steve_bok

Good luck! Plenty of good ones out there

Bruce It's not a bad idea at all, I wish I had the money to buy a property with a sizeable water to do such a thing. Personally I'm happy with the prospects I have in public waters in regards to big fish, I'm getting good sized Carp and the mystery of not knowing what is out there is exciting, this would probably outweigh the known population when fishing a managed water even if it had big fish. The thing that would appeal to me about a private water would be the attitude of all involved, you can forget the morons and the negativity and just have a friendly positive vibe on the bank with likeminded people, no bogans leaving rubbish behind for me to constantly clean up, and no carp with their heads caved in rotting on the bank etc etc. I would be interested, but only if it were close enough that I could spend a lot of time on the bank, and it would depend on how much the fees were and if others I know were getting involved. Be sure to keep me updated in how things progress. Cheers Steve

To me slack vs tight makes little difference in regards to catch rates. I generally fish tight so I know what's going on indication wise, often fish slack in windy conditions. I don't fish many really clear waters where I would probably use slack lines. Less liners fishing slack too It's all personal preference really, do what works for you.

Chris has set the benchmark for Aussie Carpers no doubt! The 'Divers who inspect dam walls' story is so old! It gets rolled out all the time, it's one of those urban myth things normally told by Cod fishermen.... even if there was any credibility to it you'd have the heebie-geebies down there in the dark, bumping into any old carp would make you dump a load in your wetsuit. Plus the idea that the biggest carp would be in the deepest darkest part of a lake that you'd need to dive to isn't really that sound either...

I think a a general rule private fisheries are for privately owned waters on private land, and public waters are free to all. That's the Australian way. However there are some opportunities: Angling Clubs could organise special access to waters that are off limits to the general public, eg. Water storages etc. If a Club can demonstrate that it is responsible/reliable then the relevant authority might grant access on specific terms. Also there is the opportunity for a private landowner to provide access over private property to fish in a public water that can otherwise not be accessed.

Nice mirror Pitch, hopefully you catch it again when it's massive. Keep the reports coming! Here's a beauty I scored today

Great fish! Hopefully there are some monsters lurking about next time I'm up there! I'm convinced that fish I had was hooked in the tail or something, otherwise it was a total beast. I've never been whipped so badly before except on 1kg pretest. Normally that set-up I had stops them pretty quickly. I was giving it heaps on a virtually locked drag and got smashed I'm still sulking about it. Might have to go heavy gear next time even though I'm much better with the lighter gear. Fish for the big ones!

Way to go Chris! What a monster! That is about as good as it gets. Reward for all your hours of persistence.

I've never heard of using masking tape underneath braid, interesting. I just use mono underneath, and hope it never gets that far, which it luckily never has. Yeah I agree fishing for carp is a great way to learn how to master fishing light especially in open snag free waters. It requires patience we've had some Carp up here that have taken 45 minutes to an hour to land.

It depends on which of my set-ups I'm using. Most would have 250m+, the heavier gear would have 400m+ (which is crazy) really but you've got to fill up your spool up with something. On my small reels (Daiwa Sol 2000s) I usually run 4lb braid which is my preference, or 2lb crystal braid, or 2lb pretest mono if I'm feeling sporting, and all are extremely thin. For float or feeder work (EB40's) I usually run 6lb mono, and big reels (Okuma EB60s) I use 15lb braid. I reckon 150m of 10lb should be ok 99.99% of the time if you're fishing a heavy drag. It must be a smaller reel to only take 150m of 10lb? The day you hook onto one of the long lean big headed LBG monsters that weigh around 10-12kg and go like nothing else is the day you'll really find out if it's enough.

Tony Mate I can't wait to have another crack at them. I'm confident of landing those mega Carp with this set-up, but time shall tell, hopefully I can hook one and find out... Bok Corner hey, sounds good, I like a challenge. I'm imagining something thick with lily pads....... The only thing I really need to work out is what strength leader material to go for... so they take the bait freely with 10kg leader?

