Ep.32 | Tony Thwin | How to Catch More Squid!

Tony Thwin is a well known face around the Perth fishing community. He has caught Marlin, Mulloway and everything between, but even after catching plenty of trophy fish, squid is still his true obsession.

In this episode the former WA tackle rep gives us a squid masterclass and breaks down jig sizing, sink rates, casting distance and a full colour system for every time of day. He shares his eight jig starter kit, the spots most people drive straight past, and a kids squidding hack that just works.

Subscribe to Tony's new youtube channel below...
https://www.youtube.com/@SquidMastersWA

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Transcript

Tall Tails Podcast — Episode 32: Tony Thwin

Mark (00:00): Welcome back to another episode of the Rodcast. This episode is brought to you by Daiwa. I want to highlight the best of the best, the Saltiga range by Daiwa. I've been using Saltigas for over 15 years, Rothy, and they're still my favourite combos.

Jake (00:14): This is Daiwa's flagship range of reels, rods, line and lures, built for serious saltwater fishing. This is the gear you take when you're chasing proper fish like GTs, tuna and kingfish. It's built for punishment, power, durability and performance, so you can trust your gear and focus on fighting your next trophy fish.

Mark (00:32): If you want gear that won't fail when it matters, this is it. Saltiga, beat your record. Now let's get into the rodcast. Mate, I'm going real good. I'm super keen to be back in here. It feels like it's been a little while, but yeah, pumped, mate.

Jake (01:10): Been bloody busy. Today we have a very special guest, a familiar face for a lot of our listeners and anyone within the WA tackle trade. This guy's done everything from game fishing down to whiting. I'm told he's a bit of a squid guru as well. Former industry rep, worked at Anglers Fishing World for a long time. A very special guest, Mr Tony Thwin. Is it Thwin or Thwin? Silent H. We weren't sure if your ancestors had a lisp or not, mate.

Tony (01:39): Thwin.

Jake (01:40): We had to tell you to stop talking before we pressed record, because you were already talking some good chat with us. So we start every episode with the last fish you caught, mate. Run us through it. Or squid, if it was a squid.

Tony (01:53): It was both. On Saturday I went for a fun fish with Marco, Marco Rafici, who owned Anglers Fishing World, and his brother Emilio. So Emilio, myself and another good mate, Jason, went out. We have a spot north of the North Mole. There's a spot there that I've always liked, and this time of year is when they fire up. We just stopped for a quick bait. Three or four drifts and we got twenty-two squid. About eight or nine of them were big. The biggest one, the hood was about 27 centimetres.

Jake (02:35): Wow.

Tony (02:36): I couldn't believe it. While Emilio had that one, he had another rod in the water. I took a video of him showing off his squid, and in the background the rod was just bouncing. Emilio, like all Italians, seems to think you need a 24 kilo game rod, a cheat stick, as a squid rod. So that rod was going off, and it was another big one. Then Jase got a big one, I got a big one. It was just continual.

Jake (03:04): So were you fishing out of the rod holders, or how were you doing it?

Tony (03:08): I do it two ways. One out of the rod holder. With the squid jigs, because you're moving, you can't just drop your jig, you have to either drop it and count it down or cast it. So I'd cast about ten metres with the drift, put it in the rod holder so the jig can drop back down, and by the time it reaches the line of the rod it's roughly six, seven metres. The other one I'd let go and count down too. The jigs I was using are 3.5s, and their sink rate is probably between three and three and a half seconds per metre.

Jake (03:54): So that's how you figure out the sink rate. Is that what the number on the squid jig means?

Tony (03:59): No, the number on the squid jig is some Japanese unit of measurement. It's a measurement of the jig from the sinker to the start of the crown. So if it's 3.5, it's 3.5 inches. Not tip to tip, but from the sinker to the start of the crown.

Jake (04:23): I feel like I'm about to get the education of a lifetime here.

Mark (04:25): That's the thing, mate, I love squidding. Who doesn't? But I've never gone in depth into it. It's always been, oh, we'll just go for a squid and see how we go. Never overthought it. I'm a bit of a rookie, but you generally can catch squid.

Jake (04:42): Yeah, you catch a few now and then.

Mark (04:44): But I'm super excited about this.

Tony (04:47): Some of the guys in the eastern states, we try to get our jigs as close as we can to the bottom, because squid are eaten by everything. You can't have a squid sitting in midwater waiting for things to come. He'll sit on the bottom, virtually translucent. You can just make out a thing until they hit something and then they light up.

Jake (05:11): Like they get excited?

Tony (05:12): They're a clever creature. For the size of the squid, they have the biggest eye for their size of any creature. Massive eyes. Their eyesight's fantastic. They see at night, they see ultraviolet, and they see normal like us. We have a small number of colour receptors. They have something like 10, 20, 30 times more colour receptors than us, but they only see in black and white.

Jake (05:53): Right.

Tony (05:53): But they see colour better through the shade. Our colour receptors face backwards, so light comes in, hits the plate at the back, then goes to the receptors. Theirs are direct, right in front. So they see ultraviolet. This is why a lot of the lures, like that green lure there, in this low light look like they're glowing. It's the iridescent paint on it. In the water it's just glowing, so it stands right out and they see it. Nothing in nature is that yellow. There are a few tropical fish, but nothing around here. But squid love that green.

Jake (06:38): We're going to get into it. I'm going to pause you right here, Tony, because if we start by talking squid we'd be here for two hours and never talk about anything else. I know your fishing knowledge spans multiple disciplines. I've been told you were early in on the game fishing scene, and anyone who knows me, all our regular listeners, will know I'm an absolute nuffy for Mulloway. I've been told you're a bit of a mentor to one of our great mates, Tim Farnell. I want to get to that. But first I want to wind it all the way back. Everyone's got a fishing origin story, and I want to know yours. Where did fishing start for you, mate?

Tony (07:14): It was a love, my father and I. Ever since I was a little boy in Burma. There used to be drainage canals outside our street and the next street. What we used to do was get pins, bend them into a hook, tie some very thin sewing thread, then go up to one of your mates when he's not looking and rip a hair out of his head. The older boys used to do that to me. Then on the drains there were water lilies and little dragonflies that sit there, and you'd catch a dragonfly, tie it up, and use the hair to tie it onto the hook.

Mark (08:11): No way.

Tony (08:11): And you'd let it go down the drain. But you never fished your side. You'd fish the other side, catch their fish and bring it back, because you couldn't eat these fish, the drains were so dirty. So you'd catch them from their side, bring them back to your side, because you'd clean up their drains, and they'd be doing it further down the road, fishing your fish and taking it out. From there, when we came to Western Australia, the number one fish a Burmese person chooses out of all fish is cobbler, because the cobbler flesh is used in Burma to make a national signature dish. Like the Vietnamese have pho. Ours is like that, but theirs is made from beef stock, ours is made from cobbler stock.

Jake (09:05): Ah, okay, gotcha.

Tony (09:06): Once you get the black cobbler from the river and make that soup, it's unbelievable. We were catching monsters at that time.

Jake (09:17): So when you came over, how old were you? And were you just mind-blown by what you could catch? You'd been fishing a drain with hair and all that.

Tony (09:32): Seven. When I saw the river, I thought, what the hell? I know there are big rivers in Burma, but here you could just walk down. There were no raging torrents going past. We'd dig the worms, and this is before where Burswood is now, it was a Belmont dump, we'd drive there and dig the blood worms there. My dad and I did this every Friday.

Jake (09:55): How good.

Tony (09:55): We'd go by the Narrows Bridge. There's one palm tree on the south side, you could drive right next to it, have our rods out. The amount of cobbler in those days was incredible. They'd be big. I remember three cobbler I caught one night filled a 20 litre bucket. Big heads like this.

