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

British Lure Angling Championships, Froxfield qualifier.

 After a 0430 start and a two hour drive I found myself on the banks of the Kennet and Avon canal at Froxfield for the second qualifier of the BLAC. After chatting with Adam Kirby and Dan Sissons for a bit, rigging up and getting a much needed bacon sandwich down my neck all 50 anglers competing gathered for the draw. I was drawn with Greg Bafia, a great guy and a great angler to. Greg and I planned to fish our way down from the start area through stretch B and C and fish back up later in the day.

map of the venue

And so at 0830 off we went, just down stream of the start area two barges were moored and greg and I both had hits from perch but failed to land them, then it all went quiet. This series of events repeated itself throughout the day. I did plan to video the competition with my gopro but 20 minutes in it ran out of memory on its SD card school boy error..... 

Greg fishing tight to the far bank.

 We leapfrogged down the stretch taking turns to fish new spots, Greg managed a few small perch from the far bank and I managed to loose two.... By 1200 I still had a blank score sheet. As we moved further down stretch C we came across Dan who had managed a few small perch on LRF gear and it seemed that all of the competitors were struggling a bit. In the car on the way up I realised I had left my spool of fluorocarbon at home, eventually the inevitable happened and a clumsy cast saw me snap up on the opposite bank... Greg kindly gave me a few feet of 7lb fluro and I rigged up with a drop shot rig to try and tempt the micro perch in the area. 

My setup for the day was a Shimano Sustain 2500 loaded with 12lb ygk braid and my newly purchased hearty rise bassforce es 6'9" 4-18g. A great rod which is going to get a lot of use, my only problem with it is the rings, they just don't live up to the quality that the rest of the rod has and I can see myself changing them in the future.

Around 1300 I managed to land a pike of 56cm and finally scored some points, I was getting a bit despondent but when my ecogear grass minnow L got hit by this fish my spirits were instantly lifted. Sorry, no pictures of the fish as i was busy measuring it and getting it signed off on my score sheet. By this point Greg had managed a few more small perch and some micro pike.

As the afternoon went on we headed back to the start area to see if we could catch a few of the perch by the boats that we had failed to land earlier in the day but boat traffic had stirred up the canal bed and the fish had moved on. I switched to a Neko rig in an attempt to try and catch a few of the finicky perch but to no avail.

Neko rigged 2" flash J

Greg had another micro pike and Dean Pilgrim's partner caught a lovely perch measuring 36cm and weighing 2lb4oz. 

36cm on the Raw Finesse mini scale

2lb4oz

1500 came and the competition ended, score sheets were handed in and showed just how tough the day had been with 26 out of the 50 competitors blanking. Scores were counted and the results were announced, congratulations to those who qualified, especially to Greg my partner. Thank you to Julian Chidgey for organising such a well run event. 

all the competitors after the days fishing

the top 6

In September I will be competing at the Regents canal qualifier, and after seeing how effective the LRF gear was on the day and how well Adam did at the Exeter qualifier I know what gear I will be taking. 

After a quick pint in the local pub it was time to head back home, and after not eating much all day a Chinese takeaway would do nicely!

Just a quick note to end on, if you are an LRF angler and read this months sea angler, you'll find an appallingly incorrect article supposedly on the subject of LRF, if you've read it you'll know what I'm on about.

Tight lines,

John

Awful weather continues...

Well this sucks.... This is the wettest winter I've ever known. The rivers have been flooded since mid December, even the canal has been unfishable.... My syndicate lake was sold a few weeks back so I've been left without a local lake to fish. All in all I've not had the best few months in terms of wetting a line. But I must not despair, things will get better.

I'm sure I'm not the only one suffering from an acute lack of fishing so I thought I'd share with you a few videos to remind you why we like spending our time by water, getting cold and wet. 

Firstly a little bit of LRF, I can't express how much fun LRF is. So here you go:

http://youtu.be/6CMSOROxgZM

Secondly a video from daiwa, this is truly inspirational stuff and just a teaser of the final video:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10152116139501807

(Apologies for the Facebook link). 

While I haven't been fishing for a few weeks now, it doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about it! I've entered two of the Fox Rage sponsored British Lure angling Championship qualifiers. 

