Cranbourne Practise Match.

Hi guys, today I bring you something a little bit different as the title would suggest. Any of you who know me know that I once was a mad keen match angler and to be honest deep down I have always been. However over the last year or so I have been branching out trying new things and I would probably by now feel confident in enough different styles to call myself a all rounder. The main problem I have found doing this though is that I have put everything else I love to do on the back burner whilst I learn others, I have had a load of fun though so cannot complain and I will be continuing to do most of the other aspects I have started. That's enough about that as I will do a post tomorrow explaining everything in more detail of upcoming fishing trips and my schedule for post and stuff.
              Moving on then to todays topic, as I said before for any of you who know me will know I used to do a lot of match fishing, I used to do the odd write up afterwards outlining what tactics and bait I used and weather or not they worked well on the day. I also used to put in the odd things with tweaks I made during the session along with things I would do differently next time. I did this for two reasons, I was mainly using it for myself before so that I could look up a certain date and see what worked on the day ready for a upcoming match or practise session, I also had hoped that along the way I would have been able to pass on some knowledge to anyone reading who may have been starting out or struggling to put together a run of fish in their own five hour matches or practise sessions. This time around I'm going to be using these blog posts in the same way but emphasising more on trying to help new or struggling anglers. Right so moving on to how this trip came about, I have got to thank Mark Tiller once again for dragging me out on something I kept telling myself I did not want to do or would not enjoy, this of course was completely wrong just like the last time he did this and took me out Carp fishing. I had a great time on the bank this weekend and off the back of it have contacted the clubs match section and signed up! It felt really good to dust off the old Maver box and Pole ready for a session and to be honest I was filling with excitement the closer and closer we got to the venue. The reason for choosing the venue was simple we found out that there is a main six lakes out of the clubs venues that they run the matches on, this of course was one of them, the next step was then to find out if any of them allow keepnets as we wanted to see exactly how we faired instead of using a clicker and have a rough guess at it. One last point before moving on to the part you actually came to read and this one is directed at Mark mainly! I know you say you don't want to do it as your focused on Carp and Match fishing but seeing as you dragged me out on two trips I did not want to do and I loved it you are coming on a river match session with me and you will feel the same as I do the day after I promise!!
             Okay so on to the session, Mark and I had planned this trip during the week and had both agreed to meet up Saturday and load his van ready for the morning to save a bit of time, we then set a time of 6.30am for him to pick me up as we had a forty five minute drive and the lake opened a hour from then. After the short drive we finally arrived at the lake with a bit of time to spare before we were allowed to start fishing so off we went on a quick walk around the lake to try spot some fish or a peg that took our fancy, we started off by walking round the right hand side of the lake and after passing six or seven swims we stopped to take a look and that was when we spotted a point on the other side with a swim facing of both sides of it, this to us was perfect as it gave us somewhere to sit close but with our own water to fish, we could keep an eye on what each other was doing to see what was working better also put us close enough for compulsory match fishing banter. It was settled then and after literally running back to Mark's van getting the gear out as fast as possible and making our way round to the swims there was only one thing left to do, that of course was to flip a coin to decide who takes what side. This was settled a bit quicker than normal when I asked Mark which peg he fancied and he said the opposite one to what I wanted so we just simply agreed to go in our own pegs we wanted more. Time to get set up, box levelled out, side tray on, keepnets in the water, rollers set, pole and top kits laid out, it was now time to sit, take a look and lay out a plan of action. First things first I got my self a method feeder rod set up, my plan was to start on the shot two plus two line feeding 4mm Bait-Tech carp and course pellets with a 4mm Bait-Tech xpand pellet on the hook to try pick up some early fish, I plumbed up the line and had just over three foot of water so I opted for a Dino Gino 0.4g float 0.15 Guru N-Gauge mainline to 0.13 N-Gauge and a Drennen 18 match hook. I then decided to plumb up a line at 11m to a small gap in the Lilly bed, this time knowing I was fishing for bigger fish (hopefully) I opted for a Dino Merus 0.8g to 0.19 N-Gauge and a 0.15 hook length same material and same hook pattern but size 16, my reasons for using the heavier float were simple there was a whole lot of fish against these Lilly's and I wanted more shot to get the bait down the bottom quicker. I then decided on setting up a margin this time a Dino Trux 0.3g float on 0.20 N-Gauge to a 0.15 hook length and a size 16 Drennen corn hook, this time I opted to go with a lighter float as I was going to be using a heavier bait on felt that this was going to be the line that brought me some serious fish, I felt that the less resistance I had on the bait the better as I didn't want to loose any of these fish to spooking them or something stupid like that. So that was my lines laid out it was now time to get some bait sorted out ready for the day. First thing I always do when getting my bait ready is to sort my groundbait out, one major aspect to determine what kind of groundbait I use I the colour of the water in front of me, today I had very coloured water and this helped me decided not only on colour of groundbait but the fact I wanted something smelly and oily to. I went for the Bait-Tech Envy not the brightest of baits but very smelly and attractive to carp, I decided not to go with a really bright bait as there was so many small fish around my peg I felt I would have a nightmare trying to feed them off and get rid of them if I fed groundbait they could see from miles away. next I got my self two separate two pint bait tubs one I filled with 4mm carp and course pellets and covered them with water the other I filled with the same bait but left the dry, I will explain more on the reasons why a little bit later. Next job was to drain a tin of Bait-Tech scopex corn into my pellet pump, this is something I have done for a number of years now, no matter what flavour of corn I open I always use the juices to pump through my expander pellets, just a small tip and edge for you guys. I them put my 4mm Bait-Tech xpand pellets into the pump and pumped them until they all sank to the bottom of the pump when the pressure was released. In they went to a one pint bait tub with enough of the liquid just to cover them, I then put the final contents of the corn into a bait tub followed by another tin, mainly so they had plenty of liquid in with them as well. I then went back to my groundbait as it had now had enough time to take on the water and could now add the finishing touches to make that perfect and ready to go.
             Right plan laid out, bait ready everything put neatly and easily accessible on my side try it was time to call all in, or two guys in as it were. I started off by putting a pot of Envy pressed to the side to create a pocket to add some freebies of corn and a few of the soaked pellets, I then brushed the groundbait over the top so as not to spill anything other than the groundbait if I did and shipped it out to the Lilly line, I did exactly the same thing to my left on my margin line just to get an idea if there was resident fish or if it was going to be something that needed building up as the session went on, then I fed half a pot of soaked 4mm pellet at two plus two before loading my method feeder with Envy and a hair rigging a Bait-Tech shellfish orange boilie, I cast out at eight wraps, not far but felt using running line over pole tactics early on could get me a few extra fish as the sun was beaming down and I thought shipping the pole out and creating a massive shadow could spook any fish that was there. one thing I was doing was throwing in the 4mm pellets that I had left dry at two plus two in order to get an idea what was there at the time, the reason I didn't soak these ones was so they would sink a little bit slower and I could see if any bigger fish were taking them on the way down, I fed around a dozen before each cast, again once I had sunk the line and put the rod on the rest followed by ever minute or so after this. I could see there was a truck load of really small silvers there so decided to do this for a fair bit longer before dropping in on the line. I continued fishing the feeder re-casting ever couple of minutes if I was not getting bites and it dint take long at all for this to pay off, with in the first twenty minutes or so I had managed to net three or four 8-10oz Roach and two Carp around the lb mark but after this I was getting a 2lb Carp a chuck for around the same amount of time again before the line died off. I made about four or five more casts chopping and changing between hook baits and groundbait, pellet or a mix of both around the feeder however nothing could get me a bite so it was time to change. Over the time I was fishing the feeder and continuously feeding the pellets on my short pole line I had noticed a change in the amount of smaller fish in the area, I fed a pot of exactly the same on all three lines and went in at two plus two. This time I decided to hook on a 4mm xpand pellet which I had pumped in the scopex flavoured liquid from the corn tin and out I went, first couple of put ins I had two hand size Skimmers and three Roach around 4-6oz I then hooked a very small Goldfish followed by a 4oz Crucian Carp, this told me that the line was not quite ready for me and decided to try the line by the Lilly bed and continue to feed the short line. I fished this line for around half an hour landing about eight carp from 1-2lb I lost somewhere in the region of twelve better fish in the Lilly's which was obviously down to the fact my elastic was not up to the job of puling these fish out I was fishing a 12 Middy hollow which is already heavier than I normally like to fish but this was still not enough! I have never fished somewhere that the fish pull this hard 3-4lb fish pulled like they were 15lb. With that said and with me having overlooked the fact this might be the case I didn't have any stronger elastics with me, a lesson I have learned for next time, I decided to up my feeding on my short line as I very much now felt it would have to be the one to produce for the rest of the session, I quickly took the rig off my top kit for my long line and plumbed up another line literally a top kit out, I sometime like to fish this as there will always be fish at your feet either checking out what your nets are and or mopping up any spilled baits from filling your cup or from a wayward throw. Once I had done that and with it only being a practise and not a actual match Mark and I decided to stop for a bit of lunch and to talk about how things were working out for each other, one thing that I did do before stopping though was to put a full pot of soaked 4mm's on the two plus two line to try keep the fish there whilst we were stopped. One thing that was the same for both of us was that Mark was also struggling with his elastic not being man enough for these crazy fish. Something we both for sure will be taking with us next time is some super strong top kits!

