ABOUT YEP FISHING

MY FISHING JOURNEY

I grew up in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia and my Dad was a keen fisherman. Most of my best memories as a kid were freshwater fishing with my Dad for Brown and Rainbow Trout in Lakes in Victoria and New South Wales such as Purrumbette, Bullen Merri, Dartmouth and Jindabyne.Sadly I didn't go fishing with my Dad the day he landed a 13lb Brown Trout at Lake Purrumbette in 2000 (I was 14). He caught it trolling a Celta (inline spinner, Mepps style) behind a ford fender (spinning blade fish attractant).

After this he lost some interest in freshwater fishing, thinking he will never top that catch and he was right. So luckily for me he switched to a focus on saltwater fishing and eventually upgraded his boat to one he still has to this day. Most of our saltwater fishing adventures were in Westernport Bay launching from Hastings. We also did a fair few trips out west to Portland, Victoria where we would mostly get bread and butter species like Snapper and Whiting. We also went on trips up the NSW south coast to places like Eden, Narooma and Bermagui which I desperately want to visit again.

EARLY DAYS

INTRODUCTION TO LURE FISHING

In about 2005 I got into fishing as an adult, well I was probably 18 but what I mean is that I was no longer tagging along with my Dad and his mates, I was going to start my own fishing journey, buy all my own gear and drive out to the spots now that I had my first car. This was when I was working part time at K-Mart whilst doing some studying. This was the period of time when soft plastics seemed to be very accessible, even a retail store like K-Mart soft Squidgies soft plastics which were definitely the ones that first reached mainstream popularity in Australia. These were developed by Steve Starling and Kaj Busch which were both famous TV personalities on the fishing show 'Rex Hunts Fishing Adventures' which was a staple on Australian televisions on Sunday in the 90s and early 2000s. They even sold Berkley Gulp soft plastics.

Some of these Squdgies soft plastics and Gulp Powerbaits I still have in their original packaging from 2005! I did a bit of lure fishing but when you are at that age you have different things on your mind. In 2007 I met my wife and she was keen to go fishing too. Our main focus on that time was Squid Fishing (Eging), and I remember around that time going to Rui's house (RUI Jigs) to buy squid jigs off him. Safe to say his Egi business is doing very well as he now has them in massive fishing retail stores.

We would fish at places like Mornington, Blairgowrie and around the Melbourne CBD.

A FISHING OBSESSION

The latest obsession has been non stop for about 4 years and has came about as a result of having being relocated for work to an awesome coastal town in South West Victoria called Warrnambool. Warrnambool is at the end of the world famous Great Ocean Road which attracts thousands of tourists each year for the amazing stretch of road that hugs the coast line. Now that I live 15 minutes from the ocean, 10 minutes from trout and bream filled rivers and 40 minutes from the famous crater lakes that have Tiger, Cheetah, Rainbow and Brown Trout, Chinook Salmon, Aussie Bass and Redfin Perch how can I not take the opportunity to get into fishing?

I started ultralight lure fishing with all the typical soft plastics like zMan 2.5 inch GrubZ and Slim Swimz in Bad Shad and Baby Bass. I wanted to catch more fish so I went on a pursuit of downsizing everything even further using trout magnets, XUL rods. I was catching fish on a regular basis, familiarizing myself with all the new locations. My 2 favourite catches from this time were a 40cm Bream at the mouth of the Hopkins River with a 1 inch paddle tail on an Ajing Jighead aswell as a 46cm Silver Trevally off Killarney Beach. I then decided to start documenting my catches on youtube, I see everyone else is doing it, all I need is my phone and some editing software and Im good to go right?

Soon enough in my constant pursuit into becoming a better angler I discovered something called BFS fishing 3 years ago. I had no idea what it was, started binge watching videos and eventually bought my first combo off AliExpress which was an Acehawk AG Venom 5'6 rod and Histar Black Knight 2 reel (which I still have and is still very smooth). After falling in love with BFS tackle and realising AliExpress probably had loads of awesome gear to try out I started slowly buying different rods and reels.

I figured I would show off my new gear and give my opinions on it, eventually I started to build a little bit of a following on youtube so I decided to keep the momentum going. I bought new gear, tried to improve my video production quality etc and got my youtube channel monetized after I hit about 2000 subscribers. Thanks to the support of my subscribers on youtube I am able to generate income to be able to purchase more tackle to review so that I can eventually build a database and become one of the authorities when it comes to budget light/ultralight tackle and BFS tackle.

FUTURE PLANS

My future plans are to continue to evolve my youtube channel in terms of video production quality, drone footage, multiple camera angles as all of that. My eventual goal would be to branch out into not only doing budget AliExpress and Temu gear reviews but to also promote tackle and maybe even other fishing related items from the bigger brands we all know and trust.

This website is the start of Phase 2 of Yep Fishing, from a simple youtube channel, to something bigger....