Bushy Update 2001

Steve Starling caught this ripper barramundi at Manupi lodge on Melville Island with braided GSP line. I was standing right next to him at the time and I can tell you that the GSP helped to gain depth with his cast lure and it definitely helped in dragging the fish away from some fairly horrendous snags. Would he have caught the fish on stretchy mono - maybe?

It's fun to talk to you in almost real time so I thought I might tell you a bit about what I am doing with my fishing right now and more importantly how I am thinking and exactly what I am using to catch fish.

Most of the time when telling a story it pays to keep the 'self' element out of it. After all, most folks are only interested in how to catch a fish and where that fish lives - they don't really need to get in on a writers personal ego trip. I rate myself as a very ordinary person but I have been lucky in that I have been able to fish in many different locations for a huge variety of species. I generally fish over two hundred days a year and if I don't actually catch fish my family goes hungry and I am out of a job. This is a fair incentive to track down tackle that works and to find innovative ways to use it. The other reason for fishing hard and thinking about it for 23 hours a day is that I have an absolute fishing addiction. I really don't feel good if I go for a couple of days without catching a fish. I have to catch fish, fish, and more fish because it is welded into my nature, not because I have to catch more than anyone else or because I have to look clever. Anglers who have fished on my boat might find this hard to believe but I fish a lot harder when I am on my own than I ever do in company.

The latest eggbeater reels have made spinning a lot more deadly and productive.

Apart from making me a fairly boring person this fishing mania does give me the opportunity to test things to the limit so in that regard at least I can see why somebody may be a t least a little interested in my fishing opinions. If you don't have the opportunity to be on the water as much as I am, I hope you will find something useful in the Bushy update. If you don't, well at least I have earned a couple more dollars to feed my kid and to put petrol in the car for yet another fishing trip! You can take the ego trip, I need the money!

Now you know where I am coming from let's talk turkey. Fishing is starting to make some sense to me. That might sound like a silly statement but it is an accurate one. In fishing there is a fair bit of positive transfer - that is, what you learn in one type of fishing can help you catch more fish in another situation altogether. There can also be some negative transfer - things that work in one fishery may actually hinder your results in another. Now I find that I have fished for so many different species under so many different conditions that the positive transfer has really outweighed the negative. My fishing results have improved dramatically over the last couple of years because of this accumulation of knowledge.

I love Mustad Aberdeen hooks for soft plastics - they are light-guage, strong and they work even better when you get rid of the barb.

Even cod succumb to the GSP trend in experienced hands.

Some random thoughts on tackle.

GSP lines have been around for a long time now and everyone has had a say on them. Some folks love them and some hate them. I approached these lines with an open mind and I certainly didn't jump on the GSP bandwagon when it came around the corner and rolled into town. Gradually the lines have infiltrated my fishing to the extent that I rarely use nylon now. Most of the myths surrounding these lines have turned out to be exactly that - myths. I have never seen a runner damaged by gel-spun line and I have fished it for years over all types of guides including snake guides made from fairly crappy metal, and I have never seen the slightest bit of wear. I used one particular nine weight flyrod for a number of years and that rod caught a decent yellowfin tuna, large barracuda, giant herrings, giant trevally, barramundi, albacore and heaps of other things that go fast. The guides were fine after all that - ordinary flyline will wear guides but any suggestion that gel spun will saw through guides on the first decent run is just nonsense.

GSP lines have very little stretch and their detractors claim that this factor causes pulled hooks broken rods and broken lines. I doubt it because I just haven't found it to happen. I use GSP lines for all my lure fishing from bream and trout to barra and bass and I just don't have a problem. I can feel what my lure is doing on the retrieve, I can set hooks instantly and I can apply pressure when I need to. As far as I am concerned the only stretch you need in the system is the bend in your rod and a good drag. GSP forms a brilliant link between angler and fish and it allows a top angler to impose his will on a fish efficiently throughout a fight.

Even while you sleep, water quality and fish stocks are steadily under threat and in danger of complete collapse. Yellowfin even smaller than these are being netted by the ton in remote areas such as the Similan Islands. Alarmist, unrealistic thoughts or just a recognition of the facts. I hope I have it wrong.