Details of which can be found here:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/British-Lure-Angling-Championships/263005377183836

I've been experimenting with lure rigging options, the jika setup looks promising and is something you rarely see being used. Seen here with an ecogear ikajaco and para max.

A cool little product I bought lately is the raw finesse mini scale and PB marks. 

The PB marks are small species specific stickers used to mark you PBs on the fish measure. 

My PB perh all marked up:

 

The mini scale also packs down to nice small size, ideal for the modern mobile lure angler.

Hopefully this weather clears up and I can get out soon! But with another storm predicted tonight/tomorrow morning it may be a while....

Hope your all having more luck getting out than I am. Tight lines and be lucky! 

Lure fishing 14/01/13

Today I decided to spend my afternoon targeting the pike at my local syndicate lake. They may only be small, averaging around 2-4lb but size doesn't matter, catching fish of any size is all good fun.

Gear:

Rod: savage gear bushwacker xlnt 3-18g 7ft6

Reel: fox rage ultron 2500

Main line: 18lb fox soft steel.

Leader: spider wire 10lb fluorocarbon and a 10lb wire trace

Lures:

Ecogear grass minnow m and ikajaco fished on 5g size 1 savage gear jig heads.

I got the lake around 2pm and headed to the point swim in order to fish the rough ground in the hope of catching a few perch. After an hour and one missed bite which I'm sure was a perch, I headed of round the lake trying different spots as I went. 

I was fishing the ikajaco on a slow retrieve with regular 2-4 inch lifts of the rod tip, giving it an undulating action which really brings the lure to life.

I reached the dam wall and on my 3rd cast my ikajaco lure was engulfed by a miniature pike. 

I carried on round the lake and lost another pike which must have only been around 5 inches long. 

The ecogear range of soft plastics are heavily scented with their "dynamite taste and explosive scent". A lot of anglers don't think that scent makes much of a difference when lure fishing. I think they're very wrong. I've regularly out fished people fishing with un-scented plastics and when you look at how confidently the pike take these lures and how far back in their mouths the lures are I see it as hard evidence that scented lures do work. 

Later on I switched to the grass minnow m from ecogear. I fish this by casting it out, letting it sink, then retrieving it slowly just off the bottom. Again the little pike couldn't resist and I landed 2 more mini predators.

Someone was hungry!

As the sun set and the air got colder I headed home. If you haven't tried ecogear lures yet, check out their range here: http://www.ecogearfishing.co.uk

Memories of 2013 part 3

LRF multi species fun.

LRF(light rock fishing), is fairly new to the UK and is an adaptation of the Japanese ultra light fishing for aji (scad) and mebaru (scorpion fish). The popularity of this discipline of lure fishing has exploded in recent years, I've been fishing in this style for around 3 years now, I've come along way since my early LRF days but I'm still no master, you never can be, ever session I learn new things and am constantly adapting my technique. My only advice is keep an open mind, you are only limited by your own imagination. 

A small bass taken on an ecogear aqua katsu aji straight.

When you ask most UK lure anglers about light game fishing they normally imagine lures around 10-20gram. LRF is lighter, much lighter, I'm talking 0.5-8g.

 A big concern from most anglers when starting LRF is whether they'll be able to feel what's going on at the lure end. But with the right balanced gear there's no problem at all feeling what's going on, and with time you get used to the light gear.

Another concern is what if I hook a large fish, again this is not a problem, LRF rods have tons of power in the butt section with which you can give powerful fish such as bass, pollack and crash diving wrasse a lot of stick. Just remember to set your drag correctly. Just look at what has been landed on LRF gear: 8lb+ bass, 9lb+ pollack, wrasse to over 4lb and not to mention the 10lb thornback ray that was caught last year in Plymouth.

My most used gear: 

Rod:

Major craft airock solid tip, 7'9", 0.5-5g.

Reel:

Shimano aernos 1000fa

Mainline:

Ygk g-soul 6lb

Leader:

Sunline small game leader fc in 4 or 6lb

Lures: 

The lures I use the most are made by tict and ecogear, and of course the legendary power isome, I doubt they're is a fish that can't be caught on power isome.