After the break we got straight back to it and my swim was alive with Carp ranging from a lb to 10lb, the 10lb fish I was crossing my fingers to avoid as I feared for sure there was no chance of getting them in! This I can assure you is something I have never done in a match before praying for the bigger fish to leave my bait alone. For the next hour and a bit I had a 1lb Carp a chuck with the odd one around 3lb, if I managed to land it, I could hear over my shoulder though that Mark was not having the same fishing I was, he was being completely plagued by really small Roach and tiny Skimmers no matter what line he went in on or what bait he tried. We now had just over a hour to go and my line started to slow up again, I had still been feeding my margin line during the day, with two hours to go I like to really start feeding it heavy, I go straight in with four big pots of groundbait and freebies and then top this up wit a pot or two every fifteen minutes after that until the last hour. With the final hour closing in and my only other lines drying up and seemingly void of fish now I felt I had no choice but to go in on it early. I put in another full pot of soaked 4mm pellet on the short line and threw in some on the top kit line before hooking double corn and dropping in on my margin line. Instantly I had a fish of 2lb followed directly by four fish of a lb again, this told me that I was not looking at catching a few big fish at the end of my match more a possibility of a good weight of smaller Carp, this was not something I was worrying about though as I was still putting fish in the net! The way I have always looked at match fishing is that no matter what line your on or what bait if you bring a fish back every time you will not go far wrong in the end. After these few fish though I found myself having to rotate between my three lines and pick off the odd fish for the last half hour or so. After a up and down five hours with to be honest more ups than downs Mark gave the all out shout and it was over. Mark got his weigh sling out and zeroed it up, he came over to weigh my catch first, I pulled up my silvers net first and that came in at 4lb 8oz something I was a little bit surprised at as other than the odd okay Roach I didn't think I had caught that many. Then it was my Carp net and after a eventful five hours with the hardest fighting crazy fish I have ever attempted to catch it weighed in at 60lb on the dot which gave me a total of 64 and a half lb and could not have been happier with my first session on a new venue! Once again the Bait-Tech products served me very well indeed and is the reason I would not ever use anything else for this style of fishing. I wont go into any details of what Mark weighed in, lets just say he didn't quite have the session I did!
          

