Snapper berley & electric mincer
Righto Iv had my first go at making berley recently and on testing it has worked bloody well
Im allways trying to get the cost of fishing down and having heaps of berley is allways something I want so I can throw it around without going broke
So far this is what I have learned
it took me a bit of time to work out a working system because iv worked out things need to be bulletproof when smashing up frames and thick skin
my rig is a No.32 hand mincer with a 1200watt drop saw motor connected and geared down with a pulley belt drive
it started as a boat mounted system with a wheel chair motor but my connection wasnt strong enough and it broke, as everything was defrosted and starting to get smelly I had to scramble and make a working system real fast
so far Iv used Kahawai, mullet, parore, stingray, pillies, squid, bonito and anything else lying around that was fishy
it is a big job cutting up the stingray and fish into small enough pieces for the mincer to grip, its messy and it stinks
parore is full of this black shit inside them that makes me less inclined to want to use them again, but hey they are a bycatch when I set the net for mullet so free
stingray is mint, sharp knife into long strips right thru the wings guts in and all that is left is a bony head, easy way to bulk out the amount and once again they end up in my net,
I ended up with about 70ish litres of berley, out of 3 stingray and freezer scrapings from me and my brother + the parore and left over bait
the berley comes out very brown much like the bonito stuff you buy,
I packed it into Ice bags that i got at a local wholesalers which are perfect to drop into a small onion sack and throw over the back of the boat
it stinks....... mainly due to everything going bad while each prototype kept breaking and me having to go to work each day
It works!! my brother and I had an amazing straylining trip on saturday catching some really nice fish (snapper) the best bieng 15 pound and both taking home our limit as well as letting a few go thru the day
I had a feeling it would be really good at attracting sharks with all the fish and stingray blood as well as the bonito but no issues with sharks this far, a few potential bite offs but only possibly sharks and this area is very very sharky at times.
I will definitely do this again, as it makes for very economical fishing (once I overcome the $100 mincer cost) but right now I should have enough for quite a while
very enjoyable seeing big fish comeing out of the berley trail you made, much like making accurate handloads
