bob@reefcatfishing

Hi Westie and Norm - yep on the Algarve in Portugal. Looking wistfully out on a flat calm sea waiting for a new boat. See you over here one day Norm.

When I've posted some fishing reports on here in the past, had quite a few people looking wistfully in this direction. Must be many peoples dream (mine included) to change lifestyle, live in the sun, doing something you're passionate about, and sometimes getting paid for it, in my case sport fishing. Well it isn't all plain sailing, there are loads of sharks about, most of them not in the sea. After 15 months, and having been savaged by a few expat sharks, and £20,000 worse off, there is light at the end of the tunnel. New boat, new business and a fresh start in the sun. But its been a painful journey. For some reason I didn't think "business", I thought fishing, which isn't the same, is it? So when I was paying out buckets of money I didn't apply the same business criteria that I would have when dealing with businesses in the UK. So with rose tinted glasses on, I went ahead with deals, no lawyer and absolute trust in fellow fisherman, how naive. So anyone who fancies a change of life, and dreams of doing something like I have, I would just like to say BE VERY CAREFUL, some sharks have teeth AND lawyers. Having said all of that, apart from being very much poorer, I'm very optimistic its going to be worth it. The fishing is still wonderful, the new catamaran is nearly on its way, the sun's shining and I'm in a tee shirt, oh and beers a £1.00 a pint.

Thanks Toerag, unfortunately not too many battleships in my neck of the woods. Most of my downrigger fishing will be around underwater reefs, and if you can see the lead on the sounder it will make life much easier. I'm also going to use them for deep drop fishing, saves having huge weights on the main line. When i eventually get them fitted I'll post a report on here.

PHT - what do you think of the cannons? I've been looking at the mag 10s, along with the walkers and the scottys, hard to see much difference between them.I want to do some deep drop fishing as well, drifting live or dead baits in 100 metres plus of water. I was going to use the downrigger to get the bait down so I don't have to use 2lbs of weight on my main line.

The BCC article looks pretty ggod, only problem i can see, is that you want to get as close as possible to the wreck. Its bad enough losing a normal weight but if you get the downrigger weight hung up, you lose the weight and the trolling cable. I think you need to be able to spot the wreck and drive the boat very accurately for this to be effective. Love some input from someone who's done it? Cos its on my list of things to try...

Thanks for the pic Newt, but the live baits feet should be dangling in the water.

I'm just about to buy a pair of electric downriggers. Doesn't ssem to be too much difference between the major brands, Walker, Cannon and Scotty. Penn do some manual riggers that look OK too. Advanta angling ltd nr Bournemouth stock Walkers, as usual though, all much cheaper in the US. I've always thought they would be good for towing a few rapalas over rough ground for bass.

Kleinboet, so how do you get it right? We often have shark around the boat, we can see them, but they don't take the conventional baits. Rather hoping that the kite will give us the edge. Saw some monstrous hammerheads last year, but they weren't interested in the baits. If we're really lucky, could pick up the odd white marlin as well. Anyway, I haven't even flown the thing yet, hope to have a go in the next few days (from the shore). Hi Dave - fancy seeing you here, lets go fly a kite.

Toerag what a fabulous link, thank you. I've just borrowed a Bob Lewis kite and am in the process of modifying a very old Sundridge Tope rod to use for the kite. Using a Mitchell 624 for the kite line, and now I'm dreaming of getting the new boat, so I can put it all to work. In fact just waiting for the wind to change and I'll have a go in the river outside the appartment, that'll blow the minds of the locals. I usually get a sceptical audience because I cast using a multiplier, god knows what they'll think if I turn up with a kite. Alan - how you doing? I've just got you a couple of otoliths, but not yet mounted, I'll pm you with the details. New boat has been delayed in Australia, problems getting the shipping. However I have been guaranteed a date in March, so if all goes well I'll be operating in about July. New fighting chair,outriggers, tackle the biz, can't wait. In fact I think I'll start a new thread for the unwary brit starting a charter business in foreign climes, cos there are a few pitfalls, and I've fallen in all of them.