Once again guys thank you very much for reading and I hope you enjoyed I will put up a short post tomorrow outlining plans for trips in the near future to give you a idea on what content will be up on here soon!

River Drop Shotting.

Hi guys, this time I have been out on a short evening session fresh water fishing, The plan was to meet Mark Tiller at the Longham water works around 5pm which is roughly when he was finishing work. We had decided a couple of days ago to head down and do a spot of Roach fishing as we happen to know there is some rather large specimens in this stretch of river. I was not working yesterday so I decided to head down about a hour before Mark and try out some drop shot fishing as I am also told by very reliable anglers that there is some very big Perch also. As any of you who have read my blog over the last few weeks will know I am very new to drop shot fishing and the only time I have spent doing any at all is a few hours maximum practising some LRF fishing. However I was confident as I fell so much more at home fishing for fresh water predators as I have had a bit more practise at it, not a lot more but more all the same. I also had some new lures and things to try out in the form of some Ballzy worms thanks to the Lure Nuts guys. So with the plans in place I set out in the hope of a monster Stripy.

       Once I had made it to the water works I started out by having a quick walk around the areas I know have produced a few Perch in the past, I could not believe my eyes when the first area I walked up to had around five fish that were clearly 2lb and over, in the middle of these though was something in a whole other league, it is by far the biggest Perch I have ever laid eyes on and I could not get my rod set up fast enough! Finally all rigged up and 1.5" Ballzy hooked on I was ready for the coming battle trying to hook one of these great big fish. I'm not sure weather any of you know but my personal best that I caught at the end of last year fell 3oz short of being a 'specimen' fish at 1lb 13oz so I was super excited at the prospect of maybe landing a specimen Perch any minute. I started out by making a cast around a yard past the fish I could see so as not to spook them, also standing well back being very carful not to put any shadow over the water to maximise my chances of hooking one, I then very slowly reeled back towards them putting tiny little lifts and jigs in the lure as I went along, I got to about a foot away from the shoal and one of the fish took a immediate interest in when I had put in front of it, he sat watching my lure for a few seconds edging slowly closer to it when finally a short sharp lunge forward and he had engulfed my bait and hook, I gave what I thought was a good firm strike and off it shot unfortunately spooking all the other fish away before shaking its head and my hook all in one movement. For any of you who have been in the same situation before, probably most of you, you will feel my pain not only the loss of the fish but the fact that for quite some time now there was no point at all in fishing the same swim.

         So I was now on the move, there is another small wall opposite where I was fishing just a short walk over the bridge, I could again see a load of fish in the first swim I came to however this time they all looked to be a whole lot smaller. I changed over to a smaller 1" version of the Ballzy worm as after loosing that fish I just wanted to land anything now just to cheer myself up a bit, I dropped in just over the edge right next to a small reed bed and with in seconds I had a small knock on the tip directly followed by a much bigger one, once again I stuck into a fish this time it was a lot smaller but that was not my concern I was fully focused on getting the fish on my unhooking mat and taking a look at it. I think to call the winding in of this fish anything like a scrap or a fight would be a bit ridiculous as I may have only felt it shake its head once in the three seconds it took to bring in, to be fair though the little guy was scale perfect and although nowhere near as big as the one I had lost I did not care as for me I really do mainly enjoy looking at the fish I catch.

