Hoping someone could enlighten me. i went out on my Kayak at Raglan the other day, only about 200m off the boat ramp over sand and dropped my longline. Once set, I did 45min fishing with the rod within about 50m of where the longline was, I had no bites at all, got a bit annoyed and went to collect my longline. (I should note I wasn't using any berley)

Anyway, on the longline, all the bait was eaten and I caught 3x Gurnard, 1x Kahawai and a Rig shark! So whats going on?

How can the longline attract that much attention while my rod had nothing? I've read that a longline creates its own Berley trail and so will naturally attract fish. Is this correct? 

Does it then follow that for my rod fishing I should anchor the kayak and drop a berley cage, and wait for all the fish to turn up? 

Everywhere I read, there are a millions opinions but using berley off the kayak seems to be a pretty strong recommendation. 

1) Use a fish finder to find the fish

2) Use burley to attract the fish to you

3) Drop and hope

then number 4 is a combination of 1 & 2

1 and 4 regularly work well. 2 will work quite regularly but not always. 3 will work on the days you get lucky

Burley on a kayak though I would do with a very light rope. When that Great White or big Bronzie grabs your burley cage you don't want to be attached to well.

So far its seems like the Longline is a winner.

I was just wondering why it seems to work so well? Like it must attract the fish to it by creating it's only scent right?

Anyway, I plan I trying berley but I'll set it on it only float/weight while I set my longline, then come back to it, anchor, attach to the berley with say a 40lb nylon, so like you said, when a shark has a go, he can have it!!

I was planing, on keeping my berly and my longline like 200m apart, so I was effectively doing two separate fishing trips. But that could almost work better, just fishing in the longline trail. 

I could be wrong, but I think my longline has J-Hooks, their stainless steel 4/0 size. The backbone has crimps so the fish swim off and then sort of get struck after a few metres of swimming. Anyway, it works well!! Looks like about a 1 in 3 hook rate per trace. Good enough for me. 

Ill try both a separate berley pot out of the way of the longline and also fish in the long line trail, see what happens. I'm spending 2 weeks in Port Jackson. Also going to trying fish on the reef, however, my poor little kayak might be too small if there're significant swells. So plan on putting the longline just inside the bay. 

Thanks for the tips Appreciate it!

Same thing as the OP. Drifting next to loaded long lines and almost no bites.

I learnt something today.

What's this hook?  https://www.marine-deals.co.nz/stainless-longline-hook-pack-size-18-qty-25" rel="nofollow - https://www.marine-deals.co.nz/stainless-longline-hook-pack-size-18-qty-25

This isn't the exact ones ive got but it looks exactly the same. They look like J-Hooks to me, or am I mistaken. (I am new to this!! :) 

When you say "Don't Strike the Bite". Do you mean if I was using it with a rod?

Yes. Imagine how a long line works. The fish takes the bait and swims away until the line comes up tight. The fish hooks itself. If you strike bites using a circle/longline/recurve hook chances are the hook will come flying out the fish's mouth without hooking up. I use circles almost exclusively. Good question!

Alan

Also experienced 2500 hooks set with nothing but a couple of hag fish or snot fish as we use to call em. 

When its on .... its ON!