Read a few articles a while back on kite fishing from a drifting boat. That is, the kite line has a release clip attached to it, and your main line releases from the clip if a fish takes your bait. I gather its mainly used for shark and surface predators, and the idea is that you can keep a live bait dancing about in the top foot or two of water. I fancy having a go when shark fishing, so loking forward to trying it out. Just wondered if anyone on the forum has done it or seen it done. Whilst researching it, I came across a few Australian sites where they use the kites from a beach to take the baits way offshore. They claim to be able to put baits more than 500 metres offshore, who needs to cast? At least if the winds in the right direction!

An onion sack tied to the anchor seems to work well for me, especially if the chum is frozen. The conger and bream don't seem to destroy the sack quite so readily. We also add quite a large proportion of bran to the mix, this seems to bulk it out, and the bran particles carry a lot of scent when drifting downtide.

I've always used a smallish saucepan with a pouring lip, and I pour straight from that. I don't melt too much lead at a time, so its easy to handle. Fortunately I have access to nice clean roofing lead strips, and I find it only takes a few seconds for that to melt between pours, especially if I have snipped it into smallish pieces. I also buy scrap stainless or chrome pipes from a scrapyard and fill them with lead for pirks. Need to make sure that the inside of the pipe is relatively clean, and very dry.

Having just ordered a new cat, I'm very interested in all this. I didn't know they weren't so good for driftng, would a sea anchor help keep it lined up? We do quite a lot of shark fishing, so a spinning boat would give us a fair bit of unknitting to do. Incidentally I also know of a nice 28ft 105 for sale in Littlehampton. Not been advertised yet, i can put you in touch if you'd like.

I've never done any downrigger fishing, but its something that I want to have a go at for next year. I don't think downriggers have been used very much in the UK, but I can't see why they wouldn't work. In fact I'm sure that trolling a rapala above some rough rocky ground would be dynamite when the bass are aound. I do use teasers for surface fish, as you say Awrata the bubble trail left by the teasers and the engine noise, seems to attract the surface feeding predators. This year we tried another attractor, its a 2 foot length of 4in. by 2 in. painted in bright colours, and half the surface is covered in mirrors. Its dragged behind the boat and wobbles and spins around, the sunlight on the mirrors makes it look your being followed by a fleet of ambulances. I was very sceptical when I first saw it, but far from frightening the fish, it does seem to attract them.

I've been told that ejecting the stomach is a sharks way of getting rid of something nasty that its swallowed, you know, tin cans, shoes peter mandelson etc. It's supposed to be able to ingest it again with no trouble, so while unsightly, shouldn't be causing any distress to the fish. Don't ever touch them with your bare hands, the digestive juices are very corrosive and you'll get some big blisters.

Just found this www.makomagnet.com says the right words, if it wasn't so pricey would be very tempted to try one. Anyone had any experience with this type of thing? Must be an electronis guru on the forum who could make one up from a maplin catalogue?

Some very interesting replies here, it appears to me that the noise of the boat engine arouses the curiousity of the top predator, and if you can get a bait down quickly, you have a good chance of a strike. This seems to work for us in relatively shallow water 30metres or so, and when anchoring. Its been thought for a long time that boat noise attracts big game fish, in fact when trolling for marlin etc. its the boat that first attracts their interest, then the teasers/lures. Some boats have always been better for attracting game fish than others. We have a single engined aquabell with a big cummins diesel, I can guarantee that we will raise more fish, than a boat running outboard/s. I think the hull shape also makes a difference, thats why the bertrams and hateras designs are so popular, they raise more fish. On a similar vein, I saw a shark documentary where the scientists used an underwater speaker, and played back the sounds of a fish feeding frenzy. This seemed to attract all the top predators, and worked as well as chum. Now that I would love to have a go at. Just start a drift, stick a speaker in the water, a cd in the player and sit and wait. Would beat getting dirty and smelly mixing up buckets of rubby dubby. Wonder if they'd like pink floyd.....?