After spending a bit of time admiring the little guy I slipped him back and as you may have guessed from the picture I forgot to mention that by this point Mark had already arrived and was there in perfect time to take a picture of my monster for me. He decided to cast his feeder in just up from where I was fishing and was very happily catching plenty of Dace, Roach and small Chub for most of the evening and if he was in a match he would have posted a very respectable weight. So now that mission was accomplished on the drop shot front I decided to do what we went there for and went about setting up my feeder rod, after three or four casts and only managing two Minnows and a Bleak I decided enough was enough and that I had well and truly been beaten by Mark today, (good job we didn't put any money on it). I decided to start fishing the drop shot again for the last hour or so as we were only there for a few hours, I decided to head up to a pipe that was sticking out of the wall that was pushing loads of water out of it and really churning up the bottom of the river, I went back in with the 1.5" worm and with in literally seconds I was hooked into something a little more substantial, after a short this time I can say scrap as the fish tried to take me under the pipe and into a few different weed beds I landed the fish, still not a personal best but as I said before I like to look at the fish more than anything else and this fish was in pristine condition. I do not like to use the term it looks like it never been caught, to be honest with you if you are unhooking a fish and it still looks like it has never been caught then you release it in that condition the next person to catch it is going to say the exact same thing and so on. Any way now things were getting there and I felt I could maybe finally say I'm getting the hang of drop shotting! I was over the moon with my fish and popped him back and sat back for a little while looking at the pictures Mark had taken for me, after admiring the fish for a while I put one of the pictures on Istagram and get the rod back in the water.

After a short time fishing the same spot that had just produced I came to the decision something was wrong so sat for a little while looking at what my line was doing in the flow and things. I had noticed that if I let the line out slowly by the pipe then my drop shot moved slowly sideways through the flow of the river and as it got around about a yard off the bank I started getting a few knocks again. Another thing I had noticed was that since all the commotion of playing my last fish there was a lot of jack Pike jumping a bit further out than that. It was from this I decided that maybe the Perch were trying to take my lure only to spot a Pike and retreat, don't know how much of that is true but precision guess work was all I had to go on at the time. My next move was a simple decision I had now caught two Perch and if there is Pike to be caught I am never one to shy away from the challenge, I decided to bypass the pipe water pushing my rig out and simply flicked it out about a yard and a half to where the bites roughly stopped, This proved to be the right thing to do as I hadn't even managed a jig before the rod completely doubled over. This one could be called a scrap and the fish well and truly beat me up weed bed to weed bed it went, I absolutely love this ultra light style of fishing as you get to feel literally everything it is great and if you have not tried it I strongly suggest you do so! Not long later and I had a Pike netted for me by Mark, He put the net down on my unhooking mat for me and assumed his position as camera man once again.

 Once again guys thanks for reading I hope you enjoyed it, I am looking forward to writing the next one almost as much as I am getting out fishing! I have a few different sessions coming up so something new to write about, I am on another LRF practise session tomorrow, Sunday I am off on a match fishing session on a snake lake, this is something I have not done in a long time and I am really looking forward to it and will be writing about it so hopefully that is something you would like to read and my finally I have a full Carp fishing weekend planned with Mark next weekend so that will be something different again. So I have a action packed couple of weeks coming up and can't wait to get out fishing again. I really hope also that you like the sound of the up coming content to but until next time tight lines all!

Poole Quay Drop Shotting.

Right so today's LRF practise went so much better than I could have imagined on one hand but on the other not so much, I had a blinding day as far as sport is concerned but was having so much fun i forgot what the session was meant to be about. As you guys may know from reading my last post I am very new to this LRF or light rock fishing as it stands for, my last post covered my first ever practise session and this one will be covering my second. Now the first one was all about total length and catching as many total centimetres as I could and I gave myself a hour to do so. This mornings trip however was supposed to be a species hunt, I gave myself 3 hours to catch as many different species as i possibly could from the harbor wall. I also decided that I would make this a early morning session and the next one will be late evening just to see the differences if there are any. With that I set my alarm for 5.30am got all my kit ready and by the door ready for a quick getaway as soon as I was ready, that was it then alarm was sounding, I leaped out of bed as fresh as a daisy, kind of, got my self dressed and ran off like a child heading to the fair. Nice short 15 minute or so bus ride followed by a 10 minute early morning stroll down the high street and I was there, the only problem being that as a complete sea fishing novice I had over looked the tide. I felt though that this presented  me with the perfect opportunity of having a look so what the bottom was like, in the areas I could see of course.

