Personal best cod!

So, I've been fishing the Brigg for some time now, and I always knew it had the potential for big fish.  After all this place holds the British shore caught record for coalfish - a monster of 23lb.  I've never even seen one into double figures!

I noticed in my first season there how the general stamp of the fish is bigger than several local marks - I regularly catch 7-8lbers there.  But for some reason I never seemed to connect with anything much bigger.  That was until today.  OMG...  When I hauled up this beast from the depths, my first thoughts were "can I get that in the kayak?!".

The gnarled face of a 15lb cod - click on it to see the grim details!

Yes, my feet are in the water and that thing's tail is in the footwell.  Took about ten minutes to fetch it in, and made several powerful dives that initially made me think I'd tail hooked a big pollack or something.  To be honest, I didn't know what I had on the end of my line til I saw it circling below me like some biege coloured whale! When I finally got to shore, the fish nose was just above my waist while its tail was dragging on the ground.  What a big old, leathery beast!

Thank goodness for those big gill plates - I don't carry a gaff!

This was the start of a fantastic session.  Which to be fair, had started in a less auspicious fashion by me hooking a pout.  As this is a bit of rarity so close in, I thought I'd take a photo.  Clipped my pliers in my pocket as I reached for my camera, and flip, plop, and gone over the side!  Grrr! 

After the whale of Filey was landed, it was basically a fish every drop, with many of them decent cod around the 5lb mark.  All the cod bare a couple of the smaller ones were caught on the bottom SavageGear 4 Play soft lure (largest size, which is only just big enough).  The rest were all on the 30mm Sakura Split shads - cod love these.  Of course, there is always the odd nuisance fish, by which I mean inedible, even if they are often incredibly pretty:

Nice ballan wrasse, with those amazing turquoise tails.  Later in the year, the Brigg really starts to show some big pollack and coalfish.  This one barely counts!

 There was a surprising amount of swell out there.  Forecast was 2ft, which means round the back of the Brigg it will be anywhere from 4-8ft! 

now you don't!

Now you see it...

It's almost impossible to show swell on a photo, best obviously in a video, but I couldn't be arsed to do one.  Suffice to say, there was enough swell to make it very unpleasant coming back over the end o' the Brigg.

Sure enough, I realised that the swell was breaking in more or less a semi-circle in front of me and it was time to head back.  There was a parking meter running, after all!  But crossing that swell where it kicks up over the end the Brigg can be a bit of nightmare if you time it badly.  Waves that look as though they are big but rolling (so passable with care) can suddenly start to break if a big series of them come through.  I waited, and waited, and waited.  And then made a mad dash for it.  I have to confess I got lucky, I was very nearly tipped out twice when my rudder ended up out of the wave, leaving me only able to lean into the wave with the paddle.  It was all a bit too close and messy, but thankfully I made it back into the Bay and found a quiet patch to gut the fish.

Look back over the end o' the Brigg where I just came.  Not for the faint hearted (or sensible!).

Back on the beach, I was finally able to get the beast out of the front hatch and ready for gutting.  Little photo shoot beforehand:

That's not a toy paddle...

If you know the size of cavernous front hatch of the Stealth Profisha 575, then you can see the girth and size of that cod.  Gutting on the beach is not something I like doing, but unavoidable with this fish.  This didn't go unnoticed in the town, and sure enough I had plenty of questions on my way back up to the car.  Did chat with a chap who takes part in the local boat competitions, who said it was the biggest fish he's seen come from the behind the Brigg this year - his estimate was around the 15-16lb mark.

The gutted beast back home - its head is bigger than mine, even after I caught it!!

So with the other half dozen cod (and a random mackerel), the hairy crossing back into the Bay and my lost pliers, it was a pretty exciting trip. What a great sport this is!

Tight lines to all those fishing!

The cod start in earnest...