Jake (10:18): That's fantastic. We used to do cobbler in Savannah's when we were kids, with a gidgey and a torch. You'd have one of those big yellow dolphin torches. And if you had a set of balls on you, you'd go no shoes.

Tony (10:33): The first time I did that was on the weed patch. When the weed washes up under the shore you'd walk along it, and then you'd see the orange eyes looking up at you.

Jake (10:44): Mate, it's so fun. I've done it with my kids. So fun.

Mark (10:48): It's not allowed in the Swan River. I saw someone down at Ocean Reef Marina doing it recently. But I reckon I'm the luckiest bloke ever when it comes to cobbler and managing not to step on one. Down at Mandurah, my missus lives just up the road, and we were down there the other day walking through the water. I reckon I've trod on a cobbler at least 30 times, and touch wood, I've never stood on the spine. It always feels like a snake slithering under my foot.

Tony (11:21): You'd want one, because on those big ones the spine is razor sharp on one side and jagged like an arrowhead on the other. If you stand on it, he's not going to stand still. He'll make a mess of it.

Mark (11:35): Funny stingray story. We were playing a game of footy over in Melbourne once, and we did our recovery at St Kilda Beach. You remember Daniel Kerr? So Kerr, a few of us weren't going to run with the team, so we went straight in the water. We're walking along in our cossies in freezing cold water, and I was right next to Kerr, and he goes, ah, something bit me.

Tony (12:01): I think it was a crab.

Mark (12:03): I turned around and pissed myself laughing. He's looking at me like, what? Then, stingray, stingray got him. He had blood coming out, took him straight up to the doctors, and he missed the next week playing. Lynchy comes over and goes, oh, does it hurt? And Kerr just turned around and let him have it. It was brutal, because stingrays have venom too. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, the pain he was in. He was literally getting straddled by the doctor for a good 20 minutes. So the cobbler in the Swan and the cobbler we're getting, are they different?

Tony (12:49): I think they're the same, but the ones in the river don't leave, they stay in the river. They go black because they're in the mud, and they get to eat the best things, the worms, shrimps, prawns. They grow quite well, and their flesh is a lot darker than the ones you catch in the ocean. But they still eat them all, catfish.

Jake (13:13): And what's your recipe? You'll put them in soup?

Tony (13:16): It's a very complicated soup. But no one liked them. In the 70s when we were here, then late 80s, all of a sudden the Aussies started going, oh, cobbler's not bad. So the professional fishermen virtually wiped out the cobbler population in our rivers in Western Australia. That's why there was a ban on for 15 years.

Jake (13:47): Up north, the catfish fishery, they call them silver cobbler, because I think people got put off by the name catfish. There you go, different one.

Mark (13:58): I've seen them rainbow trout fishing too.

Jake (14:00): I've seen them. I know a couple of brooks and rivers they're in.

Tony (14:03): Fresh water. They start off like that and then they come in, because they can live in both, fresh and salt.

Jake (14:10): That's why around Fremantle you get the black cobbler and you can see them swimming around. They're the ocean ones. The water's salty there anyway.

Mark (14:18): So how did you transition from that style of fishing? What was next?

Tony (14:22): The river was my love for many, many years, because I used to get seasick really badly. If we went into Fisherman's Harbour and I hopped on a boat, within two minutes I'd start getting crook. Then I discovered this secret drug called Scop, from Scandinavia. There's a patch you put behind your ear, on your neck, but it affects people badly.

Tony (14:59): For me, I was going out on a boat and not getting seasick. The most wonderful drug on earth. Then they stopped bringing it in because people were hallucinating. People used it for the drug. One patch is meant to last you five days, and people who get seasick would just rip it off and whack it on.

Mark (15:21): Load up.

Tony (15:22): I think because I was really, really fit, that's why I was getting seasick. Then as I stopped playing soccer and got a little bit chubby, that's what happened. My balance levels weren't reacting as quickly. And then I never got seasick ever again.

Jake (15:44): So do you take anything now?

Tony (15:46): No, nothing.

Jake (15:47): Wow, all good. That's a big change.

Tony (15:50): It's incredible. My father, I took him out in the river on my boat 15 years ago, he got seasick. So I got it from him. But once I discovered that, then it was ocean. Then river fishing. But then we're talking about Mulloway.

Jake (16:09): What was it for you?

Tony (16:11): It was everything. The bream, the big bream. Bream is one of the best fish next to coral trout for steaming, because the flesh is white and thick, and it steams beautifully. The skin, like a trout, is quite hard, so when you steam it the flesh inside gets insulated a bit. You don't cook it, you just steam it. And then the Mulloway.

Jake (16:43): Tell me more. Don't hold back with the Mulloway, mate.

Tony (16:47): I used to fish for Mulloway at night. I'd ride my bike. This is when I was allowed to go, when I was twelve. I was allowed to ride from my house in Cloverdale to the river. I rode all the way through to Guildford, all the way around, chasing the bony herring and the mullet. Wherever I'd go to one spot, nothing there, no bonies jumping, I'd get on my bike and ride. I reckon I'd ride about 20 miles a day.

Jake (17:22): How's that?

Tony (17:24): That was just my drive, the adrenaline. I'd dig worms for my initial bait, then jag bonies or mullet and put them on live. Once I saw them, because you needed them concentrated so I could jag them, then I'd fish there. The night I met Tim, Tim Farnell, he was 16. I started from the Causeway and came up, came up, and ended up at Ron Courtney Island, back towards Bassendean. Just on the other side of the Royal.

Tony (18:21): Redcliffe Bridge.

Jake (18:24): Look at this bloke.

Tony (18:25): So I get there and walk to the western tip of Ron Courtney, and it was humid, one of those summer nights, no wind. I looked at the river and at the end of Ron Courtney Island it was shimmering, like it was raining. All these little bony herrings this big had come up to the top. I had three rods. I cast one out, dropped it, and another bony was everywhere, so I dropped my rod in, jiggled it a bit, hooked one, cast it out. Third one, cast it out. This one went off, this one went off, this one went off.

Tony (19:18): Three. That's a big one, but I said no, I don't want him, so I snapped him off. The next one, snapped him off. Then this one came. So I rang Dad, I said, Dad, do you want a Mulloway? He goes, yeah, good, Rupe's having a party. So I said, okay, come and pick me up at Ron Courtney, because he had a Ute. This is about 6:30. I didn't want anyone to see it, so I dragged it up and put the Mulloway under a car until Dad came. All of a sudden this kid comes along and goes, oh, that's a Mulloway, that's a good Mulloway. Oh, where the hell?

Jake (20:01): It was Rothy.

Tony (20:04): It was Tim. He was fishing there, and where we were sitting at Ron Courtney the car park was raised, so if he looked up he'd see under the cars. I started chatting to him, and then he said, you wouldn't be Tony Thwin, would you?

Jake (20:22): I can imagine him saying it too. He would've been so polite.

Tony (20:26): He was a very good kid. Because Rob and I had been featured in articles about Mulloway fishing.

Jake (20:34): Who's Rob?

Tony (20:38): Rob Maddaffery. He and I used to fish together all the time in the river.

Jake (20:42): And is Rob Maddaffery Tim's father-in-law?

Tony (20:47): No, no. Rob Maddaffery worked as a sales rep with me at Benbo Outdoors. Tim was a factory manager then. Rob is one of these really, really good fishermen. He grew up fishing the river with his dad for Mulloway and Tailor, catching Tailor up in Bassendean.

Mark (21:10): Yeah, and good Tailor.

Tony (21:14): They go right up.

Jake (21:15): Timbo sniffing around your Mulloway, that's how it started.

Tony (21:18): That was his dream. Living up here, because he used to live right up here all his life, the river was a fair way, so he had to get his uncle to take him. He'd read about us and about the river. He goes, oh, that's great. I said, listen, Tim, I've got some spare bonies, throw these, you may get them. Go down, if the bonies are still shimmering you'll get them. He didn't get any that day. From there I saw him at boat shows. He's a great guy. Lovely, lovely guy.