To be perfectly honest I have never really taken the time to sit back and admire the quay as I did this morning, I guess living so close and growing up by it I kind of took it for granted really. I had no idea that there was so much going on on the bottom with all the crabs, big and small I could see roaming around as the water slowly rose, also as it was rising the shoals of smaller fish began to move closer and closer to the edge, I had literally no idea there was so much going on down there all the time I was just walking by before. For someone like me who has never thought about doing salt water fishing before I have always looked at it as pot luck fishing, cast out a trace and some ragworm and wait type of thing. This was mainly due to the fact of I could never look past the idea of needing to cast to features and things. Everything changed for me though once I heard about this light rock and light lure style of sea fishing, it brought a element of what I kind of know from fishing for pike and perch on rivers, lakes and reservoirs. Of course as I have mentioned a few times on this blog lately I have had quite a lot of help from some great guys, if you go back through my posts you will see links to all the ways I use to contact them and ask questions. So onto the bit I guess you came to read the fishing side of things and how I got on. The picture above is of a area on the far side of the harbor so would in turn be the last area to fill back up, so to speak. With that I decided to head to to the entrance to the quay and the water here was already around six feet deep and the wall just drops vertically there and doesn't slop away like it does in this picture. I started of at a small slacker piece of water created by a small jetty type thing used by police and life boat staff to get aboard their boats, I decided to stick to what had worked for my on my first session at the beginning of the week and drop shot fish. I kept the set up exactly the same as I had done the other end of the harbor by the moorings, unfortunately I almost instantly found I was pretty much plunging into weed ever single put in, I was only set at about three inches off bottom and this clearly was not enough. I reeled in and headed to the nearest bench to tie on a new leader and set myself up at around a foot off bottom this time, things worked out great as in front of the bench I had sat on to tie my drop shot rig were 4 great big harbor tour boats moored up, this ti me looked like the perfect place to get myself back in the water so I hooked on a small pink Ecogear grass minnow and got straight to it. I think around ten minutes had past by and one of the tour guides from the company came to ask me how I was getting, after explaining to him that my level of knowledge of salt water fishing was as low as the tide and he had laughed at me for a second or two he gave me a few tips that work well for him. He told me that roughly have a hour later I would start to see all the small bait fish rising to the surface followed by lots of bubbles, he informed me this would be the Bass and sure enough thirty minutes passed by and there they were I could see the small fish and I could see the Bass chasing them. At this point though my mind was still on task I had to catch as many species of fish as I could in the next few hours, it was maybe twenty minutes later by now and another guy had came by and asked me how I was getting on and what I was fishing for, so once again I explained to him my plan for the day and he gave me some more tips by this time I felt like a expert, or something along those lines. After he had left I changed from the grass minnow to the Isome in the red color, with in around 5 minutes of making the change I was into a fish, after a short battle with the hardest fighting fish for its size I finally swung in my first ever Wrasse.

After having landed species number one and returned it to the water safely I decided to have a go for some of the Bass next I took off the Isome and put on a small eel/worm shaped Fladen LRF lure in a white color to try and imitate the small bait fish they were chasing, I waited until the shoal grouped up again as they had been doing the whole time I had been standing there, and then flicked my drop shot between them. I don't think the lure could have fallen more than two feet through the water before I felt a knock and was into a fish, Once again although hopefully not the biggest Bass I will ever catch it put up a very good scrap for its size and tried taking me around the steps next to me and under the boat in front of me. This time I decided instead of risking loosing the fish lifting it out I would net the fish as I wasn't sure what my hook hold was like as I didn't feel I had set the hook as best as I could have done.

By this point I really was on cloud nine and could not have been happier with how my session was going. I decided because of how quickly I had gotten my bite on this lure to stick with it for a few more cast however nothing else was to show any interest, I then changed over to one of my Fladen LRF creature baits, I gave this around five minutes but again not even a nibble, at this point I decided to see if there was anyone at home at all in this swim and went back to using some Isome but in the the light sandy looking color this time. Again I gave this around five minute but once again not even a sniff of action. I'm not sure weather playing the two fish in the tight area of water had spooked all the other fish away or weather I was doing something wrong at this point so I decided to move down a bit. There was a small blue building around ten to fifteenth yards down, just behind the hut was a small ledge and a wooden beam that extended down into the water, I decided to check it for snags by running my 4 meter landing net handle down it. After determining it was clear other than the odd lump of sea weed clinging to it I felt that a cast or two here would be a good idea because if I was a fish that was planning a ambush this was the kind of place I would be sitting. After having two more Wrasse in three put ins I was more than happy that it was the right call to move and that it wasn't necessarily something I was doing wrong in the last swim. This however turned out to be the point the 'practise' ended and the Wrasse fishing began, I was having so much fun catching these small hard fighting fish, especially on such light gear that I forgot what I was there to do. 