Okay, so what about the old elastic band theory that stretchy nylon line acts as a shock absorber between angler and fish to prevent breakage and to keep hooks set. This theory is one hundred percent correct - stretchy nylon line has allowed a lot of fishermen to land very good fish over the years, and I would recommend learners and those with slow reflexes and little idea of what a fish is going to do next to use nylon, because for those people it is the ideal choice. I will go a little further and say that stretchy line has allowed some anglers with little skill, the margin for error to catch some very impressive fish. If you want an analogy - normal road drivers drive cars with soft suspensions, automatic gear boxes and spongy steering because average humans only want to get from point A to point B and that set-up is a good one for their levels of driving ability. On the other hand a grand prix car has instant acceleration, hard suspension, and twitchy instant steering, but it is capable of a vastly improved performance in the right hands. A novice driver would find a grand prix car almost impossible to drive at first and it is the same with bum anglers and GSP. Nylon line has its place for kids, people just taking up the sport and folk who have learned to fish with it and just don't want to change, and that is fine. If you are having fun with nylon, keep using it - it is very effective line with a built in safety factor. The GSP verses nylon debate is also more complex than it might seem because there are many types and brands of fishing line loosely lumped tether under the nylon banner. These line vary enormously in diameter strength and amount of stretch. There are some absolutely brilliant monfilament lines on the market and they are probably the right choice for many anglers. I still stick to my opinion that the top five percent of lure-fishing anglers will benefit from using GSP. If you want to learn to fish with lures at the top level, get with the strength and use GSP so you can feel every move your lure makes, every move your fish makes and when you decide to stop things on your end, the fish has to stop as well. Personally I would rather shoot myself through the head than go back to stretchy nylon line for lure fishing. The GSP is light years ahead in performance if you are switched on enough to get the best out of it.

GSP is also great for deep fishing with bait or jigs and there is just no room for any argument on that score - it is way out in front.

Shark Bay in WA has long been held up as a snapper mecca - it is still good but bag limits have had to change as the stocks crumble even in this remote outpost.

Unfortunately there are good GSP lines and bad ones and there are some types of lines that lend themselves to particular applications. There are certainly more good ones than the two I will mention but I have caught a lot of fish using Platypus Bionic Braid in fifty pound, both for fly line backing, and for targetting large fish such as kingfish, tuna, spanish mackerel and wahoo, as well as for other large fishy things on bait in deep water. For smaller prey I love using Berkley Fireline on my spinning reels and baitcasters. I particularly like the four pound Fireline for bream spinning as it seems to cast well off a spinning reel and being a fused line it is extremely abrasion resistant. For the record, I like fused line in the very finest diameters because the fusing adds just a little stiffness which makes the line easier to handle. In larger diameters I find the braided lies better because they are so supple.

Hooks are a very important in any fishing situation and the right hook can make a big difference to your catch rate. I use hooks of many different brands and styles but I know that picking the right one for the job is vitally important. I use Daiichi red chemically sharpened treble hooks on my hard-bodied bream lures and I consider them unbeatable for this job. Bream have small mouths full of crushing teeth and fine super sharp hooks are needed to find a hold. Strangely, I really believe that the colour of the hook is important. I used to colour code my lures - that is green hooks on a green lure and gold ones on a gold lure, but after I ran short on the multi coloured jobs and substituted the red hooks, all the lures started to catch fish. I often watch bream at close quarters in clear water and there is no doubt in my mind that they often grab the swinging red trebles on a slowly rising lure instead of trying to eat the whole lure. If you think I am crazy - try it yourself and then tell me your results haven't improved. I replace the trebles on my Deception Palaemons with number ten hooks and on my Halco Scorpion 35s with number twelve trebles.

Make your marlin hooks deadly sharp or it is a fair bet you will end up fishless.

The way of the future - circle hooks may be less damaging to fish and they certainly hang on once they are set.

While we are on the subject of hooks I think that barbs on modern day hooks are pretty much obsolete. I de-barb all my bream hooks and all my barra hooks and even on a marlin hook I leave only a very small barb. In my mind the main function that a barb actually performs is to stop the hook penetrating to its full potential. If a hook ever does penetrate properly it just isn't going to fall out by itself - especially if it is continually being pulled on by a switched on angler. I doubt that any extra fish are lost on barbless hooks. Okay, you can shout and scream all you want but if you maintain that barbless are less effective I want to see the statistics. That's right - tell me how many of a hundred fish hooked, escaped on barbed hooks and how many of the next hundred escaped with the barbless. Of course the gear has to be identical, the lure has to be the same and the angler has to be the same. I know the results with bream and they are about the same with barbs or without, but the big plus for barbless hooks is that they come out of the fish a long way faster when you are trying to release the fish. The trebles are also in good condition after they come out of a breams mouth if they are barbless. Bream don't wreck hooks often but an angler in a hurry with a pair of pliers is a different story. If you are catching numbers of fish during the day, barbless hooks ensure that your lure is in the water more often just because of the increased speed in taking them out of fish. If you need a clincher, would you rather pull a barbed hook out of your arm or a barbed one? It is a fact of life that one day you will be pinned by one of your own hooks if you do a lot of fishing.