So, after the misery of our May bloom trip to Runswick Bay, and despite all the recent rain, I took advantage of what were forecast to be several days of calm weather. Turned out we only got a couple, and the day I went the forecast was pretty well wide of the mark.

Last year I fished behind Filey Brigg systematically for the first time, trying to work out what makes it such a productive but frustrating mark. On its day it's hard to beat, but there can often be long patches where the tide doesn't seem to do much and the fishing is dead. Then all of sudden, you'll have half a dozen fish in the same number of drifts. It seems to be all about trying to work out the sweet spots, both in terms of depth (which varies quite a bit behind the Brigg), place and tide. I guess that's the same for every mark you fish anywhere, but the Brigg can be mystifying at times as to why the fish are not there.

The forecast on Windguru had the swell at a foot and wind speeds under 10mph. I should know by know that a) the Brigg seems to always generate its own little local weather spot, particularly for the wind that comes down the edge of the Brigg, and b) the back of the Brigg is always a tricky, sloppy, unpredictable sea state, even on the calmest of days. So it was on Saturday. I was out on the water for around 6am and the weather on the Bay side was quite nice. But as I rounded the corner of the Brigg, sure enough I started to see the waves kicking up ahead of me and even breaking beyond the bell buoy.  Going round the corner is always the "stomach in your mouth" moment of the trip, as the waves come in several directions at once.  If the tide is running at pace, there are generally standing waves to negotiate into the bargain, and the whole bit is one where you need to keep your wits about you as you paddle.

Dark and gloomy, but plenty of birds about this year.  Noticed quite a few puffins too.

That bit safely negotiated, the far side was pretty sloppy too with a far bigger swell than forecast making its presence felt via the usual clapotis off the back of the Brigg. Sure enough, I fished for a couple of hours with not much to show for my efforts. Then, as the tide really picked up pace, I started to catch cod. First up was the classic 'cod on the bottom with a pollack on the first'. Well, if not a pollack then its close cousin the coalfish. But it is remarkable how often that pattern is repeated.

All the fish were on my new weedless rigs, with a big bottom soft plastic weighted with an inline trolling sinker, topped by a string of smaller soft plastics.  Cod as always, fell to the big soft plastic on the bottom.

After that there followed a hectic period, with a fish every drift and many missed. The wind was gusting quite strongly by now, which meant if you came too far out from the lea of cliff then the full force of both the wind and tide would catch you and you would end up drifting too fast to hold bottom. I don't generally like going much heavier than 4 or 5oz, so I restricted my drifts to short bursts that went outwards from the cliff at the 45 degree angle due to the tide. While the tide was running, the fish kept coming. But as it reached low water, and the flow slowed, the fishing dropped dead once more.

I hung around for a bit, but by now I had 6 good cod and a coalfish, and I felt that was enough for the day. Plus I was desperate for a p*ss and there's nowhere easy to do that round the back of the Brigg on a kayak, especially when half the world and his dog seemed to be out either fishing or walking! So I ran the gauntlet past the end of the Brigg, which for once had decent waves in my favour and I had a bit of nervous laugh surfing them for a few minutes until I was safely back in the calm waters of the Bay. One thing I love about the Stealth Profisha models is the built in rudder, it really does make a huge difference when you have to surf waves and it's an absolute joy to paddle in cross winds, which used to be the bane of my life trying to keep a straight course in the Scupper Pro.

Rare shot of a cod bag for me, as the fish are still intact.  Generally parts of them are feeding the crabs before I come home.

Good first trip round the back o' the Brigg.  No tackle losses, which suggests my new weedless rigs are working on the rough ground.  The only downer for the trip was the fact I'd forgotten my knife, which meant I had to fetch all the fish back with their heads and guts intact!  Bit of a nightmare, and not very green either, but it did mean you get what is a very rare shot from me of a bag of fish that actually look like fish in the bag, and not just carcasses!   Fish stock anyone?  :-)

Good luck to all those fishing.

Alabama Rig for North Sea Cod?