In all honesty I could not call today's session anything other than a success! I went there having caught nothing but a lot of Blenny before today, I have in total spent four and a half hours sea fishing and have already managed nineteen fish, ok granted I have only caught three different species and even though today's trip was supposed to be about catching as many species as possible and I only managed two, in the grand scheme of things I personally think I am doing quite well and am heading back down tomorrow morning for another species hunt, this time I am going to start at the far side and work my was in with the tide, One thing I didn't think about doing was heading to where I know I could have gotten a quick species in the form of a Blenny, which was a huge mistake, on the plus side though that is what practise is about and I'm very glad I made the mistake today and not when it counted. I feel a lot more confident in my drop shot fishing now and am sure that confidence can only grow with time. One quick last thing to add, I was stopped today by some other guys that were about to start fishing as I was leaving, they asked me what my brand my hat was as they really liked it, I was more than happy to share the information on how and where to get one and some of the many other awesome products made by Fin and Tide. This is not a plug by a team member or a sponsored one of they're anglers because both of these I am not, I just like to share things with people that I think are good and could maybe benefit them. I have seen a lot of clothing products made by fishing brands that are awful, so when I found these on twitter and noticed the quality you get for the price myself nor you can loose! Thanks for reading I hope you enjoyed, for the guys that I know have told me they like my blog because its short and sweet I'm sorry this one is longer but I really did genuinely have a lot of fun today and wanted to share it all. Oh and by the way todays total was eight Wrasse and a Bass. 

First LRF Practise Session.

As you guys may have seen in my last post I very recently went for my first sea fishing session, I headed to Poole Quay in Dorset, this is somewhere I am very lucky to live close to. You may have also seen that I caught my first sea fish in the form of a small common Blenny, I was very happy with this as I had not done any LRF before nor had I done any drop shotting which was the technique I used to catch the fish. This morning I headed back to the same spot this time to have a very short practise match with myself, I marked out centimetre lines on one of my old unhooking mats so I could measure my fish as accurately as possible, the plan was to fish for a hour and see how many centimetres of fish I could put together in the time. I had planned on heading down very early in the morning as I felt this would help me avoid any possible distractions, also keep me out of peoples way as they were getting ready for they're days work. Unfortunately the weather was absolutely horrendous when my alarm went off and this I swear was the only reason I turned it off and went back to sleep! After finally waking up again, not to much later I hasten to add, Jen and myself decided to head down together instead and take our son to do some crabbing at the same time, once we arrived, finally found somewhere to park and made the walk, or in my case the hobble, to the spot best for getting crabs Jen set about wasting perfectly good bacon by forcing in into the crab net, whist I tied on a fresh fluorocarbon leader, hook and popped on my drop shot weight. I cut up a piece of Marukya Isome worm and threaded it around my size 12 hook, I used a really small amount just enough to cover the shank of the hook. It was not long at all before I found myself hooked into my first fish of the session, I quickly unhooked the little guy trying my best to avoid its monstrous teeth, ok so maybe not monstrous but it has got teeth I promise, with the fish unhooked I measured the fish as accurately as I possibly could having not done this before, I felt I could comfortably give myself 10cm for this one. There was quite a long drop from the edge of the Quay to the water so although I was trying to do things as quickly as possible I could not put the little guys welfare at stake, also I wanted to show my son that just because it was a small fish he deserved to be treated properly, we popped him into the small net he was using to scoop his crabs of the bag with and lowered him back to his watery home. 

                

Over the next 10 minutes I managed another 15cm of smaller Blenny, after this the bites slowed up so I decided on a quick change of lure, I decided on a small Fladen creature bait. I am left still rather unsure weather this was the right change or not, especially when it seems there was only Blenny at home today, I managed a fish of 11cm on this lure but that was the only take I had on it. I was now half way through the session and had managed 36cm of fish, I decided once again a lure change was in order I took off the creature bait and put on another small piece of Isome, this time in the red colour, this was a much better change as the next ten minutes past by and I managed two more Blenny both of which went 10cm each. After these though the bites once again dried up, I found myself at a bit of a loss as to what to do, I had covered all the water I had in front of me, I could not move to my left as there was a family there crabbing and this also the case to my right. This was unfortunate but at the same time it was nice to see so many people enjoying themselves catching the same small fish I was catching and also the ones that were catching crabs with they're kids, it was of course great to see my boy and his mum enjoying it as well. I spent 10 minutes going back over the same water I had already fished I only managed another 7cm fish, however by this point the family to my right had packed up and were leaving, I felt very lucky that this extra piece of water no matter how small had opened up for the last ten minutes of my hour, I wasted no time at all in walking down and dropping back into the water, around 4 minutes went by and I managed another small Blenny, this one went 6cm and was the last fish I managed to hook of the session which meant I had finished on 69cm and could not be happier with how the practise had gone!

                                        

As I said I could not be happier with how my session had gone, after speaking to the same group of guys I mentioned in the last post I have some more information to help with my next practise session, I have another trip to the Quay planned soon this time however I will be going on a species hunt. I will also be up early enough so I can cover a lot more of the water. I am also planning on a few trips to Christchurch Harbour, Swanage Pier and Weymouth, these will all be done and covered on this blog over the next month, I look forward to getting the fishing practise under my belt and I also am looking forward to getting the writing practise to. Once again thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did writing and I will leave you with a picture of my other half and sons haul.

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!

New Blog Plans.