Red chemically sharpened hooks are fantastic when you are chasing things with hard mouths like bream.

For soft plastics I have been using Mustad Mega Bites or bending Mustad Aberdeen hooks into the shapes I need for particular jobs. Aberdeens are thin, tough, and I love em. I still squash the barbs flat even though they are fairly small.

Just a thought for marlin fishermen. I wouldn't call myself a good marlin fisherman although I do quite a bit of it, but I do spend time on boats with gun marlin fishing crews. This means I get to look at all the cunning rigs and tactics and the one thing that absolutely stands out in my mind is the sharpness of the hooks that successful lure trollers use. The other side of that story is that about 80 percent of the boats I jump on to fish for marlin use hooks that you could sit on with complete confidence. This amazes me - why spend a squillion dollars on a game boat and all the gear you need to catch a marlin and then stick a hook in the water that has a snowballs chance in hell of penetrating a marlins armor plated mouth. Of course there are a number of conflicting theories about how to sharpen a marlin hook. Some skippers like to triangulate the hook or to make it a diamond shape, others claim this shape allows the hook to cut its way out and they prefer a conical sharpening job. Some skippers break the point off the hook to make a sharp stubby point that won't turn over on bone. Others claim a long needle-point will penetrate a marlins bill most of the time and they are in front over a season even if they turn a couple of points. I don't know which method is best but I am sure that you need a deadly sharp hook that has most of the barb taken off. The barb on a marlin hook straight out of the box, sticks out at almost at right angles and most of the time this is as far as the hook is ever going to go in if it hits bill or bone. What do you get - a run and one jump? That is a joke. Using lures is statistically the least likely way to stay attached to a marlin but if you fish lures with blunt hooks in them you just aren't in the game. The good guys even go to the extent of using fine wet and dry sandpaper to clean up the sharpening job and the guns then finish the job with polishing compound and soft cloth. A properly sharpened hook for a marlin lure should be a surgical instrument - shiny and lethal. Have a look at the ones on your boat, if they have little rust spots, big barbs and blunt points go and stand in the corner.

For livebaiting marlin I love circle hooks. Some folks like them some hate them. I guess it is a personal thing but I think that they do give a more reliable mouth hook-up, the fish fight harder and I suspect that they have a better chance of living when you release them. Overseas a few squillion billfish have now been caught with these hooks and I have seen enough to know that they are the way to go in the future. Having said that, J hooks work well for the job and a lot of evidence suggests that marlin hooked deep do survive. I guess you pay your money and take your pick but if I was a marlin I would rather have a circle hook in the corner of my mouth than a hook in my guts or a couple of lure hooks flapping around near my eyes.

Another little yellowfin is released by an amateur - how long are we going to see these fish in our waters. Seen any southern bluefin lately?

If you are fishing in really deep water for 'ooglies' like this oilfish taken off the shelf at Merimbula, you will do it more easily with GSP lines.

I love the new generation of spincast tackle. Combine a modern spin reel with a purpose built spinstick and add some GSP line and you have a combination that is lethal for fish. Maybe some of the advances have snuck up on rank and file anglers and they have failed to realise just how good this tackle now is. The best reels are engineering marvels. I use Shimano Stella eggbeaters and they are unbelievably good. Yes, I do some promotional work for Shimano and I hope that continues because I love using these reels. I fish this gear unbelievably hard and when you consider that the bail arm has tripped on the first wind every single time for a couple of years without any part wearing out - you just have to be amazed. The drag is perfect, not average or good - perfect! I have come up through the old ANSA system since it started and we just took it for granted that we would have to customise our reels to fish light line effectively. The guys at Shimano have made eggbeaters that work flawlessly and I can't break them by bashing around in boats or casting and retrieving with them for hours and days at a time. For me this is fantastic because I can concentrate on improving my fishing rather than fussing with my tackle. Whatever my faults are as a person and a fisho, and there are plenty, I can lay claim to being the best tackler tester bar none - I work reels to death, I never wash them (just ask Paul, the tackle genius at Shimano if you doubt this!) and I cover them in saltwater, sand, mud and dust. If I can't break it, wear it out or kill it with corrosion, it is one tough piece of tackle. Maybe I shouldn't be proud of this aspect of my fishing and it isn't a great example to young fishers but you heard it here first - I stand before you today and I am a tackle abuser!