Well, if it works for black bass, why not for cod?  They're just as greedy and stupid!  But let's not get ahead of ourselves here.  First off, what is an Alabama rig?  Well there seem to be various claims about who was the first to come up with the idea, but at its heart is an extremely simple representation of a shoal of baitfish. Essentially, the Alabama rig is a series of wires bound together with a lead head representing an even smaller fish. You push the wires outwards to make a star shape and attach a soft plastic to the end of each wire. The rig has had its share of controversy, some saying it's not sport fishing in any sense of the word, it's more of a commercial fisherman's rig.  Indeed, it has been banned in a few states and bass tournaments in the US.

Luckily we face no such issues at sea! After all, this is a place where commercial fishing still goes on with unabated lust and little care for fish stocks.  So let's have a look at the basic rig (you might need to click on the photos to get a better view):

This is how you get it.  First spread the wires out:

Then attach your hooks and put on some soft plastics of your choice.  The ones I've chosen here are probably a bit on the small size for this particular rig:

I think the better rigs out there have black swivels, these silver ones stand out too much in my opinion and I'm sure will attract mackerel.  But if mackerel become a problem you can always up the size of the soft plastics to around 4" or bigger, especially with wide bodied shads, and that seems to put most of them off. The rig can now be folded up as you got it with the split ring, keeping everything nice and tidy:

I attached mine to a 4oz inline trolling sinker or lead weight, so that it can get down to where the cod are despite strong tides or high drift speeds on the kayak. The idea is bump them off the bottom on the first drop and then fish on the drift, jigging the rig just within touching distance of the bottom. I have some of the 3'' Sakura Slit Shads which I really rate that I'm sure will work great on this Alabama rig.  So, there you have it. Simplicity itself, saves you tying up your own rigs, and gives a nice representation of a more natural group of baitfish than the 'string of lures' type rig we usually fish.  Yes it doesn't have the big bottom shad which we've found so effective at nailing the big cod, but I'm sure the smaller spring cod and pollack will hit this rig hard!

But as always, the proof is in the fishing.  Roll on good weather tomorrow at Runswick Bay!

Cod in the fog

So, first trip of the year.  Expectations high, weather forecast good, tackle primed and ready to go.  We left our homes at 6am to be on the water for 7.30am and paddled out from Runswick in lovely conditions.  There was a slight haze and the sun was weakly shining through a thin layer of cloud.  For the first hour not much happened.  We drifted. We jigged.  We drifted and jigged some more.  Then my mate radio'd in to say he'd had a whiting.  A little later near Kettleness he reported a small coalie.

Meantime I let the drift take me round the back of Port Mulgrove.  Don't tend to fish this side of the bay much, but there's no reason not too.  Had some good catches there in the past and sure enough, I started getting a few nips at the shads.  Something I noticed last year is that smaller fish love trying to bite soft plastics, and will often follow them along the sea bed nipping at their tails, somethimes biting the tails clean off!

Sure enough, as I held the rod up to lift the jellies off the sea bed, I started to get a few tentative nibbles.  Then a pull, and I struck back into a small codling. One for the pot, so at least the first trip wasn't a blank!  Few minutes later, another series of nibbles.  This time I gently kept increasing the pressure until suddenly a felt a good pull back and up came another little cod.

At this point my fishing buddy radio'd over to ask where I was, as he couldn't even see me... now, there was a little bit of haze around, so that didn't surprise me.  So I radio'd back and started paddling back against the drift to go and meet him half way.

And that's when it happened.  He gradually came into sight, and I noticed the haze was getting thicker.  But on reaching him, I literally turned back round realised the land had completely disappeared!  The fog just seemed to roll in from nowhere in seconds, and it was a total pea souper.  You could barely make out the sun and everything quickly became very disorientating.

Whoa, where'd everything go?  No sky, no land, no pot flags!