Jake (21:56): He's one of the best blokes in fishing that I know. I want to start talking about the squid for a moment.

Jake (22:05): You've done a lot of fishing, there's so much we could talk about, but the meat and potatoes of this conversation is the squid.

Jake (22:13): These jigs on the table. We didn't think you were going to bring all that in, but you're pretty much going to run a masterclass here. So let's get into it. Mulloway, Marlin, everything in between, you've caught all the fish under the sun, yet squid is your real passion. Why is that?

Tony (22:37): It first started like with all fishermen. For me there are three types of fishermen, and three types of adrenaline, the endorphin rush. The first rush is what they catch, either it's a big fish or a thousand fish, and they get their endorphin spike from that. The next is when you're fighting the fish, a big fish running and running, and the endorphins just keep going. And then the third, which I am, is the hook set. It's a short endorphin hit, but fishing for bream with lures, a hundred casts, if you get one or two hits, that's your endorphin hit.

Tony (23:24): For me, if I cast a hundred times I should be able to get about ten or fifteen hits with the squid. That's what started me off. When Breaden came in, a Japanese JDM brand of squid jigs and squid rods. Of all the rods I've ever bought, the most expensive is a squid rod. A thousand dollars, it cost me 17 years ago. That's a lot of money back then.

Jake (24:03): A thousand bucks for a rod's not unheard of today.

Tony (24:07): That was when I first started doing the seminars. I've always said, if you sold Mercedes-Benzes and people see you drive home in an old bomb, you're an imposter as a Mercedes salesman. So for me, I bought that as a status thing. With that I bought a $700 reel, the Vanquish squid reel, double handle. I taught myself to wind left hand, because right hand you get more power. If you go one day and just wind left hand, you'll pick it up.

Jake (24:56): It's funny you say that, because we've got a left-handed reel here, and I enjoy it so much more.

Tony (25:04): If you put it on the rod, your jigging action, you get more control.

Mark (25:08): I remember watching Rex Hunt back in the day, and he was like, you've got to learn to wind left-handed, because you cast and then you're straight onto it.

Jake (25:16): It looks cool too. It doesn't look as clunky as casting and switching hands.

Tony (25:21): From that, $200 for a fishing line.

Tony (25:28): But what really got me in was when the owner of Breaden, his name's Koichi, from Japan. He named his Japanese company Breaden because Mark Breeden was his favourite baseballer in America. The B looks like a 13, and that was his number, Mark Breeden was number 13. Fun little fact. So he brings Jun, his professional fishing guy, and they call him the squid doctor, because Jun is an orthopaedic surgeon who stopped being a surgeon to fish. We announced he was going to be in the shop, and on the Sunday he'd be on the Cockburn town wall. At that time we didn't know about squid rods. He had an eight foot six, a thousand dollar rod. A lot of people came to see him, because squidding had just started taking off. We get up on the rocks and say, do you mind if we have a couple of casts? No. Everyone's casting about 30, 40 metres. Jun gets up on this rock and punches his jig out. I don't think I could cast a two-ounce star sinker and a mulie as far as he's casting that squid jig. The power. And also the professional for Yamashita, Kazakaoi.

Mark (27:04): I remember those two guys, when they cast that rod it's like a whip and it's gone.

Jake (27:12): So it makes a difference having a squid rod.

Tony (27:14): It does, because you cast further. The guides are very close, so there's no wind play, no slap, because the line coming off the spool is stripped down straight away. They usually use a low rider guide, backwards. I could tell you the story of why that's in there, because I was a Fuji rep and I saw what was happening with the guides, but that's another story. So Jun was punching it out, then waiting. Before, we'd just wind the jig, didn't know any better. So I sat down with him afterwards. First cast, squid. Second cast, squid. Third cast, squid. I realised why he was getting one every cast. His jig was in the water five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten times longer than any other jig out there. Because he was casting so far, it gave time for the squid in the general area to see his jig working, flashing, dancing, boom. If you look at a squid jig and work it up, the body of that jig has no contours. It's meant to come straight up. If you whip it with a broomstick, the jig comes flying up. If you jig it with an eight foot three or eight foot six parabolic rod that takes a lot of the pressure, with a soft drag, the jig only moves this much, but because you're giving so much power it shimmers, boom, like that. Then it drops again. Very violent action. After all that, I spoke to him. Basically what he was doing was counting down. Once that squid jig hits the water, if say you cast 100 metres and flick the bail over, the jig drops at a 45 degree angle. If you wait and wait, you could lose 20 metres of ground. So what he did was leave the bail open, wait for that jig, which is 3.5 seconds a metre, say six metres, so 20 seconds. He's waiting 20 seconds for that jig to drop. When it gets there. Now on my Ocean's Legacy Squid Seeker rod, which is seven foot six, when I draw, boom, boom, boom, I know it's half a metre, half a metre, half a metre. So if I'm in six metres of water and I've pulled it up one and a half metres, I've got to wait nine, ten seconds for it to drop back near the bottom.

Tony (30:15): Squid fishing isn't like normal fishing where you're talking to your mates. When I cast out, I'm counting virtually. After a while you get into the rhythm.

Tony (30:24): You count it back down and work it up, count it back down and work it. So that sink rate, people go, how do you know?

Tony (30:36): The packets tell you. They tell you, but it's hidden.

Jake (30:40): Chuck it here, I've got my glasses on. So the packet tells you, and you take note of that every time you buy a squid jig.

Tony (30:49): Yeah. 3.5 seconds per metre.

Jake (30:52): Oh, yeah.

Tony (30:52): So you know that jig.

Jake (30:54): So that's something that's 3.0, but then it's got 3. If you didn't know what you were looking for, you'd have an idea. You need a barcode on this one.

Jake (31:03): So 3.5. They all do it. Is that a rough guide for the sink rate if they don't know what they're talking about?

Tony (31:08): No. But you can work it out yourself. When you get to a rock platform, this is from the shore, cast out. Once your jig hits the water, leave your bail off and count.

Tony (31:25): One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, four one thousand, until it hits the bottom, and you know when it hits the bottom. Then you know how deep it is.

Tony (31:35): Then work it. If you've got weed on it, wind it in, take the weed off, cast it out again. So now you know that if it's six metres, it's 3.5 seconds, 20 seconds will do it.

Jake (31:47): Is that 3.5 seconds per metre, not 3.5 metres a second? So it does what I said. Per metre. Seconds per metre. Gotcha.

Tony (31:59): Looking at that jig, see the weight, the sinker, see how it's a bit down from the nose? That's your standard drop, that's where the standard will drop out at 45 degrees. They do that because of the squid. If the squid sees that as a fish, he knows fish have monocular vision. One eyeball can be looking everywhere, they see 360 around them. The only place they can't see is where their bottom is, down low, because the body covers them from seeing it. So the squid comes up as it's dropping at 45, with his tentacles, and grabs it. That's why a lot of the jigs I have, the top of the squid jig is always furry. It's the tentacles that come up and grab it, not them biting it.

Jake (32:57): And the tentacles are the tubes. The two tentacles.

Tony (33:00): They'll come up and grab it, draw it back. When you feel that and set your hook, a lot of the time, if they've grabbed it right and you've set it right, it'll pin them, the crowns will pin them right on the top of the head. That's the best hookup you can get, because it's the strongest. You can lift them out of the water and everything. That's why a lot of the squid jigs that say squid on them have that furry bit up on top.

Jake (33:27): Gotcha. So what about these parts here on the squid jigs, the wings? Is that what affects the sink rate?

Tony (33:35): That does very little. That feather, the weight of it waterlogged is nothing compared to the whole jig.

Tony (33:47): So it doesn't affect it that much, but it'll still drop out at 45, because the main factor is the weight.