Because of the advances in eggbeater technology and GSP lines I can deliver lighter weights to fish and still hook and fight them effectively. I am catching lots more bream on lures, trout on lures and bass that I ever thought would be possible and that is mainly because of the improved eggbeater technology. I can see huge possibilities for barra fishing with a light state-of-the-art eggbeater, a carbon fibre spinstick, and some GSP. I love using baitcasters as well but the new gear opens up lots of new possibilities - watch this space.

Electric motors have taken my fishing to new levels. I once regarded them as yankee gadgets with few advantages but now I have seen the light and I regard them as just as important as my rods, lines or lures. If you really want to get the best out an electric motor and you like casting lures - buy a bow mounted cable-steered model. Yes they are expensive but they do the job with knobs on. Tiller steered models and auto-pilots are better than oars and they are more affordable than the cable steered jobs but in my book they just don't cut the mustard. My motor is a Minn Kota bow mount Maxim 44 and it has done a great job for me. Unfortunatley I don't work for the company (I wish I did because I think their products are great) and I paid money (yes it was a good deal) for the unit. I use the motor for just about all my active fishing including flyfishing for trout and other species. If you don't have an electric motor on your boat yet, just sell something and buy one, or rob a bank - they are that good and you need one if you are a keen fisho.

I could talk a lot more about tackle but I will have to leave that for another time. My travels in fisheries around Australia and overseas have given me some insights and ideas on fish stocks and future fishing trends and I want to share a few thoughts with you on where we are going both fishing wise and generally on the planet. Firstly I am no expert on what will happen in the future but I feel like spilling my guts to put it crudely on where I think we are heading.

This decent black couldn't throw the circle hook and was released to fight another day. It fought well and there was no blood flowing on the release.

If I give you my opinion on the carp problem in Australia that will tell you where I am coming from very quickly. Carp have destroyed a lot of fish habitat and really knocked some of our beautiful native fish around. They have been a disaster. Listen to this next bit carefully. I think that in the fairly near future we will be fighting to save carp because they will be one of the few fish species alive in Australian inland waters. Maybe I am nuts but everywhere I go fish are under threat from pollution and overfishing and excessive human usage of water. Species in general are disappearing at a fantastic speed off the planet and humans are rapidly filling the world with their poisonous refuse. I go to the Similan Islands in Thailand and a group of boats are netting tons of juvenile yellowfin tuna every single night. This place is a long way from anywhere but while you are sleeping well tucked up at night a fantastic species is disappearing before its individual fish can reach three kilos. Similar things are happening everywhere - you might not be aware of it but fish are under threat in every part of the globe twenty four hours a day. Half the coral reefs in the world are already dead and the rest are on the way. Coral spawn is the food supply for many pelagic fish species so if they go so will the fish. We are rapidly eliminating the predators of the world, in particular, sharks. Without them fish populations will probably go into decline. I have only mentioned a very few of the problems here and I would much rather be like most other people and stick my head in the sand and say "she will be right mate." However the whole world ecosystem is held together by a series of links and I think that we have broken too many of them to save many fish. The good news is that I am only a travelling fisho and maybe I have put two and two together and come up with five - it wouldn't be the first time! Maybe all in the garden is rosy - what are things like in your neck of the woods? Are there more fish around than there were five years ago, or less? And maybe things are fixable if humans do a few of the right things. If you get the chance to do something positive for fish or the environment in general - do it. It just might make a difference. Anyway, I have no particular axe to grind and my opinions are just that - opinions. I hope they are wrong.

Any way, even if we keep sitting on our bums there will be fish around for a while yet and I would love to help you catch a few. I will be able to talk to you again soon because I will be doing a column every couple of months on this site. I am a confirmed luddite and I am not even connected to the internet and don't intend to be in the near future so I won't be talking directly to anybody one to one on the net - I'll be fishing instead but if you have a few questions or topics of interest I am sure Neil will pass them on to me and I will consider some answers in the column. See you soon. Bushy.

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