Luckily we are both equipped with GPS devices (though mine's on my phone, so not ideal) and we were able to navigate back in towards Runswick.  But the fog was so thick, and the tide so low, that even as we followed Mulgrove point round, we still weren't sure where we were.  In fact even after landing on the sand at Runswick, it was hard to know where abouts on the beach we were, as you couldn't see the start of the grass or any cliffs.  The fog literally gave us a little circle of about 50 metres around which you could make things out.

Looking up the beach, looking out to sea. Runswick Bay vanishes!

I'm not one for paddling in those conditions, GPS or not, it's just too unsettling.  You can hear boats around you but you can't see where they're heading.  So we packed up and headed home.  At least we shook off the winter cobwebs, tested the new weedless rigs and bagged a couple of fish:

Roll on the calm weather, the mackerel and the big cod that come following in behind!

Weedless rigs for cod and pollack

Readers of this blog will know that last I tried some experimental rigs that replaced hokkais with small soft lures known sometimes as jelly worms or paddle tails.  We had already found that by replacing the traditional pirk with a big weighted shad, we caught more cod and bigger cod.  But the tackle losses continued to be heavy, despite the big shads only having a single hook and generally staying free of snags.

Another fat cod falls to a big 6" bottom shad.  

The problem was the hokkais.  These themselves are a more effective replacement for the traditional cod feathers, but essentially they are the same.  A single exposed hook surrounded with a bit of fluff and plastic!  And having three of these on a rig means that pot lines, kelp forests and even rough ground are a recipe for snags and tackle losses.  Now I don't like throwing money away as much as the rest of you.  Neither am I wildly keen about littering the sea bed with heavy lead weights and the rest of the rubbish that anglers use.  I thought there has to be a better way.  And so there was.

Last year we tried for the first time replacing hokkais with tiny jelly lures rigged weedlessly and the results were fantastic. I particularly like the Reins range of small paddletails called "Rockvibe Shad".  We favour the 2" and 3" sizes, but it might be possible to go bigger. Sometimes it is possible just to leave a rig of these in the current and watch your rod tip as fish try nibbling at them!  Of course if let them do that too long, you'll reel in a string of bare hooks!  But despite the success we had with these lures last year, we were still losing tackle to snags.  This time the culprit had to be the big bottom shad.  The search was on for a weedless version of the big bottom shad. Not as easy as you might imagine. Most large shads are not designed to be weedless, they're usually designed to go with a weighted head which is nearly always not weedless. Unfortunately, even so called "heavy" shads are often just not heavy enough for use on the kayak as they are not intended to be used with a string of jelly lures above them.  They might work ok on the their own, but when added to a rig of jellies the tide drag on a 100ft of water is considerable and means that shad needs to be at least around 100g / 4oz or more to fish the bottom effectively for cod.

Luckily my sea bass fishing had taken me down the route of soft lures several years previously. Many of these originally came over from the USA and Japan where they're widely used for black bass fishing, though they'll pretty much catch anything predatory.  In recent years there have been a whole slew of designs targeting European sea bass in particular.  Readers of this blog will know of my recommendations relating to Fiiish Black Minnows from a couple of years back, along with Savage Gear Sandeels and other paddle tail designs that I find are safer to fish with from a kayak (no stray trebles hooks) and catch just as many fish.

Early test rigged failed as the Black Minnow 160 heads
were just too lightweight. BTW, the gap between
the bottom shad and the next jelly should not be more
than about 10" (i.e bit less than shown).

The Fiiish Black Minnow as we all know has become incredibly popular, despite its relatively poor casting from the shore.  One of the main reasons for its popularity is the fact that it is rigged to be weedless, thus reducing snags amongst weed and rocks.  I had hoped to use the bigger versions as a weedless bottom shad for my cod rigs.  The larger size, the 160mm and above, do work as single lures (though the very largest 200mm is just a bit too big for close in cod jigging, IMHO).  But at 60g the 160mm just isn't heavy enough to get a rig of jelly lures down to the bottom when drifting against a strong tide.  We needed something about double that!


