Fishing For Dummies, 2nd Australian and New Zeal E-Book

Steve Starling

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 568

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Created especially for Australian customer! This book puts more fish on your line! Want to dangle a line anywhere in Australia or New Zealand? On the way to becoming a successful angler, discover how to choose your tackle confidently, master rigs and knots, read your fishing environment, cast efficiently and take home more fish for the table -- all while * fishing with safety and sustainability in mind. * Find expert guidance -- absorb Steve Starling's insider knowledge of fishing to develop your angling skills * Build your fishing kit -- discover how to choose the right tackle for the right fish, competently and without waste * Increase your fishing knowledge -- take advantage of myriad tips about constructing effective rigs * Hone your craft -- match your bait to the fish, cast with ease and reel 'em in * Take on sustainability -- immerse yourself in the new age of fishing; catch only what you need * Prepare your catch -- improve your skills in all areas of fish preparation, from gutting to filleting with ease * Cook like a pro -- practise the art of simplicity in the kitchen to retain and release those wondrous fish flavours * Investigate ten top fishing spots -- take a trip to Steve Starling's top fishing spots in Australia and New Zealand Open the book and find: * How to target Aussie/Kiwi saltwater and freshwater fish * Techniques to rig your gear likea pro * Pointers on selecting the best baits, lures and flies * Ways to tie reliable knots -- in all weathers and in the dark * Tips on casting all types of fishing tackle * The right way to release your fish * Ideas on how to contribute to fishing sustainability * A guide to your own style of angling: Jetty rat, estuary or ...

Leseprobe

Fishing For Dummies®, 2nd Australian & New Zealand Edition

by Steve Starling

Fishing For Dummies®

2nd Australian & New Zealand Edition published byWiley Publishing Australia Pty Ltd42 McDougall Street Milton, Qld 4064

www.dummies.com

Copyright © 2010 Wiley Publishing Australia Pty Ltd

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Author: Starling, Stephen

Title: Fishing For Dummies/Steve Starling

Edition: 2nd Australian & New Zealand ed.

ISBN: 978 1 74216 984 2 (pbk.)

Series: For dummies

Notes: Includes index. Previous ed.: 2002.

Dewey Number: 799.1

All rights reserved. No part of this book, including interior design, cover design and icons, may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means (electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the Publisher. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Contracts & Licensing section of John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd, 42 McDougall Street, Milton, Qld 4064, or email [email protected].

Cover image: © 2009 Steve Starling

Typeset by diacriTech, Chennai, India

Printed in China by

Printplus Limited

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Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: THE PUBLISHER AND THE AUTHOR MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES WITH RESPECT TO THE ACCURACY OR COMPLETENESS OF THE CONTENTS OF THIS WORK AND SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION, WARRANTIES OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. NO WARRANTY MAY BE CREATED OR EXTENDED BY SALES OR PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS. THE ADVICE AND STRATEGIES CONTAINED HEREIN MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR EVERY SITUATION. THIS WORK IS SOLD WITH THE UNDERSTANDING THAT THE PUBLISHER IS NOT ENGAGED IN RENDERING LEGAL, ACCOUNTING, OR OTHER PROFESSIONAL SERVICES. IF PROFESSIONAL ASSISTANCE IS REQUIRED, THE SERVICES OF A COMPETENT PROFESSIONAL PERSON SHOULD BE SOUGHT. NEITHER THE PUBLISHER NOR THE AUTHOR SHALL BE LIABLE FOR DAMAGES ARISING HEREFROM. THE FACT THAT AN ORGANISATION OR WEBSITE IS REFERRED TO IN THIS WORK AS A CITATION AND/OR A POTENTIAL SOURCE OF FURTHER INFORMATION DOES NOT MEAN THAT THE AUTHOR OR THE PUBLISHER ENDORSES THE INFORMATION THE ORGANISATION OR WEBSITE MAY PROVIDE OR RECOMMENDATIONS IT MAY MAKE. FURTHER, READERS SHOULD BE AWARE THAT INTERNET WEBSITES LISTED IN THIS WORK MAY HAVE CHANGED OR DISAPPEARED BETWEEN WHEN THIS WORK WAS WRITTEN AND WHEN IT IS READ.