LRF is not a species specific method I believe that with the right approach anything can be caught with LRF gear. To date I've had 26 species and last year I landed 18 species:

1. Bass

2. Ballan wrasse

3. Corkwing wrasse 

4. Long spined scorpion fish

5. Smelt

6. Pollack

7. Rock goby

8. Common Blenny

9. Gilthead bream

10. Sand goby

11. Mackerel

12. Garfish

13. Common goby

14. Black goby

15. Scad

16. Goldsinny wrasse

17. 3 bearded rockling

18. Tompot blenny

A few LRF catch photos:

Long spined sea scorpion

Tompot blenny 

Baby pollack

Corkwing wrasse

3 bearded rockling

Black bream

A lot of my LRF fishing is done while on holiday. This year I was in Port du Crousety in France for 2 weeks and if I wasn't chasing my bass on the headlands and tide rips I was spending most evenings on the breakwaters chasing the mini species.

With angling scenery like this, who could complain.

If you haven't tried LRF yet, I highly recommend it, it's not for everyone, but if you enjoy finesse fishing then I couldn't recommend it more highly.

I get most of my gear from my good friend Ben Field and his shop the Art of Fishing: 

http://www.artoffishing.co.uk

Ben is more than happy to help out if you have any questions. Or you can contact me through my twitter: @johnwheeler811

Memories of 2013 part 2

Syndicate carp fishing 02/10/13

Last year I was unable to do much fishing due to A level exams but once they had finished I rejoined a syndicate 10 minutes walk from my house which I had been a member of 2 years before.

The lake is around 2.5 acres and up to 20ft deep in some areas. There is a low stock of carp up to low 30's in the lake and less than 40 captures a year is common as the lake can be quite hard.

 

This was my 3rd session since I had re joined at the beginning of September. On my previous sessions I had 3 fish, one mid double, a 23 and this 27lb 10oz. All mirrors.

I spent an hour walking round the lake, no fish showing..... Nothing new there I thought. 

So I headed round to a swim the fish pass through when moving from the "handle" to the main body of the lake. This swim has produced for me before in similar conditions and seemed an obvious starting point.

rods out, bivvy up, brew on, sorted.

Now the waiting begins.

At about 7pm I had a take on my left hand rod from what felt like a decent fish I played it back towards me only for it to roll over and the hook drop out yards from the net, I was gutted, that was clearly a 20lb fish. With the way this lake fishes I thought I had blown my chances and was now heading for a blank... 

The rod went back out and the curry went on the stove.

The bait I use is made by Burton Bait Rollers, a small company that has just entered its second year. They produce exceptionally high quality baits at very reasonable prices. 

http://www.carpand.co.uk/bbr/

At 9am the next morning just as I was about to top up the swim with a scattering of boilies the left hand rod was away. Please don't come off....

After a short powerful scrap the fish was in the net. No blank for me.

She went 24lb 1oz and after a few quick self take photos I slipped her back. Not the best photo in the world, oh well.

A few words on tactics: 

The swim I was fishing has 3 spots where most anglers fish to, they're obvious, 2 holes in the far bank tree line and the lily pads. These spots get fished heavily and fish are going to be wary of them. So, I do something they're not so used to. Bait the main spots but fish a hook bait off the spot, as if it's a stray boilie which missed its target. Works for me.

Rigs:

All my rods were fished with the same rig, 10inch long nash missing link 20lb in silt colour, size 10 long shank fished blow back with silicon and a short piece of shrink tube over the eye. Hook bait was an 18mm boilie and 12mm white home made pop up in matching flavours.

The day passed without action and the forecasted storm began to appear. The lightning was spectacular, there was no way I could sleep with thunder and lightning above me. I wasn't expecting action during the storm as takes usually come just after rain. But I was wrong.

At 11pm my middle rod tightened slowly, the fish was powering away up the handle. I applied a huge amount of side strain to turn the fish away from the overhanging and submerged trees. She turned and was soon powering around in the open water, staying deep as large carp do. I tired her in open water then guided her the the net. I turned my head torch on and looked down into my net, that's the 30 I thought. After unhooking her I slipped her into my retainer sling and left her in the deep margins for weighing and photos in the morning. 

I didn't sleep much with the excitement. Catching a 30 in a lightning storm is an awesome experience and one I will never forget. Here she is 32lb on the dot.

I'd caught my 5th fish in 4 sessions and it was the lakes largest fish, happy is an understatement. 

I packed down all my kit and pushed the barrow round the lake and up the hill to my car, a new PB, caught in a lightning storm, that was pretty special.