I have been able to get down to my local beach spot over the last couple of spring tide and have got plenty of small queenies and trevs on slices and jigs early in the morning.
I have also managed to get a couple a couple of nice blue salmon which put up a great fight on light spin gear.
Yesterday decided to do something a bit different and dig out my old surf rod and alvey
Went down at first light hoping to get a salmon ar two, but would have been happy with a shark or something just to have some fun with the outfit
Set it up with a paternosta rig with a bit of stripey fillet on the top hook and some squid on the lower and sent it out.
I put it in the rod holder then went to have a flick with the light spin gear.
As what usually happens as soon as i had the other rod out the alvey starts running.
I picked up the surf rod and tried to put the spin gear in the rod holder when the alvey which has no drag or antireverse near took my thumb off whith a blistering run.
Started playing the fish using my palm as a drag and after about 10 mins had the fish near the beach.
Was expecting a shark or shovelnose to appear but was pleasantly surprised when a good sized trevaly came ashore.
The fish went 75 to the fork of the tail and was a solid fat fish.
Pretty chuffed to get that fish as it gave me a great fight on the old outfit.
Had a few more baits go off over the next hour and eventually landed a small reef shark.
Plenty of birds working a big school of fish just offshore but as usual outside casting range.
Called it quits not long after the tide turned.
I have had this rod and reel for well over 35 years and always enjoy using it,use to catch heaps of salmon down south at Locs well and Sharinga and chase snapper with it around Whyalla of the rocks,
The lack of drag and anti reverse make for some intresting times when I hook a large shark or ray.
The reel is an Alvey 700 surf champion with 20 lb platypus pretest matched to a 4m custom Super Stick hot shot fiberglass rod.
I will have to get this outfit out more often as it is a great fun way to fish
and against my better judgement I deployed a live tarpon about 20cm into a favourite snag, it wasn't long before I was hooked up onto a soild fish.. the noises coming off it under load were unbelievably bad 
as its drag consisted of a spring metal plate against the spool..... no doubt state of the art technology back then but I managed to land a good 70cm barra on it once again proving that all the gear and no idea is the way most anglers roll these days.. .. 