Trademarks: Wiley, the Wiley logo, For Dummies, the Dummies Man logo, A Reference for the Rest of Us!, The Dummies Way, Making Everything Easier, dummies.com and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Wiley Publishing Australia Pty Ltd is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

About the Author

Steve Starling is one of Australia’s best known and most respected fishing writers and television/DVD presenters. At the age of seven, he pulled his first fish from the Lachlan River in central western New South Wales, and Steve claims he was just as firmly hooked as that little redfin perch. Thus began a passionate commitment to recreational angling that has only strengthened over the intervening decades.

A teenage Steve had his first magazine article on fishing published in his final year of high school and five years later went on to become editor of the title that had accepted his story. Four years later, he turned freelance and has since written 20 books, thousands of magazine features and numerous video and television scripts. His work has been published in a dozen countries and several languages, and Steve has travelled and fished across the globe, catching several world record fish in the process.

Through the 1990s, Steve became known to a much wider audience at home and abroad as a regular co-presenter on the long-running Rex Hunt Fishing Adventures television series. As well, he has performed stints in front of the camera as a presenter on The Great Outdoors, The Australian Fishing Show and AFC Outdoors. Steve and his close angling mate, Kaj ‘Bushy’ Busch, also completed three series of an outdoor adventure, fishing and cooking television series called Hooked On Adventure, which was set initially in Western Australia, before moving east to the rest of the nation. Today, Steve is a major contributor to the quarterly magazine-on-DVD known simply as The Fishing DVD.

Steve Starling — better known to many of his fans these days simply as ‘Starlo’ — is a graduate of the University of NSW, where he majored in Modern History and English Literature, briefly teaching these subjects at high school before embarking on his full-time fishing career. He has two grown up children, Tom and Amy, and now resides in Darwin with his partner, Jo, and her daughter, Charlotte, with plans to eventually return to his beloved far south coast of New South Wales.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my fishing partner, business mentor and soul mate, Jo, who never ceases to inspire me, and whose intuitive, left-field/right brain take on angling has taught me to not only give better answers, but also to ask more meaningful questions!

Author’s Acknowledgements

I need to thank plenty of people for their help with this book, and I’m sure to miss a few. First and foremost I’d like to acknowledge all those fellow anglers I’ve met over the years who’ve so willingly shared their knowledge and enthusiasm with me. Whatever I know about fishing today is the sum of their wisdom, not mine.

I’d also like to give a big thanks to Wayne Wells, who created the clear, concise illustrations you see on these pages. Having a friend and a fellow fisher as my illustrator made life so much easier.

Writing the original version and now this updated Australasian edition of Fishing For Dummies has been an interesting exercise. I’ve penned lots of how-to material in the past, but before my Dummies experience, I had never been called upon to write in a manner that’s so accessible and transparent, even to people with zero knowledge of the subject matter. This feat is harder than it looks, and I owe a considerable debt of gratitude to the editors of the original version, Carolyn Beaumont and Karen Earnshaw, and to the always affable and good-humoured Robi van Nooten, my editor on this new version. All three pulled me into line every time I strayed towards jargon and insider-speak, and they constantly posed the simple, incisive questions a newcomer to the sport might be expected to ask. Carolyn, Karen and Robi have made this a much better and more useful book than it would otherwise have been.

Finally, my sincere thanks to Bronwyn Duhigg, the Acquisitions Editor who first suggested and then made possible this timely update of the original book, and its expansion to include our friends across the Tasman in New Zealand. Bronwyn was always a joy to deal with and never got cross with me, even when I bunked off to go fishing instead of finishing my allotted chapters on time! Thank you.

Publisher’s Acknowledgements

We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments through our online registration form located at http://dummies.custhelp.com.

Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:

Acquisitions, Editorial and Media Development

Project Editor: Robi van Nooten, On-Track Editorial Services

Acquisitions Editor: Bronwyn Duhigg

Editorial Manager: Gabrielle Packman

Production

Graphics: Wayne Wells and the Wiley Art Studio

Cartoons: Glenn Lumsden

Proofreader: Justin Coughlan

Indexer: Karen Gillen

Fishing For Dummies®

Table of Contents

Introduction

About This Book

Conventions Used in This Book

Foolish Assumptions

How This Book Is Organised

Part I: Getting to Know Fish

Part II: Tackling the Right Gear

Part III: Using Your Equipment the Right Way

Part IV: The New Age of Fishing

Part V: What Kind of Angler Are You?