I thought about my early experiments fishing single 25g 4" shads weighted down with two 1oz bullets.  It looked awful, but the cod didn't seem to mind.  The answer surely had to be fish a big weedless soft lure using a decent lead weight.  After much internet searching, I finally found a lead mould that met all my requirements.  The Do-It Mold 'Inline trolling sinker' model D3139.  This mould casts 3, 4 and 5oz weights.  All you need are No. 2 brass or stainless steel loops for either end.

After an hour or so melting lead in the back garden, I had a dozen different inline sinkers to try out.  The next task was to find some big shads that could be rigged weedlessly.  To be honest, this has proven much harder than I thought it would be.  A decent sized shad for large cod is around 6" / 150mm.  You can go longer, particularly if you use a sandeel or launce imitation.  In that case, anything upto 200mm is probably OK, though there is an upper limit with regard to hook size.  If the lure gets too long, then you find that it's difficult to purchase the right shape and size offset hook.

Most offset hooks go up to about 5/0.  When what we need is about a 6/0.  Of course, you can use a smaller shad.  The market is flooded with small 4 or 5" shads that can be rigged to be weedless.  I found that two nice soft lures in this sort of range that can be rigged with offset hooks are the SavageGear 4play softlure and the Daiwa D’Swim.  Here they are shown rigged to 4oz inline sinkers.  The D'Swim has a Krog hook for the largest size Black Minnow (200), the SavageGear lure has a Krog 160 hook.  These hooks are fantastically strong, ideal for hauling up big cod:

You can see how streamlined the weights look.  The remainder of the rig is simply to attach the Reins Rockvibe Shads above the weight (you can click on these to enlarge them):

 A simple piece of hose cut lengthwise with a slit in either end make a simple rig holder and keeps everything neat and tidy.  You can tuck the little jelly lures into the piece of hose to stop the rig unravelling:

That's it! To my knowledge this is the first truly weedless cod rig I know of, specifically designed to be fished from a kayak for our waters.  It should cut down the tackle losses to a bare minimum as there are no hooks exposed.  Yes, the lead might still get caught up in a cleft between boulders or something, and I know there's no such thing as a completely snag free rig, but I think this is as close as it gets.  If you have any recommendations for big shads that can be rigged weedless with offset hooks around the 6" / 150mm mark, please let me know!  Until then...

Tight lines for the coming season!

Big cod and pollack still about!

Only had time for a quick trip to the back o' the Brigg after my hols and conditions proved tough.  After all that hot weather, you would have thought the water would have cleared nicely.  But to our dismay, not only were we to be paddling under clear blue skies, we soon discovered that the water was bright green and full algal growth, not too dissimilar to the May bloom of a month back.

And to add to our distress, we timed it terribly.  We got there bang on low tide.  Long walk out to the sea followed by paddling out to the end of the Brigg only to find that the tide was slack.  That meant basically a two hour wait before the tide would pick up speed and we could expect to see some fish.  In the meantime we paddled about, hoping for the odd early mackerel but surprisingly nothing could be found.  It seemed everywhere we looked it was the same story: people were trying half an hour here and there but not finding any fish.  It was very hot out there under the sun in a dry suit I can tell you!

Eventually the tide did pick up, the water cleared up a bit and we started to get a few small codling showing.  My mate was first to the cod with a nice fish to his bottom shad:

I followed this with another thumping pollack, not far off the beauty I'd had here a few weeks before.  Again this fell to the jellyworm fished just above a big bottom shad.  Pollack rarely tackle the big shads, not sure why.  If you know how big the Stealth Pro Fisha 575 hatch is, you can get an idea of the length of that pollack.

Shortly after this I was into a decent cod myself and finished the day like that:

All in all it wasn't a bad session, given our rotten timing, the ridiculously hot weather and the horrible green water when we first arrived!