Tony (33:54): The position of that weight further forward, the more pitch, it'll drop quicker. The less, and the lighter the weight, it'll sink slower. So when I go squidding, if we were to go, I'll bring my squid bag and probably have about 200 squid jigs.

Jake (34:14): Wow.

Tony (34:15): That's because for every different scenario, if one thing's not working, if I don't get anything within two casts, I'll change, and I'll keep changing. In my mind there are two types of squiddies and the colours they choose. There are guys that say squid have such good eyesight that I'm going to go all natural colours, and look at how those colours react with the morning sun, midday sun, evening sun. Me, I say, because there's nothing in nature that's iridescent orange yet squid still go for it, I'm the opposite. Because their eyesight's so good, like hunters surveying the savannah, that's why cats have the diamond eyes. When they're looking at the savannah, anything that sticks out, any silhouette, they pick it up straight away. So I think because they've got such good eyesight, anything that's different from the environment, they pick up.

Jake (35:20): It stands out like dog's balls.

Tony (35:21): Yes.

Tony (35:22): Because of that philosophy, one of my best colours for nighttime is black, or a silhouette. How many times have you been in the water at nighttime and your legs are glowing?

Jake (35:35): Yeah.

Tony (35:36): Same thing. You drop a white jig in, cast it in the water, and because it's an object it'll glow, but what's inside that glow gets lost. You drop a black jig in, and around that phosphorus glow it'll stick out like anything. Plus they see at night. So everything at nighttime, whatever contrast, will stick out.

Mark (36:00): I've found a red squid jig at nighttime works quite well too.

Tony (36:06): Yes, because it's a very dark colour.

Mark (36:07): And what about daytime?

Tony (36:10): Daytime, same thing. First thing in the morning, as the sun's coming out, it's all the iridescent colours. You can do this for yourself. Open up your squid jig bag and have a look. All the iridescents, the greens, oranges, pinks, will be standing out more than anything else. That's what you pick.

Tony (36:32): As the sun comes up a little more, here in the west our sun rises from the east. A lot of the time, if you've got a south-easterly and you're drifting away from that rising sun, or it's an easterly breeze and we're drifting west, the sun will be right behind your jig. So straight away the darker colours work, because they're contrasting against that big ball in the sky.

Tony (36:57): As it comes up a little more, a little more angle, then you go to jigs with flash. Middle of the day, one o'clock, two o'clock, when the sun's at its brightest, then all your black jigs, your dark blues, because they contrast with that open sky.

Mark (37:16): Do you have a similar theory for deeper water?

Tony (37:19): Deep water's a little different. With deeper water it'll be match the hatch.

Mark (37:26): Right.

Tony (37:26): Like we have a spot we go for cuttlefish in 40 metres of water.

Mark (37:30): I want to ask you about cuttlefish. I love cuttlefish.

Tony (37:34): There's about 40, 50 metres of water there, so it's the natural colours. Whatever's around in WA, we get a lot of the parrot fish, a lot of the rock cods, the browns, the pinks.

Mark (37:48): I catch so many cuttlefish on soft plastics, but when we're demersal fishing, jigging too, certain times of year. And they're big buggers.

Jake (37:58): We use the natural jigs to match what's around.

Tony (38:03): In 50 metres of water the sunlight doesn't affect it that much, but what's around it does. So again, going back to fly fishing, that's the hatch. The pinks, the browns, for the rock cods. And orange works really well too, because of the crayfish.

Mark (38:22): One thing, I think I've said it on here before, when we were fishing for whiting in about 20 metre depths, I always tie a squid jig, a mate gave me the tip, above my whiting rig.

Tony (38:32): Yes.

Mark (38:32): And it's surprising how many squid you pick up.

Tony (38:35): That's the other thing too. If you're catching whiting, there doesn't need to be a blade of grass. If you're catching constant whiting, I always throw out a squid jig.

Tony (38:45): Always do, because they're always there. The activity draws them. They see it, especially when you're catching them and they flash, flash, flash, and they come. We've always got them.

Mark (38:59): How good. So along our coastline, I'm assuming you've fished the majority of the way up, Hillarys, Freo, all that. Is there different structure you look at in different places? Like you mentioned, if there's whiting around. Can you give us a few other tips? The standard one is weed, right?

Tony (39:19): That's one of the best spots, and you've probably gone past it a million times and not even thought about it. Coming under Hillarys.

Jake (39:27): Have a think about this, because a lot of people are going to listen.

Tony (39:32): As you come out, just off that channel, halfway out. A lot of people catch a lot of squid off that north wall. And then that area there, Little Island, just on the other side of Little Island, that is the best spot, without a doubt. A lot of people used to fish for whiting there, but I think it's just beyond the closure.

Tony (40:02): Going from Hillarys and heading south, straight in front of Marmion Angling Club, the weed there. How many times have you seen weed build up on the banks? All across that area. When you're looking for weed, there are two types. You know what the sand patches look like. When you look at the water there are brownie-grey patches, and there are definite black patches. It's the black patches you're looking for, because the black patches are the new growth seagrass, beautiful grass, and that's what the squid like. You'll get them on the brown stuff, but not as much. And try to fish the edges of the patches, because squid, though they'll sit in the sand, like sitting on the weed better, I think they blend in better.

Mark (40:54): That's a good idea.

Tony (40:55): On the edges. Same with King George, they love those edges. They're patrolling all the time.

Jake (41:01): So to summarise, like in the listener questions, which we'll get to shortly, colour is the biggest topic of conversation amongst punters. I'll put my punt hat on for this one, I'm not a squid guy. On what day would you pick a colour? Let's talk about a sunny day, an overcast day. Quick summary of what colours you'd pick.

Tony (41:22): You'd never pick colours like that. You'd pick colours for the different times of day. The sink rate, if you're out of a boat, 3.5 is very good. If you're from the shore, threes are better, slower sinking, so it gives the squid more time to see it.

Jake (41:49): Gotcha.

Tony (41:50): The main colours I'd get if I was a starter, I'd get eight jigs, and they'll cover every weather condition. I'd get two iridescent jigs, like the greens and oranges, oranges are very good first thing in the morning. Two lumo jigs you can shine up, very good at nighttime and before dawn. The iridescents work from daybreak, which tomorrow will probably be about quarter to six till about eight. Then we're going to have beautiful blue skies, so I'll go to something flashy, because the angle of the sun is just right, you get that flash as you're drifting east or west. The Shimano Flash Boosts are very good. See that little flash in the middle? In the sunlight that flashes like anything, and there's four little springs on each flash, so as you work it, it flashes. That's the material Shimano first brought. Without that colour, which is a T14 Keimura cloth, that cloth there, Shimano wouldn't have sold any jigs in Australia. People know T14 now. That's a Keimura cloth. That jig glows blue in UV.

Tony (43:31): In the water you can see that jig, which you'd say is white. In the water it's blue, glowing blue. That's one of the most important colours. One of my very good friends, Tony Pitch, that's all he uses.

Tony (43:46): That's his favourite. So we call that Tony P.

Jake (43:51): What about sizes? You've got some here that are smaller. What's the go between them? Is it a similar thing, just matching the hatch?

Tony (44:00): Exactly right. There's a 1.2 squid jig over there, a little grey jobby. This one. You can't get him anymore. That guy in any marina is it. Because if you look in Hillarys, you see those little smelt, especially this time of year. The smelt come into our harbours, May, June, July, on clear days. The squid go to that. That particular colour.

Jake (44:32): That's not really a colour, that's water.

Tony (44:34): Because when you look at all the smelt in the water, what colour are they? That.

Jake (44:38): Yeah.

Tony (44:38): That belly is a little bit glowy. But that guy sinks one metre in ten seconds. Very slow sinking. That size, in the clear, in the river off the Claremont Jetty, that clear colour in that size. Ten seconds per metre.