It's been a while since my last post and as the title suggests I have been thinking quite a lot about where to go with this blog and I have made some new plans. Ok so one thing I did say to you before, I think on my twitter, I am going to be doing blog posts more regularly, I believe I said weekly, however I have been thinking about this and I have decided to try and do 2 a week. Generally I fish one or maybe two evenings a week, if I'm lucky enough, and I also fish on weekends, with that being said I had only planned before on making every Friday 'blog day' this has now changed. I am still planning on publishing a post every Friday but this will cover anything that has happened during the week, I am now also planning on doing one every Monday as well. There are two main reasons for this, one is that when I left doing my blog post until the following week before I have found that I struggle to remember a lot of the details from the trip, and also I feel that the more posts I publish the better I will get at writing them.

          Moving on from plans for regularity of posts and on to some other things I have been thinking about, one thing I have been thinking I need is to get better pictures to brighten the place up a bit, this is something I will be able to do a bit more easily now I have a working camera on my phone again, this may not mean the best quality pictures but it does mean that I don't need to be caught out with not having time to get cameras out and set up leaving the fish on the unhooking mat whilst doing this, I realise I can put this fish back in the net to rest in the edge whilst I do this but its not something I like to do with bigger fish, I am new to predator fishing and lure fishing, I feel that sometimes letting a fish recover only makes it harder to hold up for a picture and I worry about not being able to handle it safely, so I find it much better for me, if I'm on my own, to unhook and snap a quick picture and then release the fish as soon as it is rested. Another thing I have been thinking about is that maybe I should be taking pictures of more than just the fish I catch, I enjoy my surroundings when fishing so maybe take some pictures of the nice places angling takes me for others to view as well? I'm not sure if it is something you guys would like to see but if I enjoy it maybe you do to. Lastly I feel that maybe my descriptions of my rigs and or lures and other bits may not be up to scratch so taking pictures of these will make it easier for you to see what I am trying to describe.

              As some of you may know I have recently had a operation on both of my feet and have not been able to get out fishing, this has given me a lot of time to sit and think about where I want to take my fishing and everything else linking to it such as this blog. One of the main things I have been thinking about in my fishing is other ways to get my predator fishing fix, I have spent quite a lot of time on the internet looking around for new things to buy and also spent a long time on youtube learning a lot about lure fishing in general. I have also spent a lot of time, probably annoying you, with questions on twitter, some of you more than others, thank you very much to everyone who has helped me over the last few weeks and sorry if I have bored you the many questions I have asked, you guys know who you are I have taken on board everything you guys have told be and also looking into any links you shared and have learned a lot from you all, for that I thank you!

One main thing that has been on my mind recently is that I would really like to get out and give drop shotting a go, I realise that by putting this picture on here I have just gone against everything I said about better quality pictures but I can barely walk at the moment and could not get out to start getting better camera equipment. However these Fladen soft baits where recommended for me by a guy on twitter that has helped me a lot recently, you know who you are and thank you again. These are the first lures I have bought to start my drop shotting kit and look forward to finally be able to get out and use them, with that being said I currently don't have a specific drop shot rod and will be using the lightest spinning rod I have to start with, this is another thing I have spent a lot of time thinking about but I kept coming back with the same answer, I have recently bought myself a Korum Snapper Lure rod and really like the look and feel of it, so for me it makes sense that if I like this one so much why not buy the Snapper Drop Shot rod. Unfortunately due again to the operation I had to have I have not managed to get out and try the rod yet, I am however hoping to soon.

Moving on from here I have been looking at lot of pictures on twitter and also reading a lot more blog posts from you guys than I used to, it is because of this that I have a new found interest in something that until now has never interested me, that being see fishing, or at least sea lure fishing like LRF mainly. I personally think that one of the most awesome looking fish I have seen to date is some of your pictures or Wrasse. So as you can see my obsession for Pike that then transformed into one for fall fresh water predators has now expanded again, I had no idea when I started lure fishing there was going to be so many different styles and things, even more to the point I only set out one day in hope of catching my first Pike due to some goals I had set myself for the year whilst setting up my youtube channel, I had no idea that when doing so I was going to end up feeling the way I do now about the species and all predators alike!

           One more final thing that I have been thinking about quite a lot is the reason I started this new blog and left the old one behind, my main reason for starting a new blog was because it had been so long between posts I kind of felt that a new start was the only way, that said one of the other key reasons for starting this was that I was taking a new direction with my angling and that was when I started specimen fishing as a whole. There was something I said to myself at the start I would not let myself do and that was to make this blog go in one direction and only be about one style of fishing and or for a single type of fish. I kind of feel that even though I am planning on fishing the sea, rivers, lakes and reservoirs for the predators, I am still going in the same direction with this, with that I am going to be spending a bit of time now that it is warmer fishing the club lakes for its big Tench and Bream, this does not mean I am not going to be predator fishing as from now on my weekday evening sessions will now be dedicated to trying all these different types of lure/predator fishing I mentioned above, that will then leave my weekend longer trips to set my stall out for the other species I planned on fishing for at the beginning of the year.