I was out on the weekend doing some testing of some heavier tackle to take on these Centennial Park Carp. Tried out my 12ft session rod running 15lb braid with freelined bread. Freelining has never really been one of my favoured methods, for no reason really other than I've always just done other things. I was a bit concerned about the potential casting distance but it turned out to be ok, it went out a lot further than I'd imagined. Only about 15 minutes in I was onto my first fish which put up a bit of a fight but was alway in control at close quarters. It went 17lb on the scales. I went on to land a few others over the weekend. I'm confident now that I have the gear to give me a fair chance of landing one these beasts. I always fancy myself on the light gear but often it ends in tears. The only thing now is getting there and managing to fool one of the big old crafty carp

Yep they were weighed and measured, they just finished the first 100 tags so judging from the size of the ponds and the fish in there they might need a lot more tags out before they start getting regular recaptures. Hopefully it's a long term study and they can get thousands of tags out and plenty of data coming back in. That fish was 695mm and 9.6kg, it was a short fat fish and full of spawn on top of that. Carp I've caught around Canberra would be roughly around 780-850mm for that weight.

Chris No I wasn't fishing the session gear, only light gear but it was 4lb braid which I think actually breaks at over 12lb, I usually land upper doubles to low twenties on it without too much trouble. Their is a no lead/sinkers rule so I was just flicking unweighted bread around, which seemed to be the popular method. The braid set-up seemed the strongest option for this finesse style of fishing. Waggler would be ok too, I took my float rod but I quickly determined it was going to be far too light when the first fish I saw within 5 minutes was easily 25lb+ Perhaps need to look at the session rod with a controller float for the really big ones, or something like that. It is no fishing in the park to the general public, but Tony runs the Volunteer Group for fishing in the park, so are long as you are registered as a Centennial Park volunteer and fishing with the group it's allowed. They're no longer killing them but are tagging and releasing them to try to work out what the deal is with the population... they finished off their first 100 tags on sunday (I caught lucky 100!) Seriously I can't wait to go back for another try, maybe we could organise a weekend to catch up, saturday Nepean/sunday Centennial Park, that's if Tony could fit us in. Cheers Steve

Chris It was like a beautiful sunny day in mid September by Canberra standards BTW, I also had the pleasure of being 'slimed' by many an eel! Did you have any luck up there? or were you just exploring? Must get up there to catch up and have a fish on the Nepean as we discussed. Cheers Steve.

Well I'd like to thank Tony (prof_s_r) for the invitation to come for a fish with the Centennial Park Volunteer Group (one I couldn't pass up!). I'd been meaning to travel up to Sydney to hit the Nepean sometime soon, but Centennial Park was another location on my wishlist. I had a ball, great company and great fishing. Just seeing some of the fish in there was unbelievable, some were 1 metre plus and 12-15kg at a conservative estimate. I would have been happy to walk around for the day with no rod a few bags of bread and polaroid glasses just looking at these fish. The fish that smoked me was massive, it was still charging off at speed with about 100-120 metre of line out, so I turned up the drag as hard as I was game and it still ran another 70-80 metres. I thought I was going to be spooled. Definately a fish of a lifetime lost... My knees were shaking afterwards. The carp in the top photo was 9.6kg (21lb) and was just under 70cm long! Definately the fattest carp I've ever seen with my own eyes. The other was just over 7kg. The fish weren't as tame as you might think, it wasn't a case of shooting fish in a barrel, we only caught 17 fish all up for the day and I think I was lucky enough to get 7-8 of them. A lot were little 0.5-1.5kg Carp. The real big Carp were crafty and you got maybe one shot at them, and soon after you arrived they disappeared to a distant part of the pond. Would be fantastic to get up there for another shot at them sometime soon, all fish were tagged and released, hopefully one of my fish turns up again someday.