Part VI: The Part of Tens

Icons Used in This Book

Where to Go from Here

Part I: Getting to Know Fish

Chapter 1: Fishing Fundamentals

Defining Fish

Fish galore

Fish wishes

Fishing is for Everyone

Hunting for your pound of flesh

Fishing for a top feed

Choosing How to Catch Your Fish

Quality versus quantity

Easy versus hard

Chapter 2: Our Favourite Saltwater Fish

Bountiful Bream

Fishing with finesse

Luring ’em onto your line

Passing the taste test

First-Class Flathead

Taking in the extended family

Colouring to kill

Moving makes for success

Frying the best fish ‘n’ tips

Glorious Garfish

Working the surface

Boning up on your skills

Luverly Leatherjackets

Collecting a right hook

Dressing for dinner

Super Salmon

Strong swimmers

Wolves of the white water

Strong on a plate, too!

Savoury Snapper

Making snappy headlines

Tracking snapper from Tassie to the tropics

Trapping your snapper

Supping on snapper

Tasty Tailor

Sew simple if you know how!

Fresh is best

Trevally Treats

Prize fighters

Raw deal

Terrific Tuna

Fast food

Deep and meaningful

Wonderful Whiting

Shallow-minded

Right royal repast

Chapter 3: Our Favourite Freshwater Fish

Bagging a Barramundi

Barra backyards

Best baits

Banking on Bass

Little Aussie battlers

Bass class

Searching for Golden Perch

Outback survivors

Perch on the plate

Catching Murray Cod

Land of the giants

Let them go, let them grow

Seeing whether the Trout Are About

Trout and about

Swish fish dish

Finding Freshwater Salmon

Desperately seeking salmon

To die for

Part II: Tackling the Right Gear

Chapter 4: On a Hook and a Line

Looking at Hooks

Keeping an eye on the basics

Making sense of the sizing system

Choosing your hook collection

Picking a pattern

Going barbless

Learning Your Lines

Nattering about nylon

Gasping over GSP

Speaking of strength and length

Drawing a line in the sand

Chapter 5: Hot Rods

Casting into the Space Age

Glass versus graphite

Fittings and fixtures

Inner-line alternatives

Choosing the Right Rod for You

Sinking the myth of the general-purpose rod

Knowing where you’re fishing and what you want to catch

Meeting the major rod families

Buying a rod — shopping around pays off

Seven Rods for Seven Situations

Harbour bream

Bay whiting

Taupo trout

Bight mulloway

Herring special

Barra buster

Bass specialist

Balancing Your Tackle to Match Your Rod

Understanding Your Rod Action

Looking After Your Rods

Chapter 6: The Reel Deal

Spool School

Choosing your eggbeater

Taking a long line

Avoiding line tangles

Seven Deadly Reels

Handcasters

Centrepin reels

Sidecast reels

Closed-face reels

Threadline reels

Baitcaster reels

Overhead reels

Reel Respect

Don’t faucet

Oil toil

Pro-active

Chapter 7: Terminal Tackle

Sinkers Away!

