Friday 25 February 2011

Slowly Slowly, Catchy Fishy

It's been a slow week for me, with numbers of fish way down on usual totals per session. I've tried everything in my box, managing to get very little interest. The saving grace though, in my opinion, is that the average fish(Pollack) size has been up on previous weeks.

Wednesday saw me meet up with local boys Steve Arries and Mike Sullivan. Action was slow off the mark, so Steve and I moved to a dark and deep corner, just outside of the main Harbour. It didn't take to long for us to find the bites and landed a few Pollack and the 8-10oz class. I hooked and quickly lost a good fish while trying out a creature bait. The take was OTD and I think it may of been down to me striking into it too quickly, the bait was a bit of a mouth full and incidentally, the fish may never of really found the hook. After this, the bites dried up completely.

We moved back to our original mark and fished on. There were a lot of Smelt in the upper layer of the water and to be honest, I was expecting to see a Bass gorging itself, among all this food. No such luck though. For Mike however, lady luck was shining. I was 40 yards away and I heard his drag singing before I spotted where he was stood - Rod arched over and the tip lunging toward the water. Obviously he was in to a good fish, so I made my way over to him to assist with the landing, half expecting to see a Bass in the 2lb class - I was surprised to see a nice Flounder come to the surface. Mike managed to steer it toward a set of steps and I duly landed it for him. It was a notably 'chunky' (pre-spawn?)fish, with plenty of fight in it. We didn't measure it, but it comfortably made 2lb class. A nice fish by any standard.
There have been a few Flounder caught on Light Game tackle in this spot, so they are definitely becoming a realistic LRF target species. Difficult to make out a pattern yet, as they've taken all manor of soft bait's, with all manor of retrieves. This particular fish came to an EcoGear Grass Minnow.

I've had a similar sized fish on a drifted, Giant Xlayer - a world apart from a 1.5'' shad. The aggressive nature of these fish is pretty awesome, know to chase down crab and fish, a spirited fighter on standard lure gear. I can't wait to grab one LRF.
I was lucky to get out last night as well, with the Mrs pre-occupied with Wedding stuff. Joined by Steve and Mike, but also Andrew Younger and Danny Welch. Always good to get out in a group and they're all thoroughly decent guys - which makes it all the better. Things started slow for me(again!), so after a chat with Mike, we decided to expand the field and move on to another mark. This saw us hitting a mark inside of the Tamar river estuary system, fishing in to deep and flowing water over broken ground. Sport was pretty instant for a couple of the group, taking me a while to find the fish and pattern. My final tally was 5 fish, including the Pollack(OTD) above - possibly my best one LRF to date. I'll definitely be visiting this mark again, it seems like it has the potential to hold some fish of a better stamp.

4 comments:

  1. Nice one mate. keen as mustard to get up there again!

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  2. Same as Ben, hoping to be in amongst it again soon!

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  3. Be good to see you boys up here again soon. Think it's an idea to expand the field now though, plenty to explore.

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  4. Get on newcombe. I was looking for you and wattsy and your youtube videos and I came across this
    Love it

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