Swanage LRF

Last Thursday I made the trip down to Swanage for a few days LRF. With fond memories of one of my first LRF sessions all those years ago on Swanage pier, I had high hopes for the next few days as under the pier is a haven for mini species and some not so mini wrasse and pollack.

Thursday evening saw me fishing off one of the concrete jetties next to the lifeboat station. The water clarity was awesome compared to the currently tea like water of my local marks. At first I fished an ecoger katsu aji straight on a jighead under the jetty hopping for a few mini species, but the amount of weed on the bottom prevented me from presenting the lure successfully. A switch to the caro produced numerous pollack once I had worked out the presentation that they wanted. Caro is a new technique to me but one I will definitely be using more in the future.

Caro setup

Caro pollack

 I was fishing a small white caro kabura fly and a tict N caro which the pollack were going mad for, casting out under the pilings for the lifeboat slipway, letting the caro sink down, giving it a few twitches and taking in the slack and letting it sink again. twitch, twitch, twitch, pause..... bang! Great fun.

Friday....

Peveril point on Friday afternoon

The weather was awful, overnight winds had seriously reduced the water clarity, I fished the pier for a few hours managing a few small wrasse, but with the wind and rain worsening I gave up on fishing and went for a walk instead.

Checking the weather Friday evening was a bit worrying as the forecast was for a biblical amount of rain on Saturday, not the best weather for filming or introducing a friend to the world of LRF. but I needn't have worried...

I met Paul at the pier at 0900 and we headed out the the lower deck to see if we could nail a few fish. As this was Paul's first LRF session I explained a bit about the rods, reels, lines, lures, rigging options etc.  I set Paul up with a splitshot rig and marukyu power isome, which in my opinion is by far the best setup to get those new to LRF catching and minimise the cost of any tackle lost as its much cheaper to buy a packet of shot and hooks than jigheads. I've found the owner mosquito hooks to be perfect for splitshot setups. I was using my tried and trusted ecogear aqua and size 10 0.9g shirasu jughead combination.

Straight away Paul was into a ballan wrasse of around 1.5lb. The look on his face when the wrasse powered off under the pier was priceless, Paul was over the moon and rightly so!

Paul's first rock pig.

Well the pressure was off me as Paul had caught and bites were coming constantly, I had been a bit worried about how the water clarity would be after the strong winds we had on friday but today was a different day and the visibility had improved drastically. 

A corkwing wrasse for myself

cheer up......

Chunky female Tompot

Pauls first scorpionfish

  The fishing was fantastic and we ended the day on around 20-30 fish between us and 5 species: ballan wrasse, corking wrasse, pollack, scorpionfish and tompot blenny.

I had planned to video my session and produce a video in a similar style to my Weymouth video (link bellow), but my gopro was playing up... it would only record for 4 seconds before stopping. Apparently this is something to do with the memory card, lesson learnt don't buy cheap ones!

Weymouth LRF: http://youtu.be/caOkWeOThcE

Paul produced this awesome little video of the days fishing:

http://youtu.be/q4fsSdXuLJ0

If you have any questions about LRF or you would like to give it a go, feel free to contact me on Facebook or twitter.

Windy Weymouth

This week I spent a couple of days down in Weymouth with a few LRF sessions on the cards, I had planned to fish off the piers either side of the harbour entrance but winds gusting to 30mph made presentation and keeping in contact with the lure a nightmare. So I headed back into the shelter of the harbour to do a bit of mini species hunting. My aim was to catch as many species as possible over the two sessions, weymouth did not disappoint, its such a haven for the light game angler with so many different areas to fish a huge diversity of species  and always somewhere to get out of the weather.

Weymouth pleasure pier

Goby bashing..... as always the super aggressive goby is the first target when species hunting, there isn't a lure in the world this little things won't attack. I was fishing an ecogear shires fine jighead 0.9g size 10 and an ecogearaqua katsu aji straight.

Black goby

 I fished on through the plague of gobys under the pleasure pier hoping to pick out a scorpion fish or a blenny but to no avail so a move was in order, I headed round to the other side of the harbour to see what was on offer.

kingdom of the black goby

 Technique wise, its simple stuff. Find some structure, weed, rocky ground, moorings, walls etc. Structure=fish. Cast the lure or lower it down the harbour wall, keeping in contact with it as it falls so you can register any on the drop takes. Once the lure is on the bottom do nothing for a while, the lure falling through the water will have caught the attention of fish and they will come and investigate, if you move it away from where they are expecting to find it you've missed an opportunity. Next use small lifts of the rod tip (1-2 inches) to bring the lure back towards you, taking up the slack as you go to remain in contact with the lure. If you lowered the lure down the harbour wall lift and drop the lure on the spot or move it along the wall with your lifts, experiment on the day and find what works.

corkwing wrasse

Round the other side of the harbour I found a small slipway a few searching casts around the area produced this lovely green ballan wrasse. I love the way even small wrasse like this scrap, and its a compliment to using light balanced tackle to gain maximum enjoyment out of our fish, cranking in fish on beach casting gear just doesn't cut it for me anymore.

A bit more jigging around the harbour structure produced a few scorpionfish and more corkwings.

my personal smallest scorpion fish.

On my second session I was wearing my gopro and did a bit of filming, while filming I caught my first LRF flounder, only a small one but great fun and a new species to add to my list.

Heres the link to the video, more to come in the future.

http://youtu.be/caOkWeOThcE