Not long now before I move onto the bass.  Still hoping for one or two decent mackerel sessions and a few late cod.  You can never have too many cod in the freezer!

Tight lines to all those fishing.

Cod bonanza!

The summer cod have well and truly arrived.  My latest session at the "back o' Brigg" resulted in cod after cod, ending up with seven for the bag with the best going on 7lb.  I also had two pollack, with one being even bigger than the best cod!  All in all, a cracking trip.

It started slow.  The weather seemed perfect (overcast and windless) and the water was clearer than I have seen for a long time, lovely to see it like that after the May bloom a few weeks back.  I thought I was going to "fill my boots", but I started with a few tentative drifts towards the end of the Brigg with very little to show for it.  I started with my weedless jigging rig using the 160 size Fiiish Black Minnow as the bottom shad and three Reins Rockvibe Shad 3" UV King Silver soft lures above it.

I was actually surprised and disappointed that my first drift didn't produce a fish!  The next only produced small stuff.  And the next after that.  Where were all the decent cod?  After an hour or so, it became clear that the perfect conditions were not producing perfect fishing conditions.  I had a couple of boats come past me to ask how things were going and it seemed slow for everybody.  The weather was just getting darker and darker, and in the humidity and heat I started to worry about thunderstorms forming.

I decided to change to a 6" bright orange shad for the bottom above the little Rockvibe shads.  It was nice and bright and might just attract fish.  Sure enough, almost immediately I was into a fish.  It slipped off and I reeled in to check the rig and noticed that one of the rockvibe shads was missing.  Replaced it, dropped it down and bang!  First decent cod of the day.  OK, there are fish about!  I paddled back up to the start of the drift.  The tide was really racing through now in the same direction as the breeze, which meant I was drifting at pace.  I'm not a fan of anchoring up, as I never fish bait and I believe that drifting lets you cover more ground.  Sure on occasion you can lose the fish if they're tightly clustered, but for most of the time covering more ground is what gets you the fish.

Whether that big orange shad really did draw fish in, or whether something changed in the tide or currents, I don't know.  But the fish started coming thick and fast.  Before I knew it, I was hitting (and losing) big fish.  I could feel some of them were pollack - no mistaking that initial run for cover!  But then I hit into something heavy, doing the typical "head nodding" fight of a cod, but then also trying to dive.  I couldn't work out what was going on, but it was something pretty large whatever it was...

Ah, cod as long my foreleg and a pollack to match.  Bring it on!

Nice coloured cod about 7lb, pollack about 4 or 5lb.

That's it, I was off!  Every drift resulted in a fish or me getting smashed or losing a fish. Before long, the pollack really started showing, resulting in some hefty specimens:

Biggest pollack ended up around the 8lb mark.  I lost a few that we're probably bigger...

What was strange though was that almost every fish, even the better cod, ignored the big orange shad instead going for the little Reins Rockvibe shads above.  That can only mean one thing - the sandeel have arrived and the fish were totally focused on them as a food source, something that was confirmed when I gutted the fish.  Sometimes using a big bottom shad works brilliantly as an attractor and that was what happened today.  I think the bright colour actually helped in that regard as when I later changed to a more natural looking shad the catches once again dropped off.  I went through a whole pack of the Rockvibe shads.  They are great fish catchers but robustness is not their first quality.  Still, they work out no more than hokkais, and in my opinion they outfish them by some margin.

I could have stayed all day catching cod like that.  I love seeing their fat white belly come spiralling up the through the water towards you.  Of course, the more you catch, the longer you have to spend gutting and filleting them and my cool bag was almost completely full.  I started the gutting out at sea with a group photo, unfortunately the foot wells of the Pro Fisha 575 only hold so much cod....

Real beast of a pollack, too big for my bag, with 8 other fish!

The back of the Brigg is great spot when it's fishable (from a kayak).  With the right tackle the fishing can be nothing short of fantastic.