Jake (45:00): That's got a wicked shine to it.

Tony (45:00): It's that shimmer. Any little light that catches it, there's that shimmer. The prawns the squid go for in the river are translucent.

Mark (45:26): So if the sink rate's that slow, what pound leader are you using?

Tony (45:30): For that it'd be six pound fluorocarbon. Fluorocarbon is very important. And also a clip. Never tie your squid jig straight onto the line.

Mark (45:42): Why is that?

Tony (45:43): Because if you drop it on a 3 or 4 it comes down at 45. If you've got a heavy leader tied to it, the water resistance brings it up, so it won't be sinking at its proper depth, it'll take longer.

Mark (46:03): It won't swim through.

Tony (46:04): With the squid jig and a clip, the jig can move. It doesn't matter how heavy your leader is, the jig itself will move and drop. And articulate.

Mark (46:19): The size of it's got to be important too, right? You don't want too big a clip. You're using fluorocarbon, the smallest.

Tony (46:27): Look this up. This is my clip box. There'll be some clips you've never seen before.

Mark (46:37): Just for the listeners, what are we working with there? That tiny, eh?

Jake (46:40): Are they the Ocean's Legacy ones?

Tony (46:45): They're probably the best clips at the moment. But Harbour Tackle clips are very good as well.

Tony (46:51): The size, and that swivel, so important. That swivel will take the twist out of your leader.

Tony (47:03): Braid has no twist, but the leader does. So that's very important too.

Mark (47:09): Gotcha. What are they called? I'm having a brain fade. I use them, the Ocean's Legacy clips. Axis swivels. They're wicked.

Jake (47:19): I've been using them for everything, like Barramundi, pretty much everything. I used to do loop knots on all my lures, but these are wicked.

Mark (47:31): I'm having a look here on my computer at the Emeraldas Shine.

Jake (47:35): That's what I'm going to call it. It's very similar to that Shimano one you were talking about, but that Emeraldas Shine, that shimmer, the white. A very similar one was the squid we got up in Mindarie Marina.

Mark (47:49): The kids got it on the new Emeraldas or the old Emeraldas? It's a new one they just brought out because of the laser impact. They've all gone for that, like the machine's gone like that as well. They've got a diamond sort of texture, so the theory is the light hits the jig and throws it off from any angle.

Jake (48:05): There were two squid, we saw them beforehand. The kids were catching blowies, then they said, oh, there's a squid there, threw them straight down, didn't even have to twitch it once and it just smashed it. Beautiful.

Mark (48:19): Squid 101. So that's what I want to pick your brain about, the marina. Where should you be looking inside a marina, because there's not a lot of weed inside a marina?

Tony (48:28): No, they don't come in for hiding, they come in for those smelt.

Mark (48:33): Gotcha. So they're in there hunting.

Tony (48:35): It doesn't matter if they're not there. If there are people fishing and catching, the squid will come, but the water needs to be clear. That's the most important thing.

Mark (48:45): Okay.

Tony (48:46): The water needs to be clear.

Mark (48:48): What about trolling? Have you ever been to Exmouth?

Mark (48:55): You actually submitted a question, that they troll for them a lot up there. It's a bump troll.

Tony (49:02): Just bump, bump, bump. But you need a jig that's a deep version. You've got the standard jigs and the deep version. You need it to stay down. Most of the 3.5 jigs are between 19 and 21 grams, so you need something around 26, 27 grams. They're normally the deeps. Same 3.5, but deep.

Mark (49:38): Trying to get it near the bottom still, or does it not matter as much?

Tony (49:40): Because you're moving, it's very hard to get it down.

Mark (49:42): Yeah.

Tony (49:43): So occasionally you might jig it up and let it drop down on the bump, and it'll come up. But the squid are very aggressive. The most aggressive squid I've ever caught, Exmouth squid.

Mark (49:55): I've seen some of those videos too. Are they a different species?

Tony (49:59): People say they are, but I think they're still the southern calamari. They call them tiger calamari because their patterns are different, deeper.

Jake (50:09): Same type, you reckon. Is there anything else you wanted to touch on with squid, Tony? Any colours?

Tony (50:17): One blue, one black. That's for the evening session. We were talking about the eight colours you'd have.

Mark (50:26): Then one of my favourite colours is this. That's the red I was talking about.

Tony (50:34): The R R. This is like a Harimitsu. The red, sort of like a deep red, a cherry red. Red eye. When Paul first brought them in, Willie, he came to Anglers Fishing World and gave me two 3.0 Rs.

Jake (50:57): Bring that mic nice and close to you, Tony.

Tony (51:01): My mate Rob, I said, hey Rob, try this jig, because he was going squidding at the South Mole with a few of his mates. So Rob gets there, and there's about 200 people squidding. This is about 1985, 86. No mobiles, nothing. Rob gets there with his six pound line, because this is before braid. I'm telling him, on the back of the box it gives you the weights and the sink rates, so I'm telling him that's going to be about 3.5 seconds, so he's got to count.

Tony (51:41): Rob casts before he got a chance to count.

Tony (51:47): He catches one, catches two, catches three, catches seven, catches eight from about ten casts. Everyone's going, what the hell? Because this was the first time that keel sinker came in.

Jake (52:04): It's kind of shaped, it's not just like any other.

Tony (52:07): It's a keel, not a square block. Everyone's amazed. So his mate Mal goes, Rob, give me a cast. Mal gets on a rock, casts, and a flock of seagulls fly through his line, gets wrapped up, snaps them off.

Mark (52:25): You'd be filthy.

Tony (52:27): So Rob, because it's a Saturday and I was working, drives around, finds a phone booth, rings the shop. Tone, have you got the other jig? I said yeah. He goes, I'm coming back. He drove all the way from the South Mole back into Vic Park, grabbed the jig, and went back.

Tony (52:45): So I got those squid jigs in. The very next week, on Busselton Jetty, I've had two fests. The first was about 85, when the very first bait chasers came into Western Australia. They were the Hayabusa, brought in by this guy Yoshi Uno, a Japanese lecturer at UWA who was also an avid fisherman. He brought the first Yo-Zuri jigs into Perth with the bait chasers. On Busselton, I dropped the bait chasers, thinking, yeah, whatever. He goes, no bait, no bait, you just put a sinker, drop. And we're catching live yellowtail for the bonito.

Tony (53:29): Boom, six in a row. Everyone's having trouble, because if you drop your bait too far you get trumpeter, if you don't drop it enough you get the guardies, because they're all thick. The yellowtail were right in the middle.

Tony (53:45): Then I went to Busselton Jetty, and killing it is an understatement.

Tony (53:56): The massacre of squid. Incredible. Ever since then, that has been my favourite jig.

Jake (54:03): There you go. That was actually a listener question, what's your favourite jig? So what is this?

Tony (54:08): It's a Harimitsu, and the colour code is R R. So if you go, I need a Harimitsu squid jig, R R, that's it.

Jake (54:16): This one, VE-22 R R 3.5.

Tony (54:19): Yeah. That packaging has been the same in the Harimitsu range from 30 years ago. The only jig that's stayed the same is that R R. And even that packaging is not the new packaging, it's the old packaging.

Jake (54:40): So it works.

Tony (54:42): I've got some other R Rs. That's the new packaging there.

Jake (54:47): I've used these before.

Tony (54:49): And Glow in the Dark is that guy. So you need a couple of Glow in the Dark.

Jake (54:57): I'll keep these. I'm hitting Willie up straight away.

Tony (55:01): Willie knows. Willie's got some other really good colours too.

Jake (55:06): That's wicked. So round them off real quick for us. Let's go through those eight. There are two more.

Tony (55:12): First two, iridescent green, iridescent orange. Two glow in the dark, either glow in the dark white or a glow in the dark amber like this.

