Catch fish with Mike Ladle.

Catch Fish with
Mike Ladle

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SEA FISHING

For anyone unfamiliar with the site always check the FRESHWATER, SALTWATER and TACK-TICS pages. The Saltwater page now extends back as a record of over several years of (mostly) sea fishing and may be a useful guide as to when to fish. The Freshwater stuff is also up to date now. I keep adding to both. These pages are effectively my diary and the latest will usually be about fishing in the previous day or two. As you see I also add the odd piece from my friends and correspondents if I've not been doing much. The Tactics pages which are chiefly 'how I do it' plus a bit of science are also updated regularly and (I think) worth a read (the earlier ones are mostly tackle and 'how to do it' stuff).

Bass fishing disappointment.

My pal Rob emailed the other day to ask whether I fancied an early morning fishing session. I needed no second bidding so at 05.30 I was parking my car and walking along the seafront. That must be Rob standing by his van. There could only be one other lunatic with a fishing rod - or so I thought. We chatted about fishing topics as we walked along to our appointed spot in the dark. As we approached the rocky ledge there was a dark shape looming out by the race - another mad angler!!!! We were stunned. Anyway, there was little choice for us, we couldn't crowd the other bloke out from the point so we decided to fish the 'inferior' spots further back towards the shore. Rob chose to fish the uptide region of the ledge with his J11 while I tried with my 'Slandra' in a weak sub-race through a gap in the ledge.

It was a bit slow but after a while I had a bite. My adversary didn't put up much of a struggle so I knew it wasn't a bass. As it turned out I'd caught a modest pollack - well better than nothing I thought. Not long afterwards I heard a call from Rob and saw him land a schoolie. A fish each - so at least we wouldn't blank. As it began to get light my race died completely so I walked back and joined Rob fishing the uptide area. We could see shoals of fry scattering from the attacks of small pollack and after a while Rob had a second fish, this time a pollack similar to the one I had earlier. We saw the other angler out on the point land and release a small fish but he didn't appear to be having any better luck than we were. I suppose that I'd been fishing for about an hour when I had a good pull on the soft plastic eel and found myself playing a reasonable bass. I landed the fish and took a couple of pictures before putting it back.

By now I could see that the chap who'd beaten us to it was one of our pals - if we'd known earlier we could all have fished the potential 'hot spot'. When I asked he said that he'd also landed a small pollack and a schoolie so perhaps it was just as well we had fished other places. By now it was time for Rob to go to work and as I had to go out I didn't want to be too late back so we called it a day and left the third man still fishing. Two fish each - not too bad for a short session.

If you have any comments or questions about fish, methods, tactics or 'what have you!' get in touch with me by sending an E-MAIL to - docladle@hotmail.com

Nice one.

My bass in the water by my feet.

Got it.

Not a bad fish all things considered.  It would have been nice to fish the race as we intended but that's life.

Well hooked.

The lure has folded up and the weedless 'Texposer' hook was right in the back of the mouth.  Clearly this bass meant business.