Catch Fish with
Mike Ladle
Information Page
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).
Thanks for the tip off Bill!
Anglers can be pretty secretive and they are, of course, famous for stretching the truth (= lying). So, it's good to have fishing pals that you can trust. Over the years I have had quite a few friends and colleagues who willingly exchanged information about their successes and failures, when fishing for everything from salmon to smelt, carp to conger and mullet to mackerel. In fact, when I think about it, the best of my eighty year's worth of accumulated knowledge, about how best to catch fish, has stemmed from discussions with this diverse group of anglers who fished hard and thought carefully about their fishing. Overall, we fished for a wide variety of species often in very different ways. Quite a few of my good angling friends no longer wave a rod about, indeed several of them are now dead, but I still find my keen (mostly much younger than me) contacts very useful and happy to collaborate.
This week I had a classic example of the benefits which stem from having a number of good fishing mates. Bill Fagg and I have known each other, and fished together now, for almost fifteen years. Only a small proportion of our trips are made jointly and our approaches to the pleasures of bass fishing differ, but we DO exchange sound information about almost every trip we make. We also have a few (a very few) mutual friends who regularly pass round good, sound, angling information. Perhaps surprisingly, it is even valuable to know about blank trips and this sometimes saves us hours of fruitless rod wielding. These days most of the information is exchanged via emails, although in the past it was generally word of mouth. Both methods work well.
To return to my recent experience, it was a classic example of the benefits of having a small group of 'danglers' who trust each other. In my last web page I mentioned that while my pals had been catching numbers of smallish (1.0-2.5lb) bass on lures I had landed sweet Fanny Adams on large, free-lined baits. Recently, as usual, Bill had succeeded pretty well with his soft plastics while my own, two, brief bait-fishing sessions had resulted in a blank and a modest three pounder. Anyway, Bill emailed the other day to say that he'd been down to the coast again and, as he was walking along to his selected spot, he stopped for a short rest and simply stood watching (he's a very good 'watcher'). He said "... after a few seconds first I saw a tail, then the back of a bass. I didn't move, but cast my lure well past the fish I could see. As the lure hit the water there was a huge sploosh and I saw the back of a good fish that I hadn't noticed, right where the lure had just landed." The commotion scared off the other fish he had seen. Of course he had to have a few casts and and gave it five minutes in the hope of a bite. but no luck. So, he moved on to his intendeded destination.
He spun over a fair length of shoreline but the only result was what he called "a phlegm coloured abhorrence" (= wrasse, he's not keen on them!) and then "a microscopic ~20cm bass on a 10cm lure".
The fish which Bill had seen, and which had refused his lures, sparked my interest. So,the following morning found me walking along the shore with my free-lining gear, baited with a hefty fillet of mackerel. From Bill's description it was clearly a good deal rougher, windier and weedier than the previous day, and although I halted for a look, as Bill had done the previous day, the sea was choppy and I could see nothing. Anyway, I lobbed out my fillet and within minutes the line and bait were plastered in feathery weed. I wound in and cleaned everything up before repeating my cast to a slighly different position. The result was the same - everything draped in weed. This was no good. I decided to move a few metres further to get the wind more behind me so I could easily cast to a slightly different position. The move was a definite improvement. I let the bait lie for a couple of minutes and when I wound in for a check, the amount of weed on the gear was minimal. Cast again to the same spot and wait. After five or ten minutes there was a tug, I let the line run out and the fish (surely a bass), made two or three successive sharp movements, each time taking a few metres of line. It was clear that the bass was dragging my braid through the thick, weed-soup. So, no point waiting any longer. I closed the bale and held on, there was a strong pull and I was into a fish but the line zig zagged through two or three masses of drifting weed and I had no direct contact. There was zero choice I would have to wind in both fish and weed.
Playing a fish plus a couple of kg of weed isn't the best fun but eventually I was able to slide the bass ashore. I did the usual - unhook, measure, a couple of pictures, and slip it back.
Nice bass on bait, from weedy water.
.
.
Perfect circle-hook position in the scissors.
I was more pleased than I look.
.
Now I put on other fillet and flicked it out to roughly the same spot. There was an instant,strong, bite which ripped the bait clean off the hook. Bugger! As a last resort I put on the head of a little (old) mackerel which I'd popped in the bait bag with a view to chucking it away, but there were no more bites. I packed in and went home well pleased with the short session. Note the 'feathery' weed in the picture of the head of my bass, this is the sort stuff which was almost everywhere in the sea and caused such a problem when it draped itself on the line and bait.
PLEASE TELL YOUR TWITTER (X), FACEBOOK, EMAIL FRIENDS ABOUT THESE BOOKS.
THE SECOND WAVE
Written with Steve Pitts this is a SEQUEL TO THE BESTSELLER "Operation Sea Angler" IT'S AVAILABLE ON PAPER FROM -
HOOKED ON BASS
Written with Alan Vaughan. NEW PRINT OF THE ORIGINAL: IN PAPERBACK. Copies available from all good book shops RRP 14:99 -
ANGLING ON THE EDGE
Copies can now be ordered (printed on demand) from Steve Pitts at 34.00, inc. Royal Mail Insured UK Mainland Postage.
To order a book send an E-MAIL to - stevejpitts@gmail.com
FISHING FOR GHOSTS
Written with David Rigden. Copies from
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