Mark (55:25): Like that.

Tony (55:28): That's say we started dark, five in the morning, it's dark, so you throw out your glow in the dark jigs. As the daylight hasn't risen yet but you can see, you go straight to your iridescent lures. Then from about 10 to about 12, you get your flashes, whether it's the Emeraldas or the Shimanos. Then you need a black, total black, or a total black lure, like that.

Mark (56:07): Or a dark blue.

Tony (56:10): That's for the brightest part of the day, when the sun is right above and they silhouette really well. Then as you get into sunset, you get the sun colours, fiery red, so your R Rs, or another colour with a red base. There's your eight. And if you get the 3.5, you can use them in any condition.

Jake (56:38): Yep.

Tony (56:39): Now I'm going to give you a super tip. You're taking your boys, your wife or your girlfriend squidding, and they can't judge how deep it's going. So what you do is snap the jig on, then cut a piece of fishing line, about 500 mil, tie it to the snap, and put a teardrop sinker on. You only need one or two. Drop them until it touches the bottom, then just get them to jig up and down.

Jake (57:11): I'm going to do that with my kids. That's a great thing.

Tony (57:13): So many times, because you're drifting, they don't have to wind. They just jig up and down, and once you're on the ground, they're in the premium strike area.

Jake (57:21): So the teardrop sinker is below the jig, so the jig doesn't foul up on the weed.

Tony (57:27): It's similar to the way you do it with a paternoster. But the jig will still move up and down, and it'll still wiggle because you're on a snap.

Jake (57:39): Have you got a bait, this is a random one, that you think is one of the squid's favourite diets? Where if you find that bait. Whiting?

Jake (57:50): So even for the land-based guys, that's a good tip. If you're on ground where you know there's whiting, then you should go for squid.

Tony (58:01): Marco and I are going to do an episode, a comical one, where we go old school.

Tony (58:10): That'll be with the spike, with the herring or a whiting. These jigs were the first jigs to come out.

Jake (58:20): They use them deep sea, that's a lot of the commercial ones.

Tony (58:27): They came in about four colours. They were called the SJ2 Squid Jig, and these are the ones that are handlined.

Tony (58:35): Toss it down, whip it back, whip it back. That's how they get it. But we're going to film an episode going old school with bait, with a float and a spike.

Jake (58:47): Nice. Awesome. So it's a good time, you just mentioned the YouTube channel. You started a YouTube channel with Marco. What's it called, if anyone wants to check it out? They're going to learn a lot about squidding, probably more than they have here today. They'll be able to watch you do it.

Tony (59:01): Because I'll show them.

Jake (59:02): Exactly, they'll be able to see it visually. What's the YouTube channel called?

Tony (59:06): WA Squid Masters. It's basically Marco and I going out for a squid. It's more informative with a little bit of fun.

Tony (59:17): The first episode drops on Thursday.

Jake (59:21): Don't Google that website. WA Squid Masters.

Tony (59:27): We're just doing it up.

Jake (59:33): That's awesome, mate.

Jake (59:34): Let's start working towards wrapping this up. Wall of Fame, mate. I told you to bring a lure in if you felt keen to donate to the Wall of Fame behind you. What have you brought in?

Tony (59:48): I'll let you choose. I have two explanations, two jigs. One jig I kept to remind me to keep my humility. I have a very good friend, Tony Casella, and he has a very good friend, Morris. I said, look, don't worry about squid jigs. But Morris went out and bought 10 squid jigs for $10. He said, yep, this is going to be great.

Tony (01:00:17): And I had probably about $800 worth of squid jigs.

Tony (01:00:24): On that day, his fishing rod was an old 24 kilo solid glass rod that you couldn't bend, I think broomstick handles were softer, a marlin rod, but it was broken in half, so he had a massive tip on it. It was short, probably about four foot. He drops this thing in the water, and I'm working away.

Tony (01:00:47): He catches one, two, three. Eight. He's caught eight on this thing.

Tony (01:00:57): I can't believe it. He goes, Tony, you've been giving me jigs, here, have one. I went, oh, thanks, Mars, I might try this other one. These jigs were a dollar each. I thought, oh geez, this is terrible, I can't be beaten. I went through every one, and in the end stuck his on, cast it out with the drift, boom, on. Killed it.

Jake (01:01:26): Against everything you stood for.

Tony (01:01:29): I was squidding, going, here I am, a thousand dollar squid rod, a thousand dollar reel, three hundred dollars worth of line, twenty dollars worth of leader, and I've been reduced to his level. So that's that one there. I kept it as a reminder. Or there's that other one.

Jake (01:01:53): That little one here? This one?

Tony (01:01:56): Feel the weight of it.

Jake (01:01:58): That's sick.

Tony (01:01:59): 40 grams.

Jake (01:02:01): That's wicked.

Tony (01:02:01): See the weight where the nose is? That is two metres per second, if not greater. I bought it because I used to go to Phuket, and at Phuket I used to go squidding. There's this big jetty, but the current was running fast, so I needed something big. I saw that, bought it, took it to the jetty, and there were all these other squidders. So I went well away from them, dropped it, and the water was about 30 or 40 metres. This guy went down, and then whack, I was on. As I brought it up there'd be a whole lot of little eyes coming up, the squid only like this. Caught one, caught two, caught 50. As I was bringing it up, all the other fishermen would gravitate over. So I'd go, oh boys, pick it up and move away, drop it down, boom, boom, on. They'd all chase me. That's a good lure.

Jake (01:03:07): I like that, it's different. I like the smaller one because of the size of the weight on the front. It's literally like the size of a 20 cent coin. That's epic, man. I'd love to put that in the Wall. 40 grams. Not a problem. Let's rip into the listener questions, going back to squid. Mate, these questions probably don't require as in-depth an answer as what we've got, and we've covered a lot of these, so it cancels out a lot of them. This is thanks to Daiwa, who sponsor the listener questions segment. They give us a little prize pack every week. We've actually given away the squid prize, a wicked Laser Impact squid pack, probably six weeks ago now. Michael Sumner won that pack and dropped it off to his house personally. So we've actually got a Barra rod to give away for this one. If barra's not your thing, maybe you can sell it.

Mark (01:04:10): Yeah. And like you mentioned, that's how you get into it with the barra rod, you can't believe it.

Jake (01:04:18): What have we got here? We've got the Daiwa Wilderness baitcast, six foot four, three-piece travel.

Mark (01:04:25): Exact travel rod. It handled some bloody fish, it wasn't a massive one, but I got an 80 centimetre. It's a wicked rod to collapse, wicked rod to use.

Jake (01:04:40): Pretty much all squid questions for this one, but you're getting a Barra rod too. Hopefully you can get away and catch a barra on it. Thanks to Daiwa for hooking up the listeners. Tony's just throwing in a little squid jig for you as well. Legend.

Mark (01:04:57): What's that? Ocean's Legacy Squid Seeker, this little jig. Look how bright it is.

Jake (01:05:04): We'll get into it later. All right, Lost in WA. If you can only have one squid jig, what colour and size and why?

Tony (01:05:12): If you're on the shore, already answered. 3.0.

Jake (01:05:15): 3.0. Without a doubt. That was my bad.

Jake (01:05:19): All right, this is a really good question. Mr Ryan Willow, what is the squidding equivalent of a three-metre swell, north-west winds, and spearmint milk coloured water after a storm for pink snapper? That's obviously your best pink snapper weather ever. From what you've just said, that's like the worst. So what's the best, if you had to choose?

Tony (01:05:43): What we've had since Friday. Flat water, no swell, very light wind. You can't have no wind for squid, you need wind. You need that drift day. But for the shore guys it really doesn't matter. For the boat guys, you need that drift, or else you squid like you're on the shore, cast out and work it. Since last Saturday it's magic weather. So good that tomorrow we're going back to the big squid spot. This time of year, autumn, is the best time of year. Because of the weather we get, and I think autumn we have the least amount of strong south-westers, so the water clears up.

