Of Dollars and Scents

Hi Fisho's... what's new in your world today??? If your anything like me, your sitting in front of your computer, bored shitless with work, and dreaming of screaming reels, hard pulling fish and monumental bust-ups... I only wish!

Today i wanna touch on a few grey areas in fishin. The topic is not a new one but still warrents some healthy debate. Is the use of scents cheating??? Is putting on an additive to lure considered ethical to notion of pure lure fishing??? Also is using scents built into lures or lures made from biodegradable material or food stuffs considered a 'real' lure????

All these questions are subject to personal opinion. 1 fisho might advocate the use of Berkley Gulps, for instance, while another might scoff at the idea of using a lure made of eadible food. One things for sure, if you don't use these lures in bream comps these days you are seriously doing yourself a major dis-service. They work particularly well on all species, even though they look like absolute shit out of the packet. And this where my point of contention lies. They look like shit, swim extremely poorly, have terrible colours....but catch a heap of fish. The Gulp formula is meant to attract fish and the fact that the lure is made of food stuffs, similar to food fed to fish in aquaculture, means the only thing attracting the fish to take the lure is its bait-like qualities. The deception is not in the anglers ability to trick the fish into believing the lure lie but rather triggering another response in fish...smell not sight.

What about lures made of plastisol??? If you apply scent to these lures do they work as well??? Is this considered cheating??? Once again in tournaments, the testing ground for a lot of our retail products,allow the use of scents in comps. In the infancy of comps the scents were quite poor and yeilded next to no benefit, maybe only angler confidence, thats about it. The scents were spray based and made of smells of garlic, prawns, aniseed etc etc.

Then came along Ultrbite a new kind of additive. This was a pheromone based scent undetectible to humans. It apparently stimulated the fish to feed. One of the main issues was when you apply the scent to the outside of plastic lures, re-application was needed quite regularly, same with the older style of scents. Some people swore by the pheromone others, like me, didnt see any increased fish catches by using it.

Now, we come to the goodies. Recently Squidgies released thier pro-range of lures. Inside each packet comes a scent t apply to the lures bought called S-Factor. Without doubt this is the best scent to date. I have noticed a drastic increase in certain fish catches and re-application is not as often due to the gooy texture of the stuff. I have noticed a big increase in jewie catches but not needed for flatties. Just depends on how the fish attack.

Apparently the main difference with S-Factor compared to other scents is that S-Factor is water soluble and fish can taste the lure from a range of 1 meter or so. The comp fishos are going crazy over the stuff and it seems every secong angler is using the stuff. Well done to squidgy for fighting back against Gulps.

While i reckon the purity of lure fishing is being lost somewhat in plastix fishing, theres no denying they are being created more deadly every season. As i said its personal preference whether you think its cheating or not, but one things for sure if you fish comps you cant do without em.

The Leading Edge

Hi All,

Time to talk about leaders...no im not talking about the men who run our countries either... but rather the business end of our tackle. More specifically leaders used for lures rather than bait...sorry bait fishos...but get with the program!

The current craze is obviously to fish with flurocarbon. It has so many advantages over mono that it makes sense to use it most of the time. Some of the advantages are;

1) Light Refraction Index - Very wanky terminology for a simple meaning. Basically fluro line has the same light refractive properties as water meaning once the line is submerged it becomes virtually invisible. The benefits are obvious especially if your using pink or green braid.

2) Abrasion Resistence - Some pundits believe mono has better abrasion resistence than fluro. In some brands this may be the case but as a whole i refute this somewhat. I reckon fluro is inheritly stiffer and harder than mono, therfore lends itself better to wear and tear.

3) Aging - Mono has a tendency to brake down over time. My early indications are fluro has a longer shelf life than mono. The colour, although virtually non-existent, doesnt bleach or degrade, or even go milky as some brands of clear mono seem to, like Maxima and Platypus.

Even though Fluro does have its advantages there are some fishing situations where Mono will out-perform Fluro. And there are some upsides to using Mono too, these are;

1) The Price - Mono is much cheaper than Fluro. For the tight arses out there mono makes commercial sense, especially 600m of Jarvis Walker for 4bux! In my opinion the best thing this super cheap line can be used for is backing...on reels that will never see the backing ever. On reels that may catch fish that might empty a spool, i use better quality line.

2) Knots - The one area that i will conceed to mono is in tying knots. The line pulls up better than fluro line. The fact that fluro line is stiffer and harder does hinder the knot tying process. More care needs to be taken to ensure the knots bed down snuggly and lay evenly. The extra stretch in mono has an elastic effect of tying snug knots that pull up even tighter under the load of a fish.