Thinking small

Picking a sinker shape

Using split shot

Buying and making sinkers

Swivels’ Turn

Switching swivels

Discovering a few swivel secrets

Buying and keeping swivels

Quick Connection

Adding a weak link

Enjoying the two-ringed circus

Bobbers’ Job

Using stemmed floats

Using floats without stems

Fixing the position of floats

The Lure Cure

Take Me to Your Leader

Using wire leaders and traces

Working with snells and snoods

Chapter 8: Baits, Lures and Flies

Seducing Saltwater Fish

Coming the raw prawn

Picking the best of the rest

Catching your own bait

Considering the great de-bait

Tempting Freshwater Fish

Desperately seeking supplies

Opening a can of worms

Trapping shrimps and crayfish

Latching On to Lures and Flies

Bait-catching rigs

Lead-head jigs

Metal jigs, slices and slugs

Plugs and minnows

Poppers and surface lures

Soft plastics

Spinners

Spinnerbaits

Spoons

Trolling lures

Dispelling the Fly-Fishing Myth

Lining up your target

Earning frequent flyers

Part III: Using Your Equipment the Right Way

Chapter 9: Creating Your Fishing Kit

Assembling the Rod and Reel

Reeling with Choices

Organising the Whole Box and Dice

Boxes earn brownie points

Buckets can do the job

Taking Along the Tools of the Trade

Essential items

Non-essential items

Being Safety and Comfort Conscious

Chapter 10: Spooling Up

Feeding the Line to the Spool

Tying One On

Tying for testing times

Tying up loose ends

Winding Up the Process

Spooling your resources

Watching as the tension rises

Working out when to stop

Topping up the spool

Chapter 11: Top Knots to Know

Meeting the Major Knot Families

Tying In with the Blood Knot Family

Half blood knot

Improved half blood knot

Full blood knot

Meeting the Uni Knot Family

Uni knot

Double uni knot

Looking at Exotic Knots

Double knots

Looping the loop

Shock leader knot

Slim and beautiful

Chapter 12: Rigs That Really Work

Choosing from Five Basic Rigs

No-sinker rig

No-sinker rig with swivel

Running sinker rig

Running sinker and swivel rig

Paternoster rig

Mastering Five Fancier Rigs

Fixed float rig

Running float rig

Bubble float rig

Ganged-hook rigs

Lure fishing rig

Chapter 13: Cast Away

The Mechanics of Casting

Casting with a Threadline Outfit

Working out when to release the line

Restricting the length of your cast

Casting with a Sidecast Outfit

Casting with an Overhead Outfit

Banishing backlash

Practising makes perfect sense

Casting with Fly Gear

Chapter 14: Hooking, Playing and Landing Fish

Fish or Wish?

Controlling the line

Striking and setting the hook

Play Time

Playing the fish

Pumping and winding

Catch Me if You Can

Using a landing net

Using a gaff

Part IV: The New Age of Fishing

Chapter 15: Kiss or Kill?

Let ’em Go, Let ’em Grow

Deciding how many fish to keep

Releasing fish to ensure survival

Kill ’em and Grill ’em

Killing Your Catch with Care

The last rites

A bloody business

Good point!

Keeping Your Catch Cool

Ice is nice

Slurry with a fringe benefit on top

Ice boxes are cooler

Chapter 16: Cleaning, Preparing and Cooking Your Catch

Getting ’em Clean and Prepared for Chef

Gutting and gilling fish

Scaling fish

Filleting fish

Skinning fish

Making steaks

Cooking Your Catch

Dining In Is Simply Delicious

Adopting a Recipe for Success

Freezing Points

Chapter 17: Fishing for the Future

Thinking About Yesteryear

Thinking About Tomorrow

Limit your kill

Toxic tackle?

Fish for your kids and their kids, too

Part V: What Kind of Angler Are You?

Chapter 18: Specialise or Speculate?

Anglers versus Danglers

The All-Rounder

The Specialist

The Serial Specialist

Chapter 19: Surf Casters and Rock Hoppers

Finding Fish off the Beach

Reading the waves from the beach

Timing the tide

Baiting Your Beach Fishing Rig

Introducing Rock Hopping

Locking into Rock Fishing Locations

Fishing on shallow reefs

Rock fishing in mixed-depth locations

Rock fishing from deep-water ledges

Recognising the rock formations of overlap zones

Rock Fishing and Reading the Tides

Watching the ebb and flow

Rock fishing safety first — staying alive

Chapter 20: Jetty Rats

Picking Prime Piscatorial Real Estate

Finding Treasures at Your Feet

Tuning in to the changing conditions

Casting out to cover all bases

Landing Fish from Jetties

Chapter 21: Estuary Anglers

Taking a Look at Estuary Fish

Reading Estuaries

Understanding tidal influences

Looking out for structural features

Looking at the Big Picture

Chapter 22: Deep-Sea Anglers

Boating Out to Deep Water

Bouncing into Bottom Fishing

Drifting the Sand and Gravel Beds

Fishing for Game

Learning from the experts

Trolling offshore

Chapter 23: Freshwater Fanatics

Singing the Sweetwater Tune

Fishing Trout Streams

Spotting pools and riffles

Working the transitional zones

Fishing Aussie Outback Rivers

Who’s coming to dinner?