            I would just like to take a second to thank every last one of you for your support on the blog and with all other things you have helped me with.

OPD? Obsesive Predator Disorder??

So far on this blog for anyone who has read it you will have seen that since the first day I caught a Pike I have very rapidly become obsessed with the species, this however took another turn in the last post as I caught my first ever predator fish from a river and that was a Perch. Recently though I have found myself looking on the club waters, forums and the angling press for information on other species such as Eels and Catfish, however it has not stopped there I have even been looking into things like Wrasse also and sea fishing is not something I have ever been interested in!
        
           One good thing that has happened lately is a few friends of mine have taken a interest in the lure fishing aspect of the sport and a small group of us are beginning to come together now, Dan who is someone I have mentioned on here before as being the first person I fished with in years and really sparked my love for all aspects of fresh water fishing, more recently though we have been joined by another old school friend, Bironn. As a group our first trip seen us go to the very place I caught my first Pike as I knew there was a whole lot of fish in the water and at the very least we would be able to help Bironn snare his first and hopefully one of many to come. I had a gone with him the day before to help him get a rod, reel and some braid, I told him not to worry about lure as like most lure anglers a have a couple he can use, the idea I put to him was that he can use a wide array of mine and then make his choice from there where to go with starting his collection. I cannot fully remember as he tried so many but I believe his only fish of the session fell to a savage gear 3d sardine shad in yellow. I could tell he was a very happy angler and I was also happy to see him with a fish as to be fair to him he worked very hard for the bite, he had hooked into a few and lost them and then it seemed like everything he tried after that wouldn't work but then he struck into a mint little jack and landed his first Pike ever.

I believe at the start of this trip Dan had set his stall out to catch himself one of the handful of nice Carp that reside in the reservoir, this however didn't last very long as he had a chat with the clubs lakes manager and was told the baits he had would be pretty much useless on here. With that it didn't take him very long at all to have the carp gear packed away and the Ugly Stick out. It didn't take him long to have his first trip of the session this one would also turn out to be his only one. Myself however had set up in a swim I knew nothing about as there was a Carp angler in the only known decent Pike swim on the water, I had put together a quick dead bait set up and cast a popped up Roach into about 16ft of water and sat eagerly waiting, I did not at this point attempt much spinning as the water in front of me that was at a cast able distance was very shallow and after a few goes I had no confidence there was any fish there. There were also no real features to cast at in this swim as I had chosen it mainly because I knew I could get a bait out into the deeper section and I could keep an eye on the angler in the better swim, it was not long into the session and he had began to pack up and at that point I started to pack down what little kit I had ready to move the exact second he did.

The moved proved to be the right move as I had a fish first cast, this one fell to a Berkley Soft Shad in the Perch pattern. After five or six more casts I decided to switch over to the Savage Gear lure that Bironn had his fish on as I had only just bought those and wanted to give it ago, again this proved to be the right move as for the first time ever I had a fish take on the drop, not only was that a first but the Pike was also my biggest on lure tactics to date weighing in at a mighty 4lb on the nose.

I had originally planned on publishing this post about a week ago now but with all the problems with work seeming to be sorted i did return on Monday last week and have found myself extremely tiered because of this. I feel like I'm making excuses and do not want to look that way as it genuinely did take it out of, so much so i needed a fishing trip this weekend just past to relax from it! This time it was to be just Dan and I as Bironn had hurt his back and was in no fit state to go fishing. With that being said this meant we were open to any of the club waters as Bironn is not a member and if he wanted to fish we would have made sure to find a water that offered guest tickets, it was because of this though we headed out to the Northfield White Lake in Ringwood, Dan aiming to get his first club Carp as he had not been a member very long and me, well I fancied a go at some of the double figure bream that drive the Carp anglers like Dan so mad from time to time.

            It was this trip though that would show me that my obsession had reached a new peak as I found myself only thinking one thing the whole time i was there, that was the water is stocked with Pike, Perch and Cats, a thought i could not drive from my mind so i could concentrate on the task at hand of hauling some monster bream from the depths. These for a time were only thoughts until Dan sat looking in the edge of where my rods were positioned and called me over to show me a Perch of a few ounces swimming through a group of small fry, again for a little while this just added to the thoughts and i went about bringing in my rods to re fill the feeders and get them back on the spot. After a further three or four casts with the feeders I could no longer take it and brought in the rods, headed to the car and grabbed out the spinning rod and my lure boxes. I began frantically thrashing the water to a foam casting a fair few times with each lure in my swim to no avail, by this point Dan had fallen asleep so a had a few cheeky chucks in his swim before heading of to some of the more likely swims with overhanging cover and things. Unfortunately I still had no takes and after bringing in my other rods earlier in the day no Bream either, what I am trying to say painfully is I blanked.

           Sorry it has been so long between posts again and I will try a lot harder to get more published more regularly! Thank you for reading and I wish tight lines to all!