These are the built-in features and benefits of the two leader materials. In fishing situations though the use of one over the other has its place too. Lets see some examples;

1) Mono has a tendency to float. In a fishing situation where you require the light lure to hang high in the water column, such as fishing boat hulls, the mono will aid in keeping the lure bouyant. Fluro has a tendency to sink so in reverse, if you want to fish light lures a bit deeper, which would be the majority of times, Fluro aids the sinking process to get the light lure deeper, quicker.

2) Fishing with Mono leader of hard pulling fish. In situations where braid is used zero stretch in the line can mean more pulled hooks. The use of mono can put a little bit of elasticity in the system pretty much like a shock absorber. There are Fluro lines now made with a stretch factor to cater for this exact issue.

3) With poppers mono aides in keeping the popper on top of the water rather than digging in. As i suggested fluro sinks and therefore can have a negative effect on popper action.

4) 80% of my fishing revolves around deep water cast-and-retrieve. In this scenario Fluro is the way to go.

So in rounding up...there are times to use fluro and times to use mono. Understand the inherit characteristics of each and this will aid in your selection. Don't get caught up using only one type either.

Some of my current favourite lerader are;
Fluro
Sunline Basic FC - in 4-12lb
Sunline Hard Rock - all lines classes
Siglon FC - 10-20lb
Varivas Shock Leader - 20lb

Mono
Platypus Super 100 - 4lb-10lb
Penn 10X Pro Line - 6lb-30lb
Platil Universal - All line classes

Results of the 2008 Hawkesbury Classic

Hi Everyone,

So the scorecards are in, the fish have been weighed and the boats are cleaned and packed away back in the garage. The classic is over for another year. All the hype, anticipation and nervous sweat that goes into it ends in either excitement of sweet victory or the taste of hollow defeat.

In years past the taste of hollow defeat has been the subtle pill i have had to swallow. I have come close on occasions, seen my fishing partner bring home the bacon and even been cleaned up by fish that would surely have won the whole thing...but it wasnt my time.

So in 2008....yep you guessed it....it still wasnt my time. Sorry if you were expecting me to say i won. I didnt. But i did do a few things that gave me a glimmer of hope moving forward. I caught the 5th biggest jewie of the comp. Ok so thats not particularly exceptional as 4 fish weighed more but it was the only fish of substance to be caught on a soft plastic. The 4 other jewies were all caught on live bait.

So how big were the fish i hear you keep asking??? The winning jewie weighed 19.5kgs cleaned. The same angler caught the second biggest fish 15.7kgs and 3rd place weighed 13kgs. The 4th biggest weighed 11kg and my little puppy weighed 10kgs cleaned. Not a bad effort as i said, especially on 8lb braid and 20lb leader. The winners were probably using 30 or 40lb mono leader and 60 to 80lb leader...sporting??? I think not. I'd still be happy to catch one on anchor rope regardless but the light line really put my heart in my mouth.

The fish took 25mins to subdue and gave a brilliant account of itself. I orginally thought it to be better than 11kgs whole, thinking to be 13 or 14kgs...but my excitement over-rode my ability to judge and it weight alot less.

We did catch some other notable fish too. We caught a stack to flatties...probably 60odd fish in 2 days but none were real monsters...the best was 2 fish at around 2 kgs each...nowhere near big enuf to win comp. The results of the winning fish were;

1st Heaviest Fish - Jewfish 19.5kgs
2nd Heaviest Fish - Jewfish 15.7
3rd Heaviest Fish - Jewfish 13kgs
Flathead - 4.2kgs
Bream - 1.18kgs
Whiting - .450g
Jewfish - 11kgs
Biggest Other Species - 2.8kg kingfish

The low light was seeing all these 50-60cms jewies weighed in. Now all the fishos knew that the fish wasnt going to win the comp...so why keep em??? Why pilfer sooo many juvenile fish out of a system that is constantly raped by the commercial fleet??? It makes no sense...but is a typical reason why the mighty Hawkesbury River is little more than a shadow of its former self. It devoid of life and the sad reality is the noose is being pulled tighter...no managemet plan is in sight and the over-harvesting of its resources will surely be its downfall.

Next year i will not be fishing for flathead either. The winning fish is always a female...so why bother??? Keep a breeder for the possible chance of noteriety or give the system an opprtunity to re-stock. 1 breeding flathead will put over a million young into the system per year...its only a small step but one im prepared to make.

Time to cahnge to more ecological practises i think!