Things are getting warmer in Canberra. Enough to make me break out the tarp and tent poles. Thus I've finally found the joy of fully shaded fishing. Despite wanting to take up a pastime that didn't involve mounds of gear, carp fishing has crept up on me and I find myself looking longingly on anything that will enable only one trip from the car. The day was hot enough on Saturday to drop the GPSr off the windscreen again. It had nothing to do with the crack that's been creeping across the glass for two weeks as the temperatures changed. So, armed with a decent layer of sunscreen, we attempted our luck in a new spot in Lake Tuggeranong. I can't drive past there now without thinking of Steve Bok's STUPENDOUS achievement of a 10 kg Carp on a one kg HAND LINE!!! I would have loved to have seen that. It would have been worth recording. Once you get something like that achieved, you just make doing anything to top it more of a challenge. The way things are proceeding, Steve is going to have to start catching big carp on a line made of braided nasal hair, while blindfolded in the middle of the night in a thunderstorm. And using a brick for bait. So we set up in the likely spot, briefly burlied the margins and set up the gear. I'm never in a hurry. The mornings seem to be quiet. Eventually my fishing buddy decided to walk around and burly up the reeds which were some distance away. After a couple of hours with nothing happening, he reeled in, rebaited and put one out to the other side towards the middle of where he'd burlied up. That's when things started to move. We estimated the range at the first take at about 70 meters although Google maps later confirmed it as 80, with probably even slightly more when he cast deeper into the reed crescent. I will admit that seeing someone catch a fish at a distance is quite entertaining. It's more fun when you've got it on your own line, of course. This carp dodged back and forth and mixed it in with the reeds a few times. Eventually, it ended in the net and of course, the guestimations of weight started. I was pushing for something on the 5kg mark and was stunned to see it barely make 3.6kg. Mind you, I think that I seem to be overguestimating lately. I only had my 9 foot rods out, so couldn't make anywhere near the far side and continued to set the hook baits along the reed edges on the right hand side. This eventually proved beneficial and I got to do a bit of a run around the reed beds in order to untangle a little feisty [censored] who didn't even make 3kg. I was also hamstrung by not being able to get my rod tips close to the water and so had to listen to a wind plucked alarm serenade when thermal activity started. My companion had the better situation with longer rods, more angled rod pod and of course, the best choice as he'd turned up before me. I was left wondering if I could find a rechargeable hedge trimmer at reasonable cost for some custom made access to the waters edge. I wonder how suspicious that would look to find a neatly cropped patch of grass when we left... To keep ourselves amused while nothing was happening, we left one of the nets in the water under a nearby tree and lifted it into a white bucket to see what little fry we could find in it. Very quickly, we had a bucket full of tiny fish. We figured that they would be some sort of unrecognisable species, but to our surprise, we could see the start of the characteristic stripes of the Redfin perch on fish about 4 centimeters long. My buddy has a longer net and so tried ambushing some other small fish near the reed beds to the other side of the tree. This produced some slightly fatter, greener fry about 5cm long. When taking a closer look at these, a very distinct course scale pattern was visible on a reasonably transparent fish. They had a visible black spot on their internal organs, which were largely silvery. I never thought to take a photo which showed them from the side, but we suspected that they might be carp fingerlings. Shortly after this, I raised the net again and discovered a saucer sized long net turtle had crawled into it. He went into the bucket for a photo opportunity. Shortly after that, we noticed that some of the redfin fingerlings had died or at least had stopped swimming, so we tipped everything back into the lake and bid the turtle farewell and good luck. The carp fishing magazines were broken out at that point, and much was made of the huge amount of gear at amazing prices that one could have for the exchange of pounds in the UK and other parts of Europe. The range of chairs particularly seemed to be unbelieveable. I'm after something that turns into a chair only once it's conveyed all one's carp fishing crap to the waterside. The second take from the far side was most entertaining and took quite a few minutes to get into the net. Once weighed, it topped at 7.65kg and there was much rejoicing. We're now both over the 7kg mark and slowly being more strategic in our quest for the 10kg barrier. Once we get there, we might even be tempted to start bringing the line strength down. Until then Steve, you'll be quite firmly kicking our collective asses. My hat's off to you.

