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).

Crete

We're back from our trip to Crete. It was hot and sunny all the time and we had a wonderful holiday - particularly our grandson Joshua (age 3) who loved every minute of it. Needless to say fishing was a secondary element of the trip although I did take a rod and a bit of gear - just in case! In fact the biggest fish I saw was a small barracuda (which shot away as it spotted me) and the most numerous fish by far were tiny damsel fish and small flathead mullet. During the daylight hours the mullet attacked any bit of edible material floating on the surface. I watched a local land a few on a controller and lumps of crust but they were not big enought to give much of a pull on the line and I didn't try for them. I did see some bigger ones when we were having lunch (tackleless) near Agios Nikolaos and their response to my bits of bread roll suggested that they might have been good fun on the light fly gear and a 'bread fly'.

The most interesting thing was on my last evening when I spotted a local fishing from the rocks. I went to watch him (as you do) and found that he was using a long-line attached to a small raft with a sail. When I got there the raft was already 50 metres out from the rocks and the chap was feeding out a monofilament line with droppers and baited hooks every couple of metres. The bait was either bits of squid (or other mollusc?) or tiny, live lobster-like creatures (they looked like snapping shrimps) which he had in a separate box. I'd be interested if anyone can tell me exactly what either bait was? I watched for some time but he simply fed out more line and caught nothing. My Greek is almost non-existant ('good morning', 'please', 'thankyou' and 'two beers') so we couldn't converse, but by waving my arms about I gathered that he didn't often catch anything of any size. I've seen Maltese fishermen using similar little rafts to get lines out from the shore but only with single baited hooks.

My fishing was confined to spinning in early mornings or evenings using plugs or soft plastics and was totally biteless. I did try jigging with a couple of flies/Deltas and managed to catch a sea scorpion and some Damsel fish. The latter were more readily catchable on float fished bread. I saw a number of wrasses and various breams but all were tiny.

By far most exciting session was when I made a little minnow trap out of a plastic water bottle. It was deployed from the beach amid the bathers and baited with bits of reject croissant. Joshua, Dan and I waited in suspense for something to enter the trap were delighted with our catch of one sandsmelt, one mullet and three Diplodus bream. Joshua was really pleased but not pleased enough to touch the wriggling little fish before we returned them to the water. He may yet turn out to be an angler (if grandad has anything to do with it).

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

Greek long-liner.

Note the line coiled in the basket and two boxes of bait.

The raft.

The green arrow shows the position of the raft. Salamis in the town in the background.

The line.

Quite a length of hefty nylon.

Bait 1.

These are the bits of ?mollusc, ?acorn worm, he was using.

Bait 2.

Sponge crabs? or tiny Alpheid prawns?.  Where did he get them?

Sea scorpion.

caught on a little Delta.

Damsel.

Also caughht on a Delta.

Trapping.

Joshua and me intent on the 'minnow' trap.

Got one!

We inspect the catch transferred to a plastic cup.

Mullet.

One of three species that we trapped.