Tony (01:06:30): And very low swell.

Mark (01:06:31): No wind, low swell, bluebird day, clear water. That's the best squidding.

Jake (01:06:37): So a fair weather fisherman is the best.

Mark (01:06:41): Nice. All right, I've got one here. Knox with a K. Favourite way to cook squid.

Tony (01:06:48): What I do with Danny on that show. You just go to any supermarket and buy a little jar of tom yum paste. Clean your squid however you want to cut it up, whether you want to use tentacles, have that on the side. In a little bit of oil, tom yum paste, onion thickly chopped, garlic, and coriander, that gives it a fresh flavour. Fry that. Then you can use vegetables, broccoli, capsicum, any veggie you like. Mix it in until they've got a bit of heat on them. Then put your squid in, toss them in. That's it. The flavour, the aromas from that tom yum paste are amazing. That Thai basil, a little bit of chilli, that smell. Danny loved it so much she had two bowls and was going for a third. This is Danny Shewy, Sherry's wife. Such a lovely lady.

Mark (01:07:55): And you're on the Forward Drive show with her. She got seasick on that episode, didn't she?

Jake (01:07:59): Was that Forward Drive Adventure?

Mark (01:08:00): Forward Drive show.

Tony (01:08:01): You couldn't script this. She goes, what am I doing? I said, okay, we're dropping this trip run, it's quite a windy day. I was so worried. I said, okay, count it down, we're in six metres here, so you're just counting for about six seconds. She went, yep. She goes, now what? I said, because the boat's moving, just jig your rod up and down. She goes, how do I know if I've got one? I said, well, he's going to try to pull that rod away from you. And she went, whack, on.

Jake (01:08:31): Straight away.

Tony (01:08:32): Straight away. You couldn't script it any better.

Jake (01:08:34): The girl always out-fishes you. Take your missus fishing.

Mark (01:08:37): That was a great episode. So on the subject of cooking, we've got one from Luke Reynolds 7. Any tips for keeping squid tender when you cook them? Just high heat, quick?

Tony (01:08:50): When you put the squid in, it'll be translucent. As soon as it starts going opaque, take it off the heat, because it's still cooking in the pan. Sometimes it takes a bit of time to get opaque, depending on how much liquid you've got. There's no set time, you can't say 30 seconds and pull it out, it depends on everything else in the pot. So just keep an eye on the squid, once it goes from translucent to white.

Tony (01:09:26): Then take it off. Keep stirring it, because that heat is still cooking it. That's how you keep it tender.

Jake (01:09:34): Great tip, I love it. I've got one here. Hachi 22. What's the strangest species you've caught on a squid jig?

Tony (01:09:42): Cobia.

Jake (01:09:44): Bullshit.

Tony (01:09:45): Big one. That was in Rompin. I didn't know this, but the reason they know where the squid spots are is they catch a squid, about this big, the arrowhead, then hook them up and go for the cobia. So I'm catching squid, whack, and all of a sudden my rod starts to bounce. This was my squid. I didn't take a squid rod because I knew it was going to be quite heavy, so I had a six kilo rod, lucky it was good line and a good reel.

Tony (01:10:21): He'd scoffed the whole thing. It took me about 40 minutes, and we cut it and landed it.

Jake (01:10:30): Because he gutted it?

Tony (01:10:32): It got stuck, choked him.

Jake (01:10:34): The species. All right, mate, I've got a funny story. I took my nephew down to the jetty at Savannah's, and I was like, I'll show you how to catch squid, mate. Second cast, I was clicking it back and I was like, oh yeah, on. It's a beauty. Pulled it in. It was an all-west blowie. I was like, nice.

Tony (01:10:54): They love it. See that white jig? That's an all-west blowie. He attacked my squid.

Mark (01:10:59): That one I noticed was quite crushed in. Proper cutters, eh? Another one on the strangest squid interaction. What's the strangest place you've caught a squid? Probably Yanchep Lagoon. That doesn't surprise me really.

Tony (01:11:17): It shouldn't surprise me either, but I was just out of the blue.

Tony (01:11:21): You know how I caught it? With my hand.

Mark (01:11:23): You just grabbed him?

Tony (01:11:24): He just came. He chased my, because we were going for salmon at that time.

Tony (01:11:29): I was winding in a scaly.

Mark (01:11:32): He chased a scaly in and was just waiting there.

Tony (01:11:36): This wave washed him up, came up, and I just grabbed him. Too easy. Thanks for coming. Then my mate goes, do you have to catch squid everywhere you go?

Mark (01:11:48): The squid master.

Tony (01:11:49): That's brilliant.

Mark (01:11:50): All right, there's a few questions there. Which one did you like the most?

Jake (01:11:55): I think the cooking squid one.

Mark (01:11:59): Yeah, how to cook things. I like that.

Tony (01:12:02): Nice.

Jake (01:12:02): Because he assumed I knew how to cook the squid. That was Knox with a K.

Tony (01:12:06): But of all the squid I've caught, I've probably eaten about two whole squid in all that time.

Jake (01:12:14): What do you mean? You let them go?

Tony (01:12:15): No, no, we keep them. I give them to whoever, because people love squid. I can't imagine ordering a plate of squid rings at dinner. I watch people eating them, because I think they're very boring.

Jake (01:12:30): Mate, I love squid.

Tony (01:12:32): I know, so many people do. I've got nothing against it, I just think it's boring.

Jake (01:12:38): Do you mean two whole squid total?

Tony (01:12:39): Total in the last year. Well, probably two tentacles.

Jake (01:12:43): You can drop them off at my house whenever you like, mate.

Tony (01:12:46): Cleaning squid is probably my favourite side. I never bring it home. Scaler bag, slit them, stick them in a scaler bag, drag them behind the boat. No smell, no fuss. And if you come in with me, I'll say, bring some seal bags so you can put the flesh in, because once you've done it the flesh is pure white, clean. The heads we keep for bait, the tentacles you can either eat or we keep for whiting bait. The flaps we keep for whiting bait. Put them in your cooler. When you come home, chuck them in the freezer, or cook them then and there. Everything clean, no fuss. Those scaler bags are great.

Mark (01:13:28): Wicked for whiting. Any fish that's scaly, if you catch herring or whatever and you want to cook them whole, chuck your fish in a scaler bag, tow it behind your boat, and watch how clean those fish are when you bring them in.

Jake (01:13:41): Something I always forget to do, and always end up with the ink everywhere.

Mark (01:13:44): All right, mate. That's the listener questions. Knox with a K, we'll get in touch with you, mate, we'll send you this Barra rod. Hope it serves you well, and you'll get that little squid jig that Tony threw in for you too. Thanks to Daiwa for sponsoring the listener questions. Legends.

Jake (01:14:00): Let's get into it, mate. This is the way we wrap every episode up, with the quick fire questions. I'm just going to throw a question at you, there's probably half a dozen, and you've got to answer them as quick as you can with the first thing that pops into your mind. So let's go. Top three eating fish.

Tony (01:14:15): Coral Trout, Red Emperor, and the Alaskan cod at Nobu.

Jake (01:14:26): I've never had it, but you said Nobu, that's enough. That is off its head. All right, Daiwa or Shimano.

Tony (01:14:33): I'm very loyal. The very first good reel I got was the Stella, and most of my reels are still Stella now. But I do use the Emeraldas, the squid reel.

Jake (01:14:47): And you wear their shirts.

Mark (01:14:49): You know what I've noticed? Most tackle shop, tackle industry guys, they're not one or the other. They see the benefits of one and the benefits of the other.

Jake (01:14:59): All right. One lure for the rest of your life. It doesn't have to be a squid jig. If you had one thing you could use for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Tony (01:15:08): It would be the Halco Barra spoon.