So, a few weeks ago my fishing buddy decides that he wants a sinker with a swivel embedded. As a machinist often has an outlet for such things, a few days later he sends me photos of his little mould. It produces 80 gram sinkers one at a time and they look like a little hockey puck. The swivel is just poked into one end of the mould and the molten lead poured in the other. A few seconds later, you can split it apart and out pops another sinker. (Yes, don't bother mentioning the lead fumes thing. It's all under control.) So the grand showing of these little beauties was Bowen Park on the side of Lake BG where we've never fished before. Now that we've both got rod pods that don't require pushing into the ground, we have been exploring other venues with access to carparks and cement paths near the lake edge. We figured that the big rods should get a showing and just to see what would happen, used some bolt rigs out far and some regular rigs in close. We know that the edge of Bowen park is where the original river used to run, but we were very surprised at how quickly it drops off in depth. Far more than what we thought based on the length of line we put out and how steeply it went into the water. Some work with the float rods reqired in future. Anyway, people either side of us were pulling in carp, except the Vietnamese guy with the 80 pound braid and the shark hooks. (We set him right on that) I managed to bag two Refin on corn, much to my surprise and to the delight of the Vietnamese fisherman, who was looking for lunch. He popped them into a plastic bag and disappeared. Eventually, we decided that it was time to see just how far one could cast one of these little sinkers tied to some 15lb braid. After a few medium effort lobs that we pegged as close to 80 metres, I decided to have a go like some of the casting instructors show how to do it on facebook. At this point, yes. I was told earlier on to get a finger stall when I used braid. I'd forgotten. I might have gotten away with it if I hadn't also set the drag up properly. So, with a large step forward, and left hand into the chest and right arm out in a snapping motion, I powered the poor little sinker out towards the far horizon, or so it seemed. There was quite a sawing sound as the drag slipped on my trusty Shimano. "Wow" said my co-conspirator" That was a rather savage noise!" as we watched the sinker disappear from sight. By then, the first stings of pain were well and truly on the way, but the blood hadn't yet started. (You can't see anything but the faintest trace of a scar now...) After we saw the tiny splash, I chanced a look at my finger. Hmm. [censored]. With a bit of luck, nothing will hit that bit of my finger for a while. I managed to abrade about a millimeter deep trench about a centmeter long. And who brings bandaids fishing, honestly? Clipping the line off and winding in then saw me retrieve two tent pegs from the back of the car. With the tape measure, I put them exactly ten meters apart and then wound the line off until around them until I hit the clip again. With eleven strands between the pegs and a meter more, that puts the cast at 111 meters. Overgunned? You bet. Everything we caught that day was at about 4 meters away, so it wasn't so much casting as swinging things out. However, we have a trip planned now to a lake a few hours away. It has a channel running through it which we have measured at 84 metres from the most convenient casting point, thanks to Google Maps. And then of course, I can always go surf fishing at the coast. Stainless steel rod pods rock on the sand!

Rodsocks never actually answered back. However, just for people that might be interested, I happened to see a Silstar Damos combo rod and reel package a few weeks ago. I think it was an 8-12lb 12 foot rod. It looked and felt surprisingly like the carp rods my fishing buddy and I got from the UK. I'm not sure about the equivalent test curve yet, but I'll try and find out.

I'd like to say that it's been a long time coming, but it hasn't really. The weather on Saturday was sensational if you were home with the heater on and a good book. Sunday wasn't looking much better. My normal fishing companion decided that he'd use the weather forecast to convince me it was worth coming out. When one has a new girlfriend, it can take convincing. She however, had some study to catch up on and the weather decided to become less than hateful, and then downright inviting. So off we went to see if one of the inlets in lake BG had anything to offer. It was a toss up if Lake G would get a visit, but in the end the inlet won us over. Why? Because Fyshwick Domino's will deliver pizza there. We took the carp cam because there really wasn't a reason not to. We tossed it into the shallow water and if I leaned out with the big rod, I could position the bait in front of it with a bit of direction and dragging the line in a Z pattern until the corn showed up on screen. With that done and no real expectations, it got put onto bank sticks and left alone while we tended the real fishing. Fish were jumping. There was a party on the far shore and after they started fishing too. After a while, we noted a guy wading into the lake wearing just his undies. He swam across in stages. As he emerged, staggering from the water, I asked him if he'd lost the bet or won one. He said "I just won 100 bucks!" Then he posed for the camera. He gave me his email address and I mailed them to him.. But shortly after that, things happened. Here you can see just how successful we were on the day: I've got to say, I'm pretty pleased!

Well, it wasn't too cold on Saturday, so with the wider lens on the Carp Cam went out on a lakeshore deployment to see if it was possible to cast to in front of it even when it was 20 or so metres out. Of course, lining it up with a handy tree on the opposite bank lets it be roughly located, as long as you stand in the right casting spot.

