First Attempt At LRF

As you may know I have been looking for different styles of fishing and things to try out and keep things a bit more interesting for anyone reading this blog. One thing I have been looking into for a few weeks now is a style of fishing call LRF, this for anyone who doesn't know stands for 'light rock fishing' and is a style of sea fishing. Once again the same group of people on twitter have been helping me again, this time I'm going to leave they're twitter usernames at the end of this post. These guys have made things so much easier for me over the last week or so, I asked about things I would need to get started and for videos they thought were good and full of information on this kind of fishing, the number of links I got sent was great, made the shopping side of things so much easier and the videos were so informative that I felt confident when I eventually set out fishing.

        That said once I bought some bits from the guys suggestions I was ready to head out and give it a go, one thing I have got now that had not arrived by the time I went out was the Sakura Rock Pouch that was suggested to me and that meant I have to take a relatively big back as I had nothing else, this made things a little bit slower as I was not as organized as I could have been with having to look about in bigger pockets for some of the smaller items. However now that it is here I am looking forward to heading back out and trying again, another thing that was suggested to me was to mark out centimetres on my unhooking mat, this will help with quickly sizing up my catches on practise sessions.

One of the main things I liked about the Rock Pouch is the small lure box that comes inside it, in the grand scheme of things and in comparison to most lure anglers I do not have many lures, however when the links came in from the guys I ordered quite a few of the suggested smaller ones. I also went on a quick shopping trip down to my local Go Outdoors store and picked up some small hooks  as well as so Fladen LRF lures, these are at the moment the only lures I own that didn't come in a re-sealable packet, so it made sense to me to put these in the box as at the moment, I have not tried enough to say I have any favourites. As always with any box I buy the first job is to add some stickers to it, this time I had a sticker from a clothing company called Fin and Tide, I will leave a link to their web page at some point in this post, I really recommend heading over and taking a look at the products on there as I think the are quite possible some of the best looking items of fishing clothing I have seen. Another great feature with the pouch is all the little wallets at the bottom, so far I have put all my packets of hooks in them and also my drop shot weights. So having just realised I have gone off on a massive tangent about this item I feel its time to move on, whilst I was in the Go Outdoors store I noticed some packets of Marukyu Isome worm, these are another product that was mentioned to me as something I should look into buying, so obviously having seen it here as well as being told it is good I had to pick some up, I have also seen this on a few youtube videos now and one of these was filmed not far from where I live, in this video it was said that this stuff has been banned in some of the local competitions because it is just that good.

So moving on, after speaking to a few people online and also some of the staff in local tackle shops I decided to head over to Swanage to give this LRF stuff a go. so after packing everything I thought I might need into the car I headed off, looking back at what I took with me now I was very much so over packed. With that though I feel very much so when it comes to fish care, when your heading to do something your unsure of or have never done before being over prepared and having to much stuff is always better than not enough, especially when it comes to the fact I took my big unhooking mat and all my pike unhooking tools, as it was something I have never done and I had gone alone I felt it was very much better for me and the fish if I went prepared for every eventuality. That being said the

only thing I didn't take with me was my side cutters or long cutters, this was due to the size of the hooks I was using, I very much felt that if I tried to get hold of these hooks with cutters in a fishes mouth I ran more of a risk of damaging the fish than helping it. So now I'm on my way to Swanage to do my first ever LRF session, all I wanted to accomplish on this trip was to catch a fish, basically I just didn't want to blank, this I know is the normal aim for any fishing trip but for me this time I had never done this style of fishing and was very much just here to learn. unfortunately when I arrived in Swanage there was some sort of pirate festival on and the pier and all the surrounding area was packed, now to be honest I probably should have checked online if there was anything going on before hand but in the excitement of finally getting out the house got the better of me,

        The day was not a total waste though as I headed back a bit closer to home, me and Jen decided to take Kieran crabbing down Poole Quay, when we got there we drove a bit further down the road and parked up at Baitor Park and walked the short walk to the old life boat launch hut, which is now a museum, a few years back a sea wall was built to create a mooring area for local fishing boats and things. This creates a nice slacker area of water and lots of cover for the smaller species of fish, I very much felt that this was going to be the best area to try out my skills against these small sea fish. With all this talk about LRF you may remember another style of fishing I wanted to learn was drop shotting so it made total sense to me to try the two styles at the same time, I tied on a small size 8 hook and nipped on a small Fladen lobster pattern lure. After a few knocks and half takes I started to realise that something was not quite right with what I was doing, so decided to change to a size 10 hook and chop a small piece of Isome worm up and threaded it on after two more put ins I was into my first ever sea fish, I know this little Common Blenny might now be the biggest fish you have ever seen but he is by far for his size on of the hardest fighting little fish I have ever hooked.

I'm at the point now where I'm going to put links to all the guys who have helped me out with so much over the last few weeks.

First up Mr G! or Gudgie:

Follow him on twitter @TheGudgeon

Also go check out his facebook page his 'G-Rakes' are awesome!

https://m.facebook.com/TheGudgeonsGadgets

Also Ant

His twitter is @worldangling_ go give him a follow

He writes a great blog to!

https://worldangling.wordpress.com/

Next up J R Wheeler

Give him a follow on twitter @JRWheelerlure

He also writes a great blog

https://jrwheelerlurefishing.wordpress.com/

As well as makes really good youtube videos!

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5yg1am8bv6PcBk2lu4CEag

Last but not least for the thank yous a awesome group of guys!

Follow them @LureNuts

Last link to share is to the Fin and Tide website seriously go check out these guys products you will not be disappointed!

They are on twitter to @FinandTide

http://www.finandtide.com/

Once again guys thanks for reading and showing your support, for any of you who enjoy reading this blog I am going to be trying harder to get more posts done a week, as I said before the aim is to get at least two posts per week done. The problem I have at the moment like I said before is I have had a operation on my feet and I found it very hard yesterday to spend the 30 minutes I did manage, I was in a lot of pain when I got home but in the end it was worth it! The buzz I got from that small fish was epic and also the joy on my sons face after he managed to get two crabs with the help of his mum. Its all these things that make our sport one of the best!