Where to find dinner

Fishing in Stillwater

Stillwater revival

Cracking the stillwater code

Spotting stillwater structures

Chapter 24: Fly Floggers

Examining the Art of Fur and Feathers

Using natural and synthetic materials

Tying your own flies

Choosing the Right Gear

Reading Up on Fly-Fishing

Chapter 25: Ahoy, Captain!

Defining Fishing Boats

Asking Yourself ‘Do I Really Need a Boat?’

Taking the Plunge and Buying a Boat

Giving In to the Lure of Boating

Part VI: The Part of Tens

Chapter 26: The Ten Best Fishing Websites

Watching the Weather

Tracking the Tides

Finding Your Way There and Back

Getting Hooked On the Fishing Rules

Chatting to Fellow Fishers

Logging On to the Super Sites

Competing in Tournaments

Buying, Selling and Owning a Boat

Shopping for Fishing Gear

Buying at an Electronic Auction

Wandering the World Wide Web

Chapter 27: My Ten Favourite Australian Fishing Spots

Trying Out Tassie’s Treats

Trekking for wild trout

Working the Great Western Tiers

Coping with four seasons in one day

Fishing Victoria’s Bountiful Bemm

Catching a mixed bag

Casting around for the hot spots

Discovering the NSW Far South Coast

Nailing ’em in Narooma

Travelling from Bermagui to Tathra

Piering into the southern delights

Conquering Big River Country

Exploring the Clarence

Tangling with bass

Visiting Queensland’s Valley of Lakes

Starting with Somerset

Working Wivenhoe Dam

Checking out Cressbrook and Cooby

Cruising Cape York’s Crystal Coast

Lodging Your Vote for Melville Island

Enjoying all the comforts of home

Following the catch-and-release philosophy

Finding value for money

Roaming West Australia’s Kimberley Region

Walking on the Kimberley’s Wild Side

Exploring the Kimberley’s south end

Extending Yourself at Dirk Hartog Island

Hooking in to the fish

Boating for variety

Making a Killing at South Australia’s Kangaroo Island

Sampling the action

Fighting with whiting

Trying for bream

Chapter 28: My Ten Favourite New Zealand Fishing Spots

Tough at the Top

A Bay Full of Islands

Earning your stripes

Inside story

Auckland for Anglers

Plenty On Offer

Taupo Temptations

The Excellent Eg’

Pick of the Upuk’

Pomahaka Perfection

Staircase to Heaven

Gem of a Creek

Chapter 29: Ten Things No-One Ever Tells You about Fishing

Letting It All Hang Out

Saving time and motion

Putting safety first

Coming to Grips with Snags

Jiggling and wiggling

Struggling and tugging

Taming the Hook

Hooking a Human

Banishing barbs

Removing hooks from people

Targeting One Species

Doubling Your Money

Repeating Productive Patterns

Taking the Good with the Bad

Lying for a Living!

Glossary

Introduction

Surveys of the leisure activities of Australians and New Zealanders constantly place recreational fishing among our top three most popular outdoor pursuits, along with swimming and the various court sports (tennis, squash, bowls and so on).

As many as one in four of us over the age of ten casts a line each year, representing an army of some five million hopefuls, each one captivated by the promise of catching a dream and hauling home a whopper. Yet the vast majority of foot soldiers in this angling army are occasional danglers and casual anglers, and the sad reality is that most of them rarely hook anything more exciting than a lump of weed or an old boot.

My aim in writing this book is to redress the imbalance and empower these rod-wielding dreamers to a stage where they actually begin catching fish on a regular basis. A big call? Yes. But I believe this challenge is achievable.

About This Book

Back in the 1970s, I remember there being a great deal of talk about the coming social revolution. Computers and robotics, it was said, would free modern man and woman from the drudgery of work, making the closing decades of the 20th century a golden age of unprecedented leisure. People would be required to invent stimulating new ways to entertain themselves in this brave new world of unbridled recreation . . . Huh! Sure thing!

