A few weeks ago, I was talking to my friend about fishing in conditions and weather that were a little better than sticking to what we wanted to do. I really enjoy a bit of lure fishing in the sea but I had no need to be standing on the rocks in a uno this February,
We scouted a likely mark, got the calendar, checked the water tables, the weather and this weekend had a low tide in the afternoon in the South West, with a storm coming later in the evening which meant that the top of the water will be like sunset and hopefully a nice calm night. Couldn’t be any better for chucking lures for Bass.
When we left we were running late, I forgot my lunch and some new lures I got so we kicked the option of just giving up and fishing locally but it was too good to miss. We stick to the plan and head… into the massive queue on the A78. You know it’s bad when SATNAV offers to take you all the way home and you still save 20 minutes. Sitting in slow traffic is definitely an hour for second guessing but even if we missed the first half hour of the turn, it would have been too good to miss.
Off the track and a quick walk down the beach in waders under the blazing sun warmed us up so we picked a spot to start our way to a rocky outcrop. Seekers are my go-to search pattern, these small metal lures cast a mile and work well on a spin stop retrieve invitingly down among rocks and bladder racks before running. Luckily there were fish in the mood to chase and the first one was landed pretty quickly, no biggie but no blank!
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| Blanks off thanks to Seeker |
Fish in a Seeker was expected, what happened next, not so much! There were fish feeding on the surface and my friend’s rod was hooked but it wasn’t a Bass, from a distance a silvery fish was hitting but it didn’t look like a Mackerel or Sea Trout. I approached to take a photo as he raised his first Garfish,
A needle-beaked fish that can grow up to 3 feet long, they are more common in the warmer waters around the south and west of the British Isles. I certainly never caught one in Scotland and now they were jumping up and down on the surface in front of us chasing bait fish. They are a popular small sporting species that cope well with light gear. They will often put on a spectacular show in their attempts to throw the hook.
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| Gar on |
We hooked some and lost some in the next hour, going down a bit resulted in more positive conversions. Many we have are above the minimum keeper size if we want a feed before we go back to Bass fishing and make bigger lures rigged with weeds to fish the foul ground.
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| Full of Net |
Not every time things come together and lots of fish are caught, I love being out there but you need a good day to remind you why we keep trying.
