A Place To Share Your Fishing Experience: siakap

Fishy Tips

Tip No 1 - For coastal fishing, get a tide chart and learn how to use it.

Tip No 2 - Always try and get fresh bait. Catching it yourself can be fun too.

Tip No 3 - Use the lightest sinker you need for the job. Sometimes this will only be a very small one.

Tip No 4 - Become good at tying important knots. Get a good knot book, learn to tie the Locked Half Blood Knot and practice it.

Tip No 5 - Read as much as you can in magazines like Fishing World. There are heaps of really useful things as well as heaps of good pictures.

Tip No 6 - Never touch or handle a fish or creature that you can't identify. It might bite or sting.

Tip No 7 - Get a good fish identification book and study it.

Tip No 8 - Always wash salt off your fishing gear, including hooks and lures, after you've finished fishing at the coast.

Tip No 9 - Try and have a freshwater tackle box and a saltwater tackle box. This will protect your freshwater stuff from rust at the coast.

Tip No 10 - When you are not using your reels, keep them in a dark place, like a draw or cloth bag. Sunlight damages fishing line very quickly.

Friday, July 20, 2007

Get To Know The Barramundi

The Barramundi (Lates calcarifer) is a species of diadromous fish in family Latidae of order Perciformes. It ranges from Torres Strait to New Guinea and northern and eastern Australia.
Barramundi is a loanword from a Queensland Aboriginal language of the Rockhampton area meaning "large scales" or "large, scaly river" fish.

Barramundi are usually a pale grey-green with a coppery shimmer, and can grow to a maximum length of 2 m (6 ft 7 in), weighing up to 60 kg (130 lb); specimens weighing 5–6 kg (11–13 lb) are more commonly seen, however. Of typical centropomid shape, it can be distinguished from the Waigeo seaperch (Psammoperca waigiensis) of the same waters by its closely-set nostrils and maxilla which extends back past the eye.

The barramundi feeds on crustaceans, molluscs, and smaller fishes (including its own species); juveniles feed on zooplankton. This catadromous species inhabits rivers and descends to estuaries and tidal flats to spawn. At the start of the monsoon, males migrate downriver to meet females, who lay very large numbers of eggs (multiple millions each). The adults do not guard the eggs or the fry, which require brackish water to develop. The species is sequentially hermaphroditic, most individuals maturing as males and becoming female after at least one spawning season; most of the larger specimens are therefore female.

Highly prized by anglers for their good fighting ability, barramundi are reputed to be good at avoiding fixed nets and best caught on lines and with fishing lures. The fish is also of large commercial importance; it is fished internationally and raised in aquaculture in Australia, India, Indonesia, Thailand, the United Kingdom, the United States and the Netherlands. In Australia, the barramundi is used to stock freshwater reservoirs for recreational fishing. The fish's white flesh is delicate, mild-flavoured, and relatively boneless, making it a popular (and sometimes expensive) food which can be prepared in many ways.