Back in the devils backyard

Armed with another golden ticket allowing access to a very special mark I had very high expectations!!!!!
The mark usually fishes so well on the back tide……..not last night!
I got home rather deflated, but in reflection I had an alright night.
With the sun behind us our long shadows loomed inside the area we wanted to fish, this mark also fishes well in the dark! While waiting for the darkness I thought I spotted a Bass. Sight casting a Nories Shrilpin 2” lure with a ecogear shirasu jig head seemed to spook the fish. I seen another bass and began reeling in much quicker than usual……. My Rod, a Nories sea bass program tide controller slowly looped over, seaweed? The drag on the reel slowly turned picking up speed gradually. It must be weed in the current, no sign of any head shaking resistance. I continued reeling in. My Mate Tony went for the net, I didn’t question him thinking he was kindly going to help me with the mess on the hook. All of a sudden the line went slack…. I’m free cool. Then the usually calm Tony shouts reel faster it’s coming towards you…… With in seconds a fine specimen was in the net. All very unexciting, a good few reports of mullet suggest they go like stink. My mullet was rather uneventful but a first for me.

As the sun sank into Plymouth Hoe I was bracing myself for a night of crazy Bass fishing. All about large takes from the surface producing. Ripples every where, dorsil fins up out of the water it had to be a good night. I went slightly smaller on my jighead down to a size ten 0.9 gram with a ecogear aquagear aji straight.

Followed by a rather healthy
Scorpion fish

The next and only fish was a large mackerel! He made my night, he gave me the fight the mullet should have. He was awesome
.

 

Don’t forget the Lure Comp is still running. For a chance to win a magnificent Seaspin Pro-Q 145 answer the question on my previous blog entry ” I’m Floundered”

Answers on Facebook pages “Light rock Fishing UK or send a message on here.

I’m Floundered

While I caught a couple of nice flounder a ummmm eerrrr  seagull  and a herring. Marcus from http://www.rockfishrookie.blogspot.com surly was the star of the night. Read his blog it’s well worth it.
A quick summery of events….
On arrival I was informed about a large ( extremely large for LRF standards) bass caught moments before my arrival. I look across to congratulate Marcus but he was a bit tied up!!!!! I had met Marcus last year just as he was thinking about getting into LRF so to see him well and truly hooked, sporting a majorcraft zalts and a shimano rarenium 3000 was a pleasing sight. I wondered over to enquire about the lure that just caught the monster bass. I was reminded of a scene from the film ” something about Mary ” you know the Frank & Beans chapter ” right 1,2 & ” we got a bleeder!”

This image was taken just after I managed to remove one of the hooks that had fortunately (or unfortunately depending on who’s arm it’s in) gone through and come out back out again allowing me, with my trusty surgical forceps from AGM fishing to crush the barb and push back through the entry hole. The image you see above was the next stage and I promise you it was much deeper than it looks in the image. Tugging & pulling the hook it just wasn’t coming free. The options seemed limited to push it through like the first hook crush the barb and he’s a free man, or yank it out!!!  What would you do????

Me……… I yanked it out. Fortunately marcus was a big brave boy, he didn’t make a sound and thankfully didn’t punch me either.

He got back to fishing and was straight into another Bass.

I’d not even rigged my kit up!!!!

Choosing the Nories Sea Bass program tide controller I wanted to unleash my New secret weapon  a Seaspin Pro-Q 90 , 10g ‘s of sheer who could resist bling! it launched out like a missile. I left it dead sticking for a wee while then began my assault on the bass below, unfortunately I was outflanked by Air support in the form of a kamikaze Seagull. I screamed , I swore and then i got distracted by the sound of the sunline braid pealing of the spool of the Stella 1000fe making such lovely music. Back to reality and a call for help , my fellow LRF’ers stopped laughing and helped out. Mike got a towel out of my Van and went about the bird with a blowtorch and a pair of pliers, well I reckon he would have done if I had a blowtorch in the van.

Thanks mike!!! The seagull flew off, emptied it’s bowles and all his mates flew off with him.

I put my new Sea Spin Pro-q 90 back in its box for another day, very confident in its abilities.

Above is a weapon capable of taking big cast a leap further, A lure for the bigger pluggers amongst us. I will be giving this lure away at the end of this update.

