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).

What was he doing?

The bass/mullet fishing has been a bit on the thin side for me recently. However, my good friend Nigel has done rather better than me. On one evening session he had a good mullet on the fly and a small bass on a lure. The following evening he opted for another spot, one that we don't fish very often, and it produced five bass. None of the fish were monsters but the sport was sufficiently hectic for him to drag himself out of bed and have a go the following morning. This time he did even better and had a total of ten bass, all schoolies, but excellent sport on his soft-plastic lures. He rang us up to tell the tale, so the following evening Bill, Martyn and I all trooped to the spot to catch the high water, which was due just as darkness fell.

We knew that Nigel's information would be spot on so we were quite confident of a catch. However, being the old cynic that I am, before we started fishing I said something to the effect that - "it never lives up to what you expect." It didn't. Sure enough there were fish there. We all started off by spinning, I used a 7cm Rapala and the others fished with weedless SlugGill type lures. There was nothing showing at first and none of us were getting bites. As dusk approached shoals of small fry appeared in the edge and before long some larger, surface-feeding fish, probably a mix of small bass and mullet appeared. Still we were struggling to induce bites. As the number of feeding fish increased I picked up the fly rod and tied on a small, white Delta.

After a few minutes of cast and retrieve I was in and the fish fought pretty well, taking line and rushing up and down along the shore but with none of the sustained runs I would expect from a big fish. I began to suspect that it might not be hooked in the mouth (foul-hooked fish often fight much harder). When I eventually slid it ashore it turned out to be a small bass hooked near the wrist of its tail. Disappointing!

Martyn took a picture of the fish and I slipped it back into the sea before continuing. I was getting fairly regular bites and missing most of them but I landed two more small bass on the'fly'. Martyn managed one bite on a lure and Bill having switched to a 7cm Redgill, caught one similar to mine. All in all a pretty poor show compared to Nigel's recent sessions. That's fishing!

Note the weed middens stuffed with Coelopa maggots. Phone picture.

My first bass on the delta 'fly', unfortunately it was foul hooked. Phone picture.

The second fly caught bass - even smaller than the first.

Bill's sole fish of the 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

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