FishTwits Blog

11-26-09

Carp Capers Canberra!

My bro DJSpeldie and I have been pottering about in the canoe on Lake Burley Griffin in Canberra – loads of fun and loads of carp.  Check out the video!

11-24-09

Carp and Kangaroos

Having been away from home so long, I had forgotten what a great place Canberra and its surrounds are for fishing.  There are 3 major lakes in Canberra (Burley Griffin, Tuggeranong and Ginninderra) which are all regularly stocked with natives, numerous rivers and it’s only a 2 hour drive into the mountains for some brilliant trout fishing or down to the coast for great estuary or offshore fishing.

Since being back I have been lucky enough to be doing some work with one of my mates on his Phd where he is investigating the effects of kangaroo over grazing on endangered bird, mammal and reptile species.  This has given me the opportunity to explore some of the off the beaten track reserves around the place where I have encountered some stunning scenery and animals as well as getting the chance to test out my 4WD skills on some pretty tricky terrain.

Shingle Back or Sleepy Lizard – these guys are awesome, they are almost invulnerable predators because of their armour

Echidna – when you spot them they basically curl up in a ball and try and bury themselves

After a hard day’s work and a massive hamburger dinner, I got the opportunity to take my mate out fishing for his first time – we were camping in the reserve near the river and I thought it was a great opportunity to do a bit of night fishing.  Night fishing was made a lot more difficult by the fact that somehow, neither of us had remembered to bring a torch.

Despite the lack of light it wasn’t long before I was hooked up with a decent sized carp and it wasn’t long after that that he had run me around a submerged (actually it was only semi-submerged I found out in the morning) log and broke my extremely light line.  Brett fished on until he finished his beer with no success and I fished on until I’d finished a couple more before calling it a night and throwing the rest of my corn in to burley up for the next morning.

The next morning was an absolute stunner.  We were up at sun rise to count kangaroos from the Hilux, which is kind of akin to going on safari – except instead of hunting we use rangefinder binoculars to spot them hopping through the bush and record their numbers.

Having completed the morning’s work we returned to our fishing hole where the carp were well and truly on the bite! They were striking hard and often and constantly diving into the snags to try and cut us off but with the aid of light I was able to land the first carp of the day.  Within seconds Brett was also hooked up and doing a pretty brilliant job of controlling his first ever fish!  So finally what you have all been waiting for, a couple of fishing pictures.

11-10-09

Site Update: Improved FishPic browsing, new intro video

Have you noticed that, when you clicked on a photo preview in the FishPics gallery, it always reset to the newest photos and made you manually scroll through the list to where you had been if you wanted to keep going?

Yeah, it kinda sucked. We were pretty annoyed by it, too.

But no more! As of today’s update, the gallery will remember where you were and, instead of showing the six newest photos when you click on one of the gallery previews, it will now show the next six after the one you clicked. If you want to just keep clicking on the larger preview image, it will walk you back through all uploaded user photos, one by one. Clicking any link outside of the FishPics gallery will still reset the gallery to display the newest photo uploads, so you don’t have to worry about missing anything.

Aside from that, we’ve added a link to Mashable’s Open Web Awards, set up a new introductory video for new users (if you’re already logged in, you can still watch it at http://fishtwits.com/intro without logging out), and made it easier to get to the page added last time which shows lists of fish, users, techniques, locations, and events you can follow on FishTwits. You can now also follow fish, users, techniques, and events directly from this page. (Locations aren’t cooperating just yet, but should be followable from the list page in next week’s update.)

11-10-09

Fishing report catch-up. Part 1: Flicking for Flathead and Whistling for Whiting on the Coffs Coast, Australia.

With all the excitement of launching FishTwits.com it has been a busy month or so for Eric and I and whilst we have both managed to get out a few times for a fish we have been a bit remise in writing up a blog post or two.  Time to catch-up.