Back to the action, all went quiet for a while before I felt a decent tug on a ecogear aqua gear swim shrimp ‘4; in pear with size 2 1.8g skip in the shade jig…. Thank you vey much a decent sized flounder.

LRF Flounder Plymouth

Again all went silent……. Marcus was getting bothered by a few smelt, the end result to that little duel was Marcus 1 Smelt 0

Mike gave me his new Megabass LRF rod ( a real beauty) I asked him if he had caught anything on it, his reply was ” no not yet”

Well thats Mikes rod Blooded!!! Another flounder 😉

On going joke with us as Mike did the same to me twice on two separate rods last year.

A totally fantastic night, new fishing pals with like minded attitudes to modern lure fishing with catch, release , and have a laugh .

I managed a Herring as most of the Lads were leaving, Staying on I had a good chat to a Chap called frankie who was desperate to blood his new Majorcraft Crostage LRF rod and by preserving he did, I mighty fine Pollock.

SO the big lure give away!!!  To Win a Super Seaspin Pro-Q 145  All answers on face book  hit like   “Light Rock fishing UK’    and drop you answers under this blog link . I’m floundered

post an answer to this cryptic question

What predator did I manage to catch with my first cast with a Seaspin pro Q 90?

a A Gurt big Bass

b A Seagull ( ha like who would be stupid enough to do that)

C A Flounder

D A Herring

Answers will be picked at random at the end of the month

Cor Fu, Living the Bream dream

Just came back from an awesome trip to the lush green Greek Island of Corfu.

I took my travel kit with me which consists of two Graphiteleader travel rods. a 1000fe shimanio Stella loaded with a fresh spool of Sunline rockfish 0.4 pe for use on the LRF Finezza 0.6 – 8g & a 2500R certate loaded with 16lb momentum also from Sunline ready to strap to the HRF Argento compatto.

My first outing was really frustrating, I was fishing 100 yards from my hotel lodge and was getting loads of tiny but aggressive bites. I went down as far as a size 10 hook but still struggled to catch. I gave up in favour of some small plugs. No sooner than attaching a wee Dawia Sc Shiner weighing in at a megga 3.5g I spotted a decent size fish. Assuming it was a mullet I made the cast anyway……..bang straight into the mouth of passing fish. A good tussle and a welcome flash of silver confirmed it wasn’t a Mullet but a Bass.

The rock I was standing on made landing the 2 1/2 pound beauty difficult  , so carefully I hand lined the fish up & thumbed it. I could feel a treble point near my index finder and tried to get a safer grip but the lost the fish and my wee Shiner plug as my Uni to Uni knot gave up. Gutted but happy to get my hand on a fish.
The next trip was a mile away and I finally managed to catch one of the pesky lil bream. Green lures are the order of the day in the form of an Aquagear aji straight on a size ten decoy rocket 0.9g I also managed a beautiful rock fish with amazing colours.
My last session was an hour before leaving, I took some local advice and hired a pedlow. Straight away trolling an ecogear plug I had a good fish on but managed to loose it. This happened a few times. Next I tried a few plugs but I couldn’t get them deep enough so back to jig heads. Due to the lack of contact I went for a small hook. The decoy rocket size ten went on with a bit of extra split to get me down. surprisingly the fish stayed on much longer showing itself to be a much bigger bream probably just under a pound but this one managed to straighten my hook. With time running out I was getting desperate. I put a spin mad Polish lure on and got interest but I couldn’t keep my fish.
The savour of the day was an ecogear shrimp lure zx35. I’m so pleased to have caught on this lure as I have had it for ages bit never had the confidence to keep it on long enough. I ended up with about 12 decent bream.
You will notice the lack of photography to accompany my blog bit unfortunately I lost my camera bag over side of the pedlow…… 🙂 all the holiday pics gone in an instant.
Like Matt Newcome said no pics .,,.,, It never happened 😦 Unfortunately we don’t have any holiday images of our baby abroad either. I don’t really give a monkeys about the equipment although the camera bag a billingham hadley has been with me for 20 years on all my trips abroad.