Alan - I think you just wrote the book "a day in the life of a charter skipper" well put.... I had an american client recently, own boat in the US, experienced fisherman etc.. We were lucky enough to catch some nice fish in the first hour or so, he shook my hand and said "thats the monkey off the skippers back" now you can enjoy yourself. How true, and its an expression I use myself now. If the monkeys still on the skippers back, expect the skipper to be working hard to get it off.....

Been fishing some man made rock marks recently, and over a period of a few weeks noticed that we would often have a fish or two in the first ten minutes, then it would all go quiet for hours. We would then change mark, and would often get a take within a few minutes again. This got me wonderng if the noise of the boat finding the mark, and then letting down the anchor was either attracting the fish, or at least triggering their curiousity. We are fishing in about 30metres of water, and the fish we are after would be the top predator on the reef. So we did a few experiments, usually we fish with live mackerel, that we catch on the mark. I got a few clients to put out some twin tailed lead head lures before the boat had properly settled at anchor, and sure enough we had some fish. When the mark had gone quiet after a few hours, we tried running the engine for 5 minutes, and sometimes, this seemed to wake the fish up and we started catching again. Definitely not conclusive, but running the engine after a quiet period did seem to make a difference to the frequency of takes. I suspect that next year we will routinely run the engine for a while if its all gone quiet. Wondered if anyone else has had similar experiences, most people would expect boat noise to scare off the fish, but perhaps for the bigger predators it can actually turn them on?

This season we have started doing some experimenting with groundbaiting, especially if we're targetting large bream. We use pretty much the same mix as if we were sharking, mashed sardines some bran and some sardine oil, have also found a "special ingredient". Look at http://www.cebansa.com its a mash of anchovies and sardines, comes in nice clean 5kg buckets and smells like fish paste, I've got through 500kgs this year. We don't have strong tides here, so just an onion sack on the anchor usually does the trick. Also experimenting with a weighted perforated bucket, with a screw on lid, the conger can't then rip the sack apart, and it seems to keep scent in the water for longer. I think we probably have a lot to learn from coarse anglers, and that groundbaiting has a long way to go. Also noticed that boat noise seems to attract fish, in fact I'll start another thread with that in mind.

As part of a sea survival course, I had to jump in to a pool wearing my own one piece flotation suit and a lifejacket. The suit trapped so much air in the legs section, it was impossible to get upright in the water. It took some minutes of serious effort to expel the air so that I could kick my legs. If I hadn't been wearing a lifejacket, I'm pretty sure I would have struggled to keep my head above water. We then had to get into an inflated liferaft, those people wearing suits without a belt or other form of grab really struggled to get in the raft. I don't know the fladen suit, but it should have some form of grab so that rescuers can get hold of something, to pull you aboard a raft or rescue boat.

Ooops - ignore everything I said, thought we were talking about 2 stroke oil.

Only have experience on larger mercurys, but here goes, at least if its a mercury: 1: As bob said check the float switch, often in the oil header tank cap. 2: The oil reservoir is often pressurised with exhaust gas, so make sure that the hoses are attached to the tank cap. 3: Some engines hav a motion sensor on the oil pump drive, if the alarm stays on, it may be the motion sensor, or horror of horors the fuel pump drive is fauly. Its only plastic and the teeth can get damaged. The motion sensor alarm and oil level alarm are the same, intermittent beeping, overheat alarm is continous. I had the same problem with a mercury black max, it was the electronic "black Box" that was faulty in the end, but it took a long time (and money) to diagnose and fix. Let me know if any of this applies, might be able to help

Hi Bob - if you lay the line on "straight" there is a risk that a coil will bury itself, particularily after you have played a fish or got snagged. This can cause the reel to snatch on casting and birds nest, braid is much worse for this than mono. I prefer laying line side to side (like a levelwind would) so that the line is supported by the layer underneath, the line can't then bury itself in the spool. You still have to get a bit of tension on when you spool up though. Some people advocate wetting the line when you spool up, seems to lay the line on better. Don't really know why it should though. Hope that makes some sort of sense Bob

No deposits required guys, after all the time i've lurked here you're almost family.