Thread: Drone fishing

Gidday.

Just doing some homework for land based fishing.

Wife has said no to a boat for couple of years but hasn't said no to a drone.

So Ive been looking at videos, articles etc but would like to speak to or have a chat with someone with first hand knowledge of drone fishing.

Just would like to target Kahwai, blue cod, trumpeter,gurnard elephant fish etc.

Cheers!

I've had 2 and done a fair bit off beaches here in Kapiti for snaps, gurnard, trevs etc. Happy to have a chat if that helps

Feel free to send me a PM with your number , I have just got a replacement as the last one went AWOL , happy to share my experiences if ya want a chat

just realised I should have added same thing as Lucky. Feel welcome to drop me a PM with ya digits if you wanna chat.

@Rock river arms hunter, from the handful of replies already you will have figured out that fishing drones have minds of their own, and go AWOL, crash into the ocean etc.
If you have the stomach to watch a few thousand dollars fall into the ocean, then drone fishing is 100% the sport for you.

Personally I've gone through a few fishing drones over quite a few years. What I have learnt is that the majority of fishing drones (swellpro, poseidon, cuta copter, shark x, aeroo, dji, aee condor) have no redundancy in the prop/motor/esc department, so a failure of any one of those on any of the 4 arms results in a crash, usually into the ocean.
I also learnt that a waterproof drone is only waterproof if it has a controlled landing into the water. They crack open like eggs if dropped 30-50M.
Something you will learn really quickly is that drone ownership is like a cult following. People will swear by their drone manufacturers product being the best thing ever, and will continue to swear by them through multiple crashes, poor customer service, and numerous near misses.

Which leads me to drone recommendations - there is only one in the NZ market that can survive a prop/motor/esc failure, and return home safely. Have a look at Aerokontiki. You pay top dollar for reliability, and great NZ service tho.

I've fixed or tried to fix numerous fishing drones, and tend to see some pretty familiar patterns of what's coming in to be looked at.

Feel free to DM me if you want have a chat.

Everything he says is true , you can insure them on your house contents insurance , like everything in life though , when it gone right it’s awesome and when it doesn’t ….well it sucks

Agree with the points above. When they are working well they are awesome - when they dont it tends to be really stressful.

My first swellpro behaved like it was possessed - there was no rhyme or reason to why it would misbehave and despite numerous fixes/services I completely lost faith in it. Service place in Auckland was also really difficult to get good comms etc out of.

I ended up with a different model swellpro and that has been pretty good for last couple of years. Living at the beach it's really easy to just shoot down there are fly a couple of lines out. I've fished with torpedos too and prefer using the drone. Get a lot of fish on it. I normally run a 30m 500lb backbone trace with 8-10 geni swivel clip traced circle (normally use either vmc or mustads) hooks on it that I clip onto my braid mainline (on electric reel). Because of the currents here I run two breakaway sinkers - and cable tie them. Started off using my surfcasters but the novelty of winding them in from 400-500m soon wore off and I had a few electric reels I use for deep water so just switched over to them.

Quite a social way to fish with people that dont like going out on boats. Had plenty of mates turn up with their families for a fish too.