The Sunline always shines on the righteous

Some of you will know I get a golden ticket to fish a totally exclusive mark (MOD) this mark has never disappointed, only exceeded my expectations each & every time we fish it. Sure for Big Bass the back tide is a winning formula, When the down lights are on the fish are active. But for the LRF angler using a balanced outfit any tide in almost any conditions work. I mean last night was like casting into tar, I’m not joking.

But still we managed to find a small area with a strong light shining into the water and we caught fish. I’m not gona lie and say it was a fish a cast but we both went into double figures on the Light rock fishing gear. Mostly Pollock & Herring but I managed to wrangle a fat bass from below the pontoon we fished from.

Danny borrowed my Nories rock fish Bottom UL which he liked the sensitivity of but he prefers a much more bendy rod. The rockfish Bottom UL can be a stiff rod but my catch rate is far greater than any other rod I use. Having said that a good ole bend in a rod is part of the excitement of LRF, Ultra light fishing.

I took the Nories Seabass program tide controller out for another session on light jig heads, starting off with a 2.3g ecogear shirasu fine jig head & an Ecogearaqua strawtail in active Chartreuse Glow

Mr Pollock was first to entertain my Lure “On the Drop” ( OTD )

Things went quiet for a while so I cracked a Beer. ” the Magic hour” ( the magic hour is a term in photography where the streetlights are on but still light out side.)

;

Fishing LRF I love the magic hour some marks with fixed downlighting can produce some great fish. The herring you see above was one of about 5 caught with Danny landing about the same amount. Although not easy it would seem the fish can still see the lures through this thick muddy water.

A reassuring sight was a few shoals of Sand eels this surely should trigger the bigger silver bars, and with that thought I bagged a fat bass.

I love the rod, blown away by the smoothness of the reel but the fluro from sunline was the best choice of the night. With the wind getting up a braid would have made things a wee bit harder. By using the fluro I was able to cast more accurately.

Herring are you hearing me.

Sight fishing is an extremely exciting method of catching a fish but last nights session on the LRF gear was more frustrating than exciting. I could see the herring, I could see the fish they where gorging on but no matter what I chucked at them, the herring just did not care. They had plenty of other fish to fry ( see what I did there)
I did manage four or five proper in the hand catches ( a few more managed to unhook themselves with an impressive air display)

This beauty ( not that you can see it) was caught using the new nories 2″ shrilpin SP’s not measured one but I think they might be more than 2″ but they worked so who cares.
I went through the whole bag ( almost) to try and catch more of this ball of herring right in front of my nose. A few came in on a 3G tackle house nabura deka & one a green aqua strawtail from using an unusual 2g jighead from illex. This jighead uses a unusual way of attaching the lure. But I won’t harp on about jigheads for fear of sounds like a knob. 😉

A can of Stella to celebrate a Stella

Oohh boy does this feel nice

The power of the power isome

Still dreaming of far away shores like Cuba & Mexico last night seen me fishing with my LRF travel rod in Plymouth. It’s a Graphiteleader finezza compatto 0.6-8g and what a beauty it is, & certainly deserves more airtime than I currently give it. The reason for using it last night was I brought a newbie a long, he was set up using my Nories rockfish bottom UL and soon got the hang of the light stuff.
After deserting our first mark due to lack of bites the loyal band of LRF’ers moved on to search for more active waters. I won’t say the fishing was easy but we did get our wish with the active water all be it very murky still from the recent rain.
Opting for a size 12 hook 1.5 g split shot and a whole power isome rigged wacky my first fish was a flounder

After a long, long period of no action the same length of rag imatation in pink hooked me a goby at roughly the same time a Adam landed one.

A bit of walking up and down the harbour and a slight Change of location
And Adam caught a herring and lost what we think could have been a bass. Loose drag 😦

But I managed to land one with the help of Matt Newcombe my new bass handling assistant 🙂

Although it was a slow night all round the whole crew managed a few fish and the banter was in top gear.
Adam the newbie had a great time, it’s hard not to when to land a couple of fish on your first session .
Good stuff all round and praise be to the people at Marukyu for bringing us magic in the form of a rag worm.