Hmmm. Chris has a lot to answer for. There's Australian of the year and young Australian of the year. There's even Local Hero on the newer ones. The posts go for about 300 metres all the way along the lakefront and then stop. I guess that's when we run out of Australians or the world ends.

I got bored at work and left early yesterday to go and take a look. Setting up near the edge of the water was going to be easy, apart from it being heavily trafficked. Then I realised that I could set up inside and between the little pillars that display the Australian of the Year. Once the temperature improves, it's up for investigation.

Actually, it's only illegal if you use them for other than your own personal enjoyment. The copyright legislation on this sort of thing was investigated by the Federal Attorney-General's Department a few years ago. There was a call for public input on it. I didn't see any submissions, but I read through the half inch thick report. The main interest was in "format changing" or ripping your CD's to your MP3 player. Copyright Branch think that this is absolutely fine. Even making backup copies is fine. Reproduce and sell anything though, or even give them away and your arse will be in a sling. Now, about them carp...

Thanks Steve. That should a bit more sheltered than other places I have looked at. I'll go check it out. Apparently the lake has had some changes in clarity lately, but went back to murky again.

Things are quiet on the forum... After the first carp cam foray, we were rather disappointed by the field of view. I underestimated incredibly how the visibility of simple things like the foreground would affect what we thought we could see. So three new lenses were ordered with a large variation in field of view. This added another hefty 16 dollars to the expenditure. I also decided that if I was looking at wider stuff, I'd best increase the width of the IR LED illumination. The first attempt at extra illumination ended badly with my $3.80 board being too big by 2mm to go into the housing. The next one that turned up fit in with barely a half milimeter to spare, so we were in business! Then another slight problem. The first wide angle lens I tried wouldn't fit through the middle of the LED board. Neither would the second. But the third greased through with just enough space, however, it was also the narrowest view of the new lenses. I pushed the entire assembly into the housing and placed it on the floor. With it powered on, it was pretty obvious that I'd lucked out. Not only could I see much more of the floor and room, everything was in far better focus. To give an idea, I am using a 7Ah Gell cell as power. With the battery placed it's own length from the camera and turned side on to it, I can see it in the middle third of the screen. Obviously the carp are going to have to come close before we can see anything in detail, but at least we'll see what's going on if anything is visible. It won't be just like looking at a spotlight beam in the fog! The next trick is to be able to either attach a float to it, or position it carefully with waders 10 or 15 metres out and then practice casting along side it. With a bit of luck, there will be some more footage when things get a bit warmer.

Well, it all came together today. Last time I looked down from the dam wall, I could see the bottom. Today, there wasn't a chance. But we threw the camera in anyway. Six metres from the water, with 23 metres worth of cable. At the deepest part, we couldn't touch bottom, but that was kinda expected. Would anyone like to donate a 30 metre extension cord? (just kidding) In an hour of fooling about, looking at stuff, we did actually see things. Carp even (and some tiny transparent fish that I've never seen before. Here is two minutes worth of what went on. I just can't wait for the water to clear up a bit..

As luck would have it, it floated. And the video is corrupted right at the end. I can watch it, but can't get it off the recorder! As soon as the legs were filled with lead and I took it around to my fishing buddy's place for a demo, we lost video... and some quick fault finding pointed to the lead as the culprit. When cutting it in half in disgust, we discovered it was three bare conducters, so I proposed that we try normal 240v cable instead and make up some leads. Would you believe how expensive it is to buy 30 metres of 3 core flex? So I capitulated and eventually bought a 25 metre office extension lead for 23 dollars and just cut the ends off. The things you do just to see if you can video carp feeding... Now that we've got a substancial cable though, we won't need to make another line to pull it in. I can just make a hole in a washer the right size, push the cable through it when it's through the screw connector and then take up the tension with a hose clamp. It might require some waders to take it out and turn it sideways, but we can just reel it back in. Unfortunately, it won't be doing any deep diving this weekend as it takes at least three days for the silicon to cure. Maybe next weekend...

Yep. Of the several hundred things that I've bought on ebay, I've only been stiffed on two things. One of them was a 6010 Aero baitrunner from the UK. It apparently got "lost in the post" and it was too late to do anything about it with the delays. So I just had to wear that one. Anyway, this is a thread about what people are using and like. Shimanos are rather popular. It's just a pity that the Daiwa baitrunners aren't so common.