An 'F1' is a hybrid between a Crucian and a Common? There is some debate whether we actually have Crucian's in Australia. It would be good to have some actual scientific genetic studies to prove any claims. For that reason alone I'd say it's more likely to be a Goldfish/Common hybrid, but hey it could well be an F1. Regardless I'm confident it is a hybrid of sorts, be it common/goldfish or common/crucian.

Yep I reckon you're on the money with the hybrid. Here's one I've caught that went 4.48kg:

Just sent you a PM. Cheers Steve.

I'll leave the boasting for a mirror 20 if it ever happens I've had quite a few mirrors around that 8-12lb (4-6kg) size, I'm sure they're out there bigger tho it's just a numbers game really. I don't think they lack growth potential. I'm the same I love to see what people are getting as well Get's me excited! Hope I don't get too much criticism for a lack of a mat, but in my defense I try to only put them down on green grass... better treatment than most Aussie Carp get. Usually only photo mirrors as they're a curiousity, really beautiful fish some of them. Here is one of my nicer fully scaled Mirrors... prob only 6lb but really pretty. Mirror Recapture 8-9lb... first capture... Mirror Recapture... second capture over a year later, hadn't grown much but a lighter colouration. Mirrors aside this would be some of the my highlights from the last few years. Common 22lb Common 23lb Ghost 17lb Common 18lb (double hook-up other rod had a 24-25lber ) Tuggeranong PB , 19lb. Long lean big lips, 17lb Latest 20lber. Around here I seem to catch stacks of Carp up to about 14-16lb, but it's pretty hard to crack a 20.... it's weird. My goal now is a 30, don't know if I'll ever crack it but I'll give it a damn good try...

Yeah it's just a matter of striking it lucky with your big mirror, although I find some waters have more Mirrors than others... so targetting those waters would make sense. In most of my local waters I reckon it's roughly about 20-30 to 1, but I know of a few places with much higher ratios. I've had several out in double figures, but nothing massive. I had a recapture of a 9-10lb mirror over a year apart, that was pretty special. Easy to distinguish recaptures going off scale patterns in photos. Had a couple of very nice fully scaled mirrors too I'll try to dig out some photos.

Evan Let me know the details and I'll see if I can get away. My old man has an All wheel drive Magna that goes well on the dirt so I'll try borrow that, I'd probably rattle the pieces out of my car. Interested to know how the fishing goes on your work trip, I wouldn't imagine it would be going off in July?, although they are probably the most hungry aggressive carp I know of in there..

No. I don't say so. Every single object that adopts a stable position in flight without augmented stability has these characteristics. A sinker on the back of a spod trailing a massive drag inducing fishing line won't do anything because it's pretty hard to induce a bending moment with a flexible piece of string. Next time you use a knitted wrecking bar to pry a nail out, you be sure to let me know. If a kayak were a cost effective method of distance fishing that I wanted to indulge in, I'd not be asking about long rods and play with spodding, would I? What's the cost of a kayak and trailer or roof racks these days, compared to a cheap rod, reel, braid and spod? Can you put it all together for 42 dollars? You seem to be remarkably effective in failing to understand the point of all this. Wow you really are an expert on everything, look out Karl Kruszelnicki. Can I put it together for $42 dollars?... hmmm, no sorry I can't do much with that amount of money. I could probably put together a very good sandwich for $42 Anyway, I've had enough of this petty back and forth. Hope your Spodding works out well... Ciao.

Nope. It would almost be impossible to get a spod to fly incorrectly with the trailing line providing a huge stability margin. While the CG stays forward of the aerodynamic center, the difference will be insignificant. (My background is aerodynamics, amongst many other things. ) You'd take a kayak out with you, but don't want to lug an extra rod.... Ok if you say so I'm not going to argue... being the expert perhaps you should contact all the spod manufacturers an ask them why they don't come with a sinker. Personally I wouldn't take a spod or a kayak, as I catch almost all of my fish in close. The kayak was just a suggested alternative that you might like to consider if fishing at extreme distance is important to you, I've seen it done very effectively.