Home Distiller

Dunno if anyone else on the east cost of Oz is going through the same thing, but lately we've had what seems to be the biggest and earliest fly plauge ever. I've got a couple of small commercial traps that are filling so fast I have to empty them every week! The little bast*rds are everywhere, I think I even swallowed a couple yesterday.

Is it the same all over, and does anyone have any good ideas for baits for the 20 litre bucket traps I'm making today?

Dunny canaries are bad this year. I'm in central Victoria and the stock attracts the buggers and getting anywhere near a dairy town is hell.

I guess it will get worse and we'll just have to grin and bear it.

blanik

Your not alone mate. Bloody things are everywhere over the west too. Was lined this morning to vote before coming to work and was covered!

They were the same last year up here, but the late cold snap did em all in.
I think we just got used to phukall flies last yea, so seems like a lot this year.
But man, it seems like a lot.

blanikdog wrote:Dunny canaries are bad this year.

Biggest problem with fly baits is finding somthing to attract flies but doesn't smell so bad ya want to yak when you get within 10 feet of it

I've been experimenting, a cupful of blood & bone fertiliser and a couple of tablespoons of vegemite dissolved in hot water took something like 20-30 blowies in an hour in one small trap.

Now if i can set a coupla forty-fours of the same stuff at the back of my block I reckon I might actually make a dent in the Louie population...not before time, either.

2 words.
Bushmans Repellant.

Avatar wrote:2 words.
Bushmans Repellant.

Okay for making 'em stay off your body, but I like seeing 'em dead...

They were really thick this weekend here - what is Bushmans Repellant?

Just a brand of repellent, 80% DEET.

http://www.bushman-repellent.com/

Deet's pretty bad stuff to be rubbin on your skin
I spilt some RID on a vinal covered card table it ate a big hole in it

I use equal parts bayby oil ,detol and metho with a good squirt of citronella oil seems to work good for me.

We don't have a fly problem here but mosquitoes bother a lot of folks. I'm not allergic to the bites personally and mosquitoes tend to avoid me.

My wife is a mosquito attactor - they swarm to her. They will fly right by me to get to her. As a consequence she is always spraying that Off repellant all over herself. I would too if I was her, but since they don't bother me much I don't want that nasty stuff on me, and if she is around I don't need it anyway.

I literally live right on the edge of a swamp (a seasonal swamp, but still a swamp). We get at least three different species of disease carrying mosquitos. There are times of the year around here when you can't go outside for fear of being carried of by mossie squadrons. No shit. So we just stay inside our flywire prison.

I hate mossies. If I was God for a day the first thing I would do is banish mossies to the other side of the universe.

Hardly ever see a fly, except fruit flies during mango season.

I have lived in a lot of places, from near arctic to pure tropical. In Okinawa we had to stay indoors at night because the mosquitos carried some really bad disease, I was only 10 at the time, so I am not sure but I think it was a form of encephelits. There were these trucks that went up and down the residential streets spraying a massive DDT fog to kill them. We would sometimes ride our bicycles behind the trucks for several miles, getting saturated with DDT spray until we had it literally running in streams off of our elbows - but we were safe from the mosquitos!

The biggest damn mosquitos I ever saw though were in Fairbanks Alaska - those things were huge, and came in big dark clouds that would blot out the sun - OK that part was a bit of an exaggeration , but there were billions of them. A radio station in Florida was running a contest to see which state had the biggest mosquito, and an entry from Alaska won. You would think that the frigid Alaskan winters would kill the larva, but obviously not.

There were also hordes of biting flies to deal with up there. The only remedy I can remember us taking for flies and mosquitos was 80 proof alcohol taken internally.

I hear they have misquitoes in south Ga that can stand flatfooted and screw a turkey. So i'm tole. Morgan

I did a job in Warner Robins GA. We litereally were working in a swamp - big ole mosqutos, but not as big as those Fairbanks monsters.

I grew up as a kid in New Guinea, the mozzies there were nasty bastards that could jab you so full of whatever that a sleepy scratch during the night would leave you with a wide-open weeping tropical ulcer 3-4 days later. I caught malaria so may times times in the 60's and 70's that the blood bank still treats me like a VIP these days 'cos of all the anti-mal antigens i've got coursing through my system.

Or maybe its my alcohol intake that's made my blood so attractive to recipients...