I left Sweden toward the end summer and headed back home for the start of summer (furthering my pursuit of an endless summer for the rest of my life).  I have managed to get out a few times with my brother who is a mad keen fishermen for a fish since I have been back in the home country.  In fact not more than three days after I touched down in Sydney airport my brother and a mate whisked me off to Coffs Harbour on the Northern New South Wales coast for a few days of beach sunshine and fishing.

My dad had managed to acquire an inflatable kayak from a friend whilst I was overseas and my bro and I decided to explore and fish one of the many creeks that run into the Pacific Ocean just near Coffs.  These creeks are teaming with fish Flathead, Whiting, Bream and Mangrove Jack, Trevally and a bit further inland the much sought after Australian Bass.

We inflated the kayak and pushed off with the incoming tide up the creek only to find that it had a leak.  For one reason or another we had thrown the foot pump into the kayak before we left so we hooked it up and I pumped air back into the kayak at the same time as paddling whilst my bro trawled a soft plastic trying to attempt a Dusky Flathead or maybe a Bream.  It wasn’t long before my brother managed to land a small flathead and my inexperience in kayak paddling whilst simultaneously pumping and dealing with quite a strong current landed the kayak in a creek side tree poking another hole in it.  As the kayak deflated, we ended up in the drink and had to swim it across to a nearby sandbank just barely managing to keep the rods, reels and tackle dry.

We decided to leave the kayak and wade the sand flats casting soft plastics and prawns into dips and holes trying to tempt a big flathead.  I spotted a likely looking snag next to a deep hole and expertly flicked my lure straight into it.  The thought of losing my $2 soft plastic was too much for me so I swam over to the log to remove it.  No sooner than I had de-snagged it, I noticed my brother hooking up – I quickly swum back to the sand bank and reached into my pocket for my bro’s water-proof camera to take some footage… it was gone.  In the process of saving my $2 lure I had managed to drop my brothers $700 camera into deep water next to massive snag!

My brother and I put our extremely limited free-diving-without-a-mask skills to the test for half an hour only to come up with a lot of scratches and no camera.  I was determined though and as I again descended again, this time I glimpsed a small patch of red buried in the mud just under a tree branch… it was the tiny red label of the camera case, with my last ounce to breath and subjecting myself to more cuts from the vicious tree I managed to lay my hands on it coming to the service arms raised in victory!

After a semi disastrous start to the trip the fishing only got better from there.  My brother showed off his flathead expertise landing them on both soft plastics and prawn baits.  He managed to land two 60cm plus specimens on very light gear by working the very same deep gutter that we had punctured the kayak on.

Having been completely out classed by my bro on the flathead front I decided to wade further up the creek chasing the many schools of whiting that were cruising the shallows.  Fishing conditions were perfect, clear water and a seemingly endless supply of different habitats making every cast exciting.  Nevertheless the whiting proved to be behaving very circumspectly sometimes approaching my bait, even touching it but never striking.  It wasn’t until the next morning, when my bro and I headed out again, undeterred by the rain, that I was finally successful in landing a 40+ centimetre specimen.  For those of you that don’t know the Australian Whiting, it is a reasonably close relative of the Bonefish, and is incredible sport on light tackle as well as being delicious eating.

A great end to the trip until my bro left the camera on the top of the car as we were packing up, we didn’t notice until a while later but when we retraced our drive sure enough we found it.  That camera is damn tough and must have nine lives!

11-03-09

Site Update: Kudos to you!

Have you been giving (or getting) Hits on the FishTwits site? Perhaps more to the point, have you wondered who was tweeting the best information and getting the most Hits? Well, now you can know!

Today’s update adds user “kudos” to the site. For the moment, users get one kudo each time one of their tweets gets hit. If a user has any kudos, this will be displayed on their profile, plus the Most Popular Users list is now sorted by kudos instead of by followers. Follower count is still displayed and used as a tie-breaker when users have the same number of kudos.

In the future, you will also be able to earn kudos in other ways, so keep your eyes peeled and watch this space for further updates.