Catch Fish with
Mike Ladle

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SEA FISHING

13 September 2002

The B.A.S.S. Fish In.

Last week we held the Dorset Fish In for the 'BASS Club' (See LINKS page for the web address). Of course these events are always disasters. The only thing you can predict with any certainty is the time of the tide. This year Steve Pitts and myself had chosen a big September spring tide so that we could all try fly fishing for surface feeding bass and possibly mullet. Steve told me that it looked as if there would be a good turn out.

The run up to the fateful weekend was perfect. Hot sunshine, calm seas, couldn't be better. I had a couple of recces during the week and found several piles of maggot-ridden weed. Just what the angler(s) ordered. Twenty four hours before the arrival of our pals it began to blow. I hurried along to the chosen spot to find it unfishable - huge waves, a sea full of weed and a cross wind that made beach casting difficult, let alone fly fishing. It looked as if all the weed would be washed away by the following day, I was gutted.

However, undaunted we decided to switch venues and, in most cases, tactics (a few hardy souls fly fished anyway). It looked as though bait fishing and possibly plugging would be the 'order of the day'. On the Friday evening a few early arrivals tried a session off the only sheltered area they could find and Lee managed a five pounder on bait - a real success. The spot which had produced several bass to wet flies in 2001 proved useless, even though I had seen bass there that morning.

The following morning we were out in force - mostly using poppers off the ledges or bait fishing in the bays. Allan Hughes, a crack lure angler, had a lovely bass on a Chug Bug and several other bites but the fish of the session was a ten pounder which took Lee's mackerel head.

That evening most of us tried for scad with fly gear or small spinners. This time the fly men had it with large numbers of small horse mackerel on wet flies (See our Tack-Tics page).

The following morning Allan took Dave Cooling and Peter McConnel in his boat for a spot of plugging and they had a bonanza with lots of fish to about six pounds on various surface and sub-surface lures. All in all a successful Fish In despite the vagaries of the weather. I expect that we'll be having another Dorset session next year.

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

Allan's Chugged bass.

Back it goes!.

Its on!

Phew!!!!

The traditional picture.