My outfit: Daiwa Itchy Twitchy, w/ Shimano Stradic 2500FK. This is my go-to rod for almost everything. The braid is light -- 6, 8 pound? if I recall correctly -- and I usually use a 4 pound leader. My preferred plastics are Keitech 2 inch 'Easy Shiners', fished on suitably small jigheads (between 1 and 2 grams, with small hooks). My heavier soft plastics outfit is a Daiwa Supacaster, paired with a Stradic 4000 and 20 pound braid/16 pound leader. The latter I picked up for chasing mulloway, mostly, although I reckon it'll work for cod (a species I've never chased, and know three fifths of nothing about).
So far -- 24 Jan -- I've picked up:
- Snapper
- Flathead
- Aus Salmon
- Barracouta
- Mullet
- Toadfish
- Eastern Gobbleguts
- Estuary Perch
- Silver trevally
- Tommy rough
- Some kind of mackeral? TBC
I have a few species I'm especially keen to catch on plastics, and they're mostly species caught in my local area: bream (which I've caught before, but haven't invested time in recently) and mulloway, of course, but also carp (I have some Strike Tiger nymphs, which will be my starting point), trout, redfin, garfish (seriously), flounder, mackerel (the species my tiny 'aji' plastics are actually designed for), King George Whiting ... and squid. I've noticed squid -- big and small -- hit plastics all the time, even when they're not biting en masse, so I'm aiming to eventually hook and land one. I'd be overjoyed to pick up species I'm not actually planning on investing time in, such as eel or those rock cod that lurk around the pylons at Sorrento. Mostly this is a 'because I can' exercise. I'm more than happy to take on board all kinds of advice, aside from the 'ditch the plastics and switch to bait or hardbodies' sort of advice, as that goes against the whole point of this pointless-ish exercise.