G'day from Oz

[Smithy]

Great site guys. Only found it yesterday.

Interested in some of the names for some of your fish.

The main ones we get over here are Hapuka Cod, Bar Cod and Blue Eye Trevalla. There are quite a few pictures of them on the Peter Pakula site and some NZ sites. Here are some good Aussie pictures. http://www.pakula.com/marlin/showthr...highlight=deep and http://www.ausfish.com.au/cgi-ausfis...m=1119847350/0 Not up on this inserting pictures thing in these types of forums. Even though where I am is a lot closer to the equator than NZ we seem to get the same main species our Kiwi (New Zealand) cousins get on their side of the ditch (Tasman Sea). Other fish are things like Gemfish which are starting to look like an Eel and they have teeth and Ironjaw. Other things the Kiwis and Tasmanians (our most southernmost state and closer to Antarctica like NZ) are things like Trumpeter. Interested in the long red fish with long trailing filements on their tails. Are they a more tropical fish? Looks like what they call a Poulet Fish (French for chicken because they taste like chicken) in places like Vanuata and other tropical places. We have a similar fish called a Rosy Jobjish but they are not nessecarily a deep dropping target and are regularly caught in large numbers at aroung 350 foot. The Rosies don't have such a large trailing filament to the tail but the body shape is the same.

If you could post some pics here or point out what you have caught in the deep dropping gallery that would be great or as the New Zealanders would say - choice!

Also with the gear, have you guys seen Alvey Deck Winches before? Have a look at them here. http://www.ausfish.com.au/alvey/9.shtml Not pushing them or anything but they are just another way of skinning the same cat. Most guys are just using them manually but an electric version is available. Here is one that was for sale a while ago. http://www.pakula.com/marlin/showthr...ighlight=alvey Some of our commercial fisherman take them to the next level and have a larger spool again and use hydraulic motors and deep drop with 15 or so hooks. Getting back to the Alveys, they are an Australian company from my state predominatley making reels for rod and reel setups for beach fishing. They also do fly reels and the deep sea ones. Some guys are even deep dropping with the 9" diameter reel they produce on a rod and doing it manually. The commercial guys favour them in all of their forms of fishing as they are so robust with less moving parts then say an overhead. They even use them in a commerical fishery for Spanish Makerel which are vary similar to your King Mackerel. A few American motorised setups are finding their way onto our boats now. The $USD exchange rate is quite attractive for us at the moment, if we could only do something about these fuel prices. They are proving quite popular for the guys that have bought them out - no local manufacturers other than the Alveys as mentioned.

For your information we are now paying about $1.17 Australian for a litre of unleaded gasoline where I live. That would be about $5.25 Australian a gallon or in your dollars $4.10 US a gallon. Our government has massive excess, duty and value added tax on petroleum stuff. Bit of a green push to make us use less of it. What are you guys paying? I see in one post a guy whingeing about $3.00 US a gallon for Diesel. Is that right? At least we are not as bad as Europe. They all get around in little baby diesel cars because their governments tax it so high that is all they can afford to keep on the road. We aren't that bad yet. V6 sedans are our most popular vehicles and a few V8s but we all can't quite afford to own and run big pickups like you guys. Wish we could!

Sorry for the global economy spiel.

[Shark Tagger]

Welcome to the board!

Mostly we go for yellow eye, warsaw grouper, misty grouper, snow grouper, queen snapper, tile fish and rudder fish.

I'll post some pictures shortly.. but there is a gallery here full of these fish.

http://www.swordfishingcentral.com/g...opping-fishing

[Logan9581]

What you Aussies call Cod, look like our grouper. Your potato cod is just like most of our grouper. Where about in Oz are ya? I lived in Brisbane for 6 months last year and loved it.

[Smithy]

In Queensland about 2.5 hours NW of Brisbane. Fish off the Sunshine Coast, Brisbane and the Gold Coast all the time. 3.5 hours each way puts me in a range from Gladstone/1770 (southern end of Great Barrier Reef), Fraser Island, Rainbow Beach and Tweed Heads at the southern extremity. Did you get a chance to fish over here? Where at and what sort of fishing did you do? The region where I am is centrally located within all our big Bass lakes so I do a bit of that as well. The other fishery which is really coming on line is our stocked Barra fishery - bit like your Snook, but they are regularly up over 60lb now. Bit like Nile Perch as well if you have seen them. Some of those fisheries are only 2.5 hours away. Glad you enjoyed your time over here!

[Logan9581]

I didn't get to fish, I was in uni (QUT) there. Spent all my free time traveling. Drove from Daintree all the way to Brisbane and down to Byron Bay. Also made it to Sydney and Uluru. Also made it to NZ for a month - Both islands. I did make 4 dives on the GB reef, that was real nice and got to see lots of different fish and giant clams.