As with so many predictions about the future, this one missed the mark by a country mile. In reality, Aussies and Kiwis are toiling longer and harder today than at any time since the introduction (in Australia in 1856) of the 40-hour working week. Like most of the Western world in this new millennium, Australia and New Zealand are nations of workaholics; rich in material goods but increasingly starved for time to enjoy the fruits of this hard labour.

One symptom of time poverty has been a dramatic shift in the way anglers acquire new skills such as the ability to rig a rod, tie a knot, hook a fish and clean the catch. In my youth, budding junior anglers typically spent a long and unstructured fishing apprenticeship at the elbow of a wise parent, grandparent, sibling, aunt, uncle or mate. For better or worse, those days are largely a memory. Today, people’s lives are part of an era of out-sourcing, re-training and power seminars, where everything from cooking a meringue to changing an oil filter is taught in high energy bursts of instruction, employing multi-media presentations, spreadsheets and interactive computer displays. Today, people want to know how, and they want to know now! So, this book is for anyone who wets a line in Australian or New Zealand waters or plans to do so, regardless of age (assuming they’re old enough to read!) and initial skill level.

While much of this book is pitched squarely at the new chum (especially those time-poor individuals I mentioned earlier), these pages contain plenty of information that benefits more experienced anglers. The truth is: You’re never too old to learn. I pick up new tidbits of fishing know-how every time I cast a line, read a magazine article or visit an angling website. I doubt you’re any different.

Conventions Used in This Book

Important bits of information are formatted in special ways to make sure you notice them right away:

In This Chapter lists: Chapters begin with a list of the topics I cover in that chapter. This list represents a table of contents in miniature.

Numbered lists: When you see a numbered list, follow the steps in the specific order to accomplish a given task such as learning the art of tying knots.

Bulleted lists: Bulleted lists (like this one) indicate things that you can do in any order or list related bits of information such as what to pack into your everyday fishing kit.

New terms: Recreational fishing terms appear in italics and are closely preceded or followed by an easy-to-understand definition.

Web addresses: When I describe activities or websites of interest, I include the address in a special typeface like this: www.fishnet.com.au. Although the website is current at the time of writing, web addresses can be pretty fickle. So, if you can’t find the site, try looking for it by using an internet search engine.

Currency: When I give you an idea of costs, for example, the price of fishing tackle, all figures are in Australian dollars unless otherwise stated.

Sidebars: Text enclosed in a shaded grey box consists of information that’s interesting to know but not necessarily critical to your understanding of the topic.

Foolish Assumptions

Forgive me for making assumptions about my readers, but as part of the large and ever-growing For Dummies library, Fishing For Dummies, 2nd Australian & New Zealand Edition, is a how-to book that assumes absolutely no prior knowledge of the subject on the part of the reader. At times, my definitions and explanations may seem overly simplistic. I apologise in advance for times when you may feel I’m spelling out in painstaking detail what our English friends so aptly call the bleedin’ obvious. But for every reader who rolls his or her eyes skywards and mutters ‘I knew that’, at least another three faces are going to light up with understanding of a concept or a process for the very first time. This book is especially for those people . . . and also for the rest of us!

How This Book Is Organised

This book is divided into six parts.

Part I: Getting to Know Fish

This part does what it should do: it introduces you to a fish. You may think fish are just waiting to be caught, but to achieve a catch you have to know how these little critters operate. Part I fills you in on the basics of understanding fish.

Part II: Tackling the Right Gear

Without the right gear, you can’t catch the right fish. By the time you complete Part II, you’re likely to know enough to want to walk into a tackle store anywhere in Australia or New Zealand without feeling out of your depth and begin shopping for the bits and pieces you now know you need to go fishing.

Part III: Using Your Equipment the Right Way

This part teaches you how to put together all the bits and pieces you may need to go fishing. You can find out how to mount reels on rods, learn new twists on tying knots and discover how to construct effective rigs for different target species and styles of fishing.

Part IV: The New Age of Fishing

Knowing why you’re going fishing is very important these days because more and more fisher-folk decide to return some or most of their catch to the water. This part examines both catch-and-release and kill-and-eat philosophies and explains their relative merits, as well as espousing the benefits of a sustainable approach to the sport. And when you do decide to take your catch home for dinner, you can also read about the most humane and efficient way to prepare your fish for the seafood feast you’re planning.