Jake (01:15:11): Yeah?

Tony (01:15:12): That lure, you can put a weight in front of it, sink it to the bottom. You can troll it for tuna, mahi, mackerel. The professional mackerel guys still use the Barra spoon, now with planers. Or you can drop it with a string of leads to get it down. That flash, that movement. I reckon the Halco Barra spoon is the best lure ever made. If I was on a boat and they said you can have 20 or 30 of one lure, that would be it.

Jake (01:15:50): The flash, eh? All right, best boat snack.

Tony (01:15:55): I have to be careful.

Jake (01:15:57): Like that too. Oh mate, hard to go past. Bucket list fishing destination.

Tony (01:16:03): Probably Vancouver Island. A little town called Tofino.

Jake (01:16:11): I've been to Tofino, I lived there for a couple of months.

Tony (01:16:14): I wanted to go ever since I was a kid. I had 10 things I needed to catch, and I got nine of them. Except for a Chinook salmon over 30 pounds. Tofino was it, and I was ready to go, had everything, and then this stupid movie came on and it became a tourist destination. Twilight was shot in Tofino.

Mark (01:16:45): So that's why Robbie's in it.

Jake (01:16:48): Trying to fall in love. Oh mate, in all seriousness, that is a wicked destination. I spent quite a bit of time there. I bought a van when I was living in Canada when I was 20 years old, spent my time surfing. I actually saw orcas while I was surfing there, man. Pretty wicked spot. One of the most beautiful places you could ever hope to go.

Tony (01:17:08): And there was this hotel at the time, owned by a couple from Fremantle. It was a floating hotel, and each one had its own little Grady-White.

Jake (01:17:25): They got sussed. All right. If you could have a beer with any fisho dead or alive, who would it be?

Tony (01:17:31): I've been very lucky, I've met some fantastic people, but one I really loved was Jack Erskine, and it'd still be him. I was so lucky to have spent so much time with him. He's an absolute god in America. In Australia, he's just someone famous. Jack Erskine. He's responsible for the two-speed gearboxes in the game reels. He's worked for every single big game company. He made the very best game line, called Amilan T. The first shipment came in worldwide, and because it was Jack Erskine's, Amilan T went like wildfire.

Tony (01:18:17): Better than Ande, everything like that, who was getting it made by Honeywell, who owns the formula for Dyneema and Spectra, who also owns a little company called Mitsubishi. So they used virgin nylon. Jack said, I only need virgin nylon. The second batch didn't use virgin nylon, and he got such a bad name for that.

Jake (01:18:49): So he's a bit of a pioneer, eh?

Tony (01:18:51): An absolute legend.

Jake (01:18:54): Engineering wizard. All right, this is the last one of the quick fire. Any advice for a young fisherman, what would it be?

Tony (01:19:03): Go get professional help so you learn properly, don't get bad habits. That's the thing. If your tackle shop, if the people in your tackle shop aren't willing to teach you, to give you 20 minutes, half an hour to teach you properly, look for another shop. Because that's what the shops are for. I don't want to blow my own horn, but Marco insisted on that, and so did I. I told Tim this story and he absolutely loved it. The first fishing tackle I ever bought for myself was the Mustad 9555 bronze bait holder, because I was a river fisherman. I used to go to Boans, which was like Myer, and they had this big fishing section. A lot of the old boys would know her name, Shirley. She was in charge of the fishing section. I'd go in there and I was very respectful, so I'd say, can I have ten hooks please? She'd get a little white paper packet and count, one, two, nine, ten, then go, one, two, twenty cents.

Jake (01:20:24): Two freebies. Those two hooks, what it meant to me.

Tony (01:20:30): I paid her back a million times over. Every time kids came in, and some of the kids that came in when I was at Vic Park are fishermen now, and they've always come to Marco. Those little kids are now earning big bucks and buying the best. So I've never forgotten that, and they haven't forgotten it either.

Jake (01:20:55): It's great advice about the tackle store stuff. We harp on it. That's why you've got to support your local independent tackle store, and try to get the best advice.

Mark (01:21:03): Nice. All right. Well, that brings it to a close, I reckon. Lek, we've got a couple of little housekeeping notes. Just for all our loyal listeners, we're going to have a couple of months off. Lek and I have been working bloody hard, both in our day jobs and on the podcast, and I just need some bloody time to go fishing. I haven't been fishing at all. I've got my tinny's out of the water too, so I'm doing a bit of a refit on it.

Jake (01:21:38): So you'll be land-based. You'll have to do the land-based.

Mark (01:21:42): What are you doing to your tinny? I'm doing a bit of a refit. First things first, I've got it in my best mate's workshop now, he's a good alloy welder, Chief. Putting all new alloy flooring in it, making it a little bit wider. I've decided I'm going to do a rod locker in it as well. I hate having my rods standing up vertical, when you're on a small boat and you've got two in there and the rods are up vertical and you go to cast, it's a pain in the arse. So I'm going to do a little rod locker. I'm getting a bit of inspiration, so if anyone's built a rod locker on their tinnies and they want to share some insight, DM me or the Tall Tails page, that'd be much appreciated. Probably the thing I'm most pumped for is I'm getting EVA flooring in it. My tinny's had carpet on it, I think I spoke about it last episode. The carpet just stinks. I love going up to Ningaloo, catching a bunch of Spanish mackerel, and those two fish just have this slime about them, they stink, especially in carpet. So that carpet, no matter what you do, I've shampooed it and everything, it just stinks. I've opted to go for EVA foam, and the guys at DC Decks are hooking me up with a bit of U-Deck, which is epic, they're helping me out. I've been eyeing it off for a couple of years, and at the Hillarys boat show recently they had a stand set up with a couple of boats they'd decked out, and the patterns, they could put logos in there and everything. So full custom Tall Tails. My old man's got it on his boat, it's wicked. It's a bit cooler under the feet too, because if we're heading up to Birchy or up at Ningaloo in the hot weather, having a hot deck under your feet is pretty crap. So I'm really looking forward to watching how they go about it. Been dealing with Milana and Lorna Graham, they've been great to deal with so far. Got that booked in, and hopefully get it on the water, do a bit of fishing. We'll come back probably July, I reckon. Sometime in July, we'll be back, bigger and better. We've got a few things in the works that we can't reveal just yet, but we're working on a few things for you guys. So we'll be back soon. Anything else we need to touch on?

Jake (01:23:52): I think there's a GoFundMe that we just want to give a quick shout out to, so I'll pass that over to you.

Mark (01:23:58): Some pretty tragic news came out of Perth this week. I don't even really know how to address it, to be honest. Unfortunately there was a shark attack over at Rottnest Island over the weekend, and a young father, we didn't know him personally, but from all accounts was a pretty incredible human being, Steve Matterbone, lost his life spear fishing. He leaves behind his wife and two young daughters. Really tragic that that happened. Our thoughts go out to Steve's wife and his young daughters, his friends that were there in the water with him, and the whole spear fishing community. There is a GoFundMe page up and running that you can donate to if you feel inclined, to raise a bit of money for his wife and daughters. I don't think it'll ever be easy, but help them get through this tough time.

Jake (01:24:52): It's a small community, and I think there's a lot of people feeling the loss, none more so than the family. So any spare change or any help you can do, we'll get it up.

Mark (01:25:04): We'll whack it up on the Tall Tails Instagram page. Just click the link in our bio to take you straight to that GoFundMe page. Sorry to end on a note like that, but just wanted to share our love with those people. We'll be back soon. Tony, thanks so much for coming in again. WA Squid Masters on YouTube. That's great, mate. Legend. You've shared so much info with us. I've actually got to go home and process all this information and figure out what we're going to do with it. Appreciate you coming in.

Tony (01:25:32): No problem.

Mark (01:25:33): We'll see you in a couple of months, guys.