Tom Jones - Short Session 27 Aug

[TAG]

Two new personal bests but not a decent fish!

Well it had to happen the first real quiet night of the season…
With the full crew (Essy back from hols and work commitments) we headed out on Friday, at 4pm, knowing that with top tide at about 6 we were effectively going out to fish “slack water”.

Essey managed to break his personal best by demolishing two large sarnies and a kit-kat before we got through the lock! Richie also achieved a new PB – writing off more sets of lures in mackerel tangles in one session than he’s ruined all year!

The sea, a bit brown from the recent rain, was flat, the drift slow and the craic excellent but there were no fish to be found on the close in wrecks. Further out the mackerel appeared and refused to disappear – even attacking shads on the way down.

All in all we tried about 12 wrecks which, when you could get through the mackerel, yielded a couple of cod and whiting.

 Daylights - mackerel
 Pirk - nothing
 Shads – cod
 Mackerel strips on a flowing trace - cod and whiting
 Green/red muppets/mini shads – mackerel

One thing that did come up in conversation was the lack of whiting this year and the proliferation of coalies - last year their seemed to be whiting on every wreck and hardly any coalies anyone got any ideas or is it just us?

Tom

[Kev1n]

With the exceptio0n of one day early on in the season we've found the same with the lack of whiting. The puddlers are around but not in huge numbers and they're all small.

We were out on Friday too, making the most of the calm before the storm. There was very little chop but quite a swell, we lost sight of the horizon on occasions. It looks like we went through the same pattern and tactics as you, ultimately, the most productive option was lures baited with big enough chunks of mackerel that other macks didn’t get hooked on the drop.

[joostan]

Great post mate and good to see the lure/feather breakdown on what caught etc.

Like Kev1n we were out on Friday (05:00 till about 16:30) roughly 12-16 miles out fishing about 70 meters. I made a Norwegian Perk which was catching small cod but nothing over 4lbs. Feathers.... well who cannot catch Mackerel with those! One big lesson I learnt was that when I was fishing anything over 30 meters with mono line I just cannot really feel the bites and going to order 1000m of 30lb braid and see what that is like. Jason (fishing buddy) made a perk from and old kids swing with a treble on it painted yellow with silver tape and was catching cod with that as well.

Just need to find how to catch the bigger cod now before the end of the season really.

[Topfly]

Joostan, just a little tip, get 8olb braid it's still mega thin and will take more stick amongst the rough stuff

[joostan]

Joostan, just a little tip, get 8olb braid it's still mega thin and will take more stick amongst the rough stuff

Cheers Topfly

[lingking]

fish

good report tag!!! joostan 30 lb braid wont have the abrasion resistance required for our waters 50 lb should do you fine,look around for best prices,theres plenty top class advice on here also,speak to slinky kate,northeast 1 the great wallsendo old sox etc etc theres loads of em all well experienced

[SIXFOOTSTEVE]

Only one kind of braid needed ,there can only be one ,55lb Dynon ....and it's only £18 from I.D. well worth getting ,it truely is the bogs dollocks .

Ask ,Norman,Keithb ,tadpoleman they all will tell you the same thing .

[Norman]

Aye totally agree with all above, especially lingking with the abrasioin problem ... I did have a try with 30lbd braid a few years ago but found as soon as there was any snag up it easily cut off on the rocks,
As Steve says "there can be only one", we use 55lb dynon 3000 - throughout, I got 5 or 6 rods on the boat and a few more at home and they all have exactly the same braid on ....... It's easy to handle and strong enough for our waters, as well as easily big enough to bring up any PB from the depths.
Fit one of the many quicklinks available to the end of the braid and hook up the traces to that, so long as there is always some mono on the trace it will at least always break after the quicklink so saving your braid.

good luck

norm