Part V: What Kind of Angler Are You?

You’re definitely not a deep-sea angler if you can’t stand to sit up straight in a bath tub without getting nauseous. Anglers fall into many different categories and you may change from one category to another over your fishing life. Knowing which kind of angling best suits you is important, so take a trip through the chapters in Part V to find out who you really are.

Part VI: The Part of Tens

Here’s where you get lists of helpful hints from my ten favourite websites to the best fishing destinations in Australia and New Zealand and all those little trivial bits that are usually left out of fishing books.

Icons Used in This Book

Throughout Fishing For Dummies, 2nd Australian & New Zealand Edition, you encounter little icons in the left margin of the pages that alert you to specific types of information in the text. Here’s what the icons mean:

Catch Words are terms unique to recreational angling (and often specific to Australian or New Zealand fishing). The expressions are angling lingo or jargon. Sometimes these words mean very different things to their standard dictionary definitions when used in a fishing context. As well as being flagged with this icon and italicised the first time they’re used in the book, all Catch Words are explained in layman’s terms at their first occurrence.

Tips are little nuggets of know-how I’ve accumulated over a lifetime of angling. Often, the tips describe short cuts or sneaky tricks that make the fishing process easier and more efficient. Think of the paragraphs marked as tips as the piscatorial equivalent of insider trading on the stockmarket, but without the associated risks of prosecution and imprisonment!

Every now and then I mark a point to remember. These are the rules that can get you into catching fish and keep you out of trouble. Look for this icon every time you need to refresh your fishing fact file.

Warnings are exactly that — a heads-up to potential dangers facing you or your fishing tackle. Be sure to read and take heed of all passages of text flagged with the Warning icon!

Where to Go from Here

Fishing For Dummies, 2nd Australian & New Zealand Edition, is a teaching tool aimed at the time poor. I’ve squeezed four decades of personal experience into these pages, along with all the things I’ve learnt from a phalanx of grandparents, parents, sibling, aunts, uncles and fishing mates from Darwin Harbour to the Derwent River, and the Bay of Islands to the Buller River. If you can make the time to read this book, you’ll understand at least the basics of the recreational angling process as it’s practised in Australia and New Zealand today . . . and that’s a promise!

For Dummies titles are reference books and if you don’t want to read from Chapter 1 right through (maybe because you’re a seasoned angler and way past the need to define what a hook or sinker is or be taken step-by-step through spooling up a reel), the beauty of this book is found in the way that you can browse here and there — rather like dropping a line at one snag, then moving to another, as the urge takes you. You can take on board those topics you know little about or want to brush up on and just skip over the others. All in a day’s fishing really . . . um, reading, I mean!

Part I

Getting to Know Fish

Glenn Lumsden

‘Apparently I have firm, white, fine-grained flesh and I’m high in Omega-3 fatty acids. No wonder I’m such a catch!’

In this part . . .

The most important ingredient in the fishing equation is the fish themselves. Chapter 1 gives you a vital overview of the anatomy of fish and how fish live — and survive — and the chapter offers a range of important insights into the recreational angling process. Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 describe, in detail, Australia and New Zealand’s most popular saltwater and freshwater fish, where to find these fish, how to catch the critters and whether or not the fish listed make tasty treats.

Chapter 1

Fishing Fundamentals

In This Chapter

Understanding how fish work

Deciding what type of angler you are

Making the hunt as hard (or easy) as you want

The delightful recreation we call fishing has many facets and in this book I’m taking on the challenge of attempting to explain all of them. First up, is the subject I regard as the single most important ingredient — the fish!

‘How-to’ texts on angling often bury the chapters that actually talk about fish way back in the book or they place information about this vital ingredient at the end. I can state this with authority because I’ve buried the poor old fish at the deep end of books myself, when in truth the act of fishing is a pointless exercise without these wonderful creatures. Fish deserve prominence and respect and that’s why I’m dealing with fish upfront.

Every other subject in this book is guided, shaped and dictated by fish and their behaviour, so it makes perfect sense to deal with these champions of evolution before any other subject. On the off-chance that you disagree with this approach and are eager to dive straight into the chapters covering fishing gear and techniques, by all means skip this section for now, but please do come back for a visit later.