The only fish in the bay

If I hear another announcement about a hose pipe ban or a double dip recession I’m going to ….to ……to, well,most probably sit back and do nothing.
I mean to start with the hose pipe ban, I’ve been back from holiday now for almost three weeks and it’s practically rained everyday! Somedays particularly heavy rain,over long periods of time. Yet we are still told to be thrifty with our water. Where’s it all going then??
I can tell you, yep, all the bulging rivers are emptying their thick muddy soup like water right in front of one of my favourite marks. Just waiting for some busybody from the water board to find it all.
Last nights session in the soup was Looking like a bank, yea I’ve said it LRF Blank. But true to good form that blank was averted by the only fish In the bay, a misguided herring content to swim about in soup.

I spent about three hours in the rain using my Nories seabass program as an LRF rod, wow…. In my eyes this is probably the most versitile rod in my collection ( well lets say on a par with the Nories jighead snapper) it wasn’t a mistake, I didn’t select the wrong rod. No I wanted to test a theory that brewed in my mind from Last monday when for the first time the seabass program & I went out hunting for guilt head bream, Putting the “tide controller” through its paced with various small plugs in the 5g range I was super impresses by the feed back. I began fixing on a few lighter jigheads, down to 2.5g. Although I drew a big fat blank on the bream I did manage a mullet, Well sort of……. I was left thinking about how well the rod handled the light lrf lures . The Art of fishing web site suggest s its a specialist rod ( which it is) Ben also suggests ” this rod is NOT for everybody” here where I think he might be wrong. The Rod is weighted as a 5g – 12g lure rod. This makes it sound very specialist and limited…… But limited is not something Nories do. Like I said at the start of the thread I successfully used the sea bass program as my LRF rod and although I only managed one fish that was down to conditions. The rod gave me the feed from a 1.8g jighead with an ecogear aqua strawtail that many lesser rods could never do. The price makes it a specialist rod but if I didn’t buy it where would the economy be …? Triple dip I would imagine. Just make make sure the UK survives I bought a few other bits and pieces like a new “Prime area “bag for containing all my LRF gear ( well some of it) and a Stella 1000 fe .
I’ve not even talked about my fishing wagon yet. I managed to sink a good few thousand on that. All in all I can sleep better in the knowledge that the hose pipe ban should be lifted as I found all the excess water, I single handily saved the economy and I found out that the Nories seabass program tide controller is a very versatile lure rod indeed.

The water in Majorca don’t taste like what it aught ta! like

Please excuse the title it was an old Heineken ad!!
But the clue is in the title, yes I’m in Majorca for a weeks R&R and occasional fish.
Tonight was my first attempt and fairly successful it was too.

First cast consisted of a 2.5g ecogear fine shirasu jig head with a aqua straw tail mated with my new graphiteleader compatto lrf rod and a 2506 certate with rockfish sunline braid.
A beautiful ( of not tricky to catch ) rainbow wrasse

Things went quiet for a wee while until I moved inside the harbour ( next to the no fishing sign)

I’m guessing it’s a scorpion fish!!

Found the Pollock!

It’s been a while now since I had a huge haul of Pollock! Playing in the Devils playground last night (MOD property) put an end to that. I’m pleased to say there back ( not really sure they ever went anywhere ) I wanted to fish with plugs, something I’ve neglected for a while now. I picked up a super little ecogear from our new lure shop in Plymouth. First cast yesterday seen a few follows from sea trout!

I had a good number of pollock at good sizes too on the little beauty from ecogear.
My mate Danny hooked a schoolie Bass using power isome ( and my new Graphiteleader compatto travel lrf rod, which he loved!!The little travel rod had some bend in it and looked great under the pressure of the Bass which was jumping clean out of the water! From then on Danny was on a roll, he must of had over 50 pollock out fishing me three to one 😦
I was using my Nories UL rockfish bottom my previous favourite rod. I blame it on me not being used to the rod ha .Most of my recent sessions have been using a Nories slow retrieve 710 but I managed to snap the tip casting what must be no more than 2grams 😦 ( a 1.8g and strawtail)
I await to see what happens about that So for now my New Favourite LRF rod is the graphite leader LRF . Did I mention how great it fishes and how awesome it looks while packed away in its little biddy hard case.
I switched over to soft plastics to try and catch up with Danny.
This Pollock was taken on the aquagear stuff.