Toerag

Well the decomissioning was for beam trawlers, so that's well spent in my opinion. Most of the rest seems to have been spent on keeping the catch in good nick, so that's good too.

I find Ghostline rubbish compared to amnesia of similar 'BS'.

SL20SH. £59 from Alderney Angling, silky smooth drag, plenty of capacity and great reliability. If you must have a leverdrag then don't get an ABU 6600LD, either get the TLD5, or possibly the Penn 975LD, although I don't know what the drag's like on that.

That article was spot-on Leon, and Norm is also correct. Days at sea and gear restrictions are the only way forward.

It always amuses me to read how the average brit boob size has increased from 34B to 36C (or whatever) - Yes it might have done, but they fail to mention the average brit arse size has gone from fat to HUGE as well!!

Actually the smaller of the two gemini's here has the bulbs out of the water when planing, there's pictures on www.boatfishing.net . I know what you mean about the blyths though, lots of spray when they're at speed. At low displacement speed I think they would perform excellently due to the narrow hulls compared to a gemini or southcat, but in rough seas the lack of buoyancy in the bow may be a disadvantage.

You could always read Fishing News, there's been a lot of new Geminis recently. A couple have gone into serivce over here in the past year or so, one for angling charter/commercial, and the other for potting. Both have had bulbous bows retro-fitted I believe as they're a bit nose heavy if the fuel tanks (aft) are low. Apparently the build quality is excellent. Keep an eye on www.findafishingboat.co.uk for secondhand prices. PS - twin 180s in a 32footer will do 18 knots top whack.

To me, 'sustainable' means you can put in the same amount of effort every year and still catch the same amount because the breeding stock is producing enough fish to compensate for the amount you take out of the system. If the breeding stock is producing more than you take out then stocks increase, if it produces less then stocks decrease. In reality a mark or area gets discovered, fished out in 5 years, then another mark is discovered, fished out in 5 years and so on. Catches remain constant(ish) so the statisticians think everything is OK, and the fishermen don't like to talk about it or the statisticians will realise that the original 'population' was fished out, and put quotas on. Eventually the marks will run out and that'll be the end of it all.

just make up some mega stiff porridge - it doesn't dissolve very quickly.

How's the 'adjustability' on the 6500mag? I have a 525 supermag filled to the brim with 20lb berkley big game. It goes like this:- mags set to 6 (slowest) - no thumb braking needed at all on any cast, it's impossible to birdsnest and feels very restricted. mags on 5.5 - feels about right, can get 'line lift' at the top of a cast if it goes high but won't birdy mags on 5 - will birdy without judicious use of thumb. So effectively I don't use most of the mag adjustability. I guess things will change once the line level drops due to losing gear in snags etc. How does the ABU compare? PS - if you don't like to regularly take your reels apart to maintain them get the Penn - ABU's are made of monkey metal these days. PPS. - reel tuning - start slow and work towards faster until it gets too fast, then return to a comfortable level. Also, only change one thing at a time or you won't know which change has had an effect.

Stoaty - I have 2 sounders, one in metres, one in feet - Although I was brought up on metric measurements I use the imperial one when I'm feathering, and the metric one when looking at the bottom. Fishing has allowed me to convert pretty easily between the two. FastD has very good advice too.

Sounds like a 'transducer not powerful enough' problem. What sort of transducer is it, and how is it attached to the boat? How many watts (RMS) is the transducer? My old X71 would run out of puff at about 80m, my x88 has a more powerful transducer and is good for over 120m. If it's not a transducer power issue, then you have a setting wrong. Fix the upper and lower limits to, say, 80 & 120ft. Make sure you can see the bottom at 80m or so, then slowly drive into deeper water and see if it stops at the 100ft mark. Turn off 'fish ID' and any sort of 'noise reduction' settings. If it's a dual-frequency job then try a different frequency, lower frequencies go deeper, but 200khz is what most sounders run at, and that's good for 120m if the transducer has the power. PS. you should set your depth readings to be in metres like your charts, it saves doing metres<->feet conversions in your head all the time.

Bins for use on a boat are normally 7x50 - low magnification makes them useable on a rocking boat, and the 50mm lenses gather lots of light which is useful in low light conditions. I have some 12x30 Opticron BGA T PC bins for 'shore use' and I like them, the only drawback is individual lenscaps to get lost. They're small enough to fit in the pockets on my jackets.

That's a nice machine Kirkwall. A friend of mine went to their factory many years ago and although he liked the boats he wasn't impressed with the laminating environment so chose to go elsewhere. Have they improved the laminating conditions? What will she do flat out, most of the ones I've seen have 200's in them.

I see there's a pic of one in your profile, tell us more about her!

OK, so how about they sell the boat and find work elsewhere if they can't cope with the quotas? It's what everyone else has to do when things go pearshaped.

nanotube fullerene is actually harder than diamond according to wikepedia. I nearly did a degree in composites engineering.

Perhaps he wants the bass for bait?.........

You only need a single beam sounder running at 200khz as 200khz will work fine in up to 100m of water assuming that it's a powerful enough transducer. Even a weedier transducer will run fine to 65m. To mount the transducer prepare the bottom of the transducer and the spot on the hull with acetone or similar solvent to remove grease. Then get a tube of bathroom sealant and simply cut the whole end off instead of using the nozzle. Squirt a humungous blob of this in the correct position then bed the transducer down into it. Apparently not using the nozzle avoids air bubbles in the sealant.

Sikaflex is a polysulphide adhesive, not a sealant. To quote a boatbuilding book I read recently - " Be careful using this sort of sealant - if you ever have to take apart the two things you stuck together with it then the odds are that one or both of the pieces will break - and that includes fibreglass!!" I have a frend who had to remove a broken skin fitting that was bedded in sikaflex - he said it was an absolute nightmare to do. Having said all that, it's brilliant to stick things together with, but it gets everywhere so be careful!

It's an evolution of the military 'very slender craft' concept where the hull is designed to cut through the waves instead of going up and down over them, much like the seacat/condor ferries. I find this more exciting though:- Hydroptere 48-knot hydrofoil yacht!

A mate of mine uses interlines, he has a DAM and daiwa one, preferring the DAM one. He says they're great until you snap off and have to re-thread the blank on a tossing boat. Apparently they're a good idea to use as a feathering rod as there's no rings for the feathers to keep getting caught on.

I bought a proper german army goretex (allegedly) waterproof at my local army surplus yesterday - £25. I think army surplus has fallen out of fashion, plus you tend to be only able to buy it from the army disposal people in bundles of random items - I had some fantastic dutch army trousers but my local shop won't get them in any more as they always ended up with a load of unpopular sized stuff they couldn't shift. But if you want durable camo gear then proper military stuff is the only way to go. I used to have some swiss army trousers - they were great as they had waterproof knees and top of thighs.

As an update on my earlier post about the size of bait a bass will take - I had a 50cm (~3lb) bass on a 30cm live mackerel on friday in the boat.

Yes, it was a good review, I liked it. Would have been nice to compare it to specific boats given Steve's experience eg, has a better deckspace than an Orkney, is less 'slammy' than a Nab17 etc. Also build specs would be nice - eg. layup, resin type, cloth type etc. Everyone these days assumes boats are built properly - this is NOT the case!! As a followup it would be great to have a thread on the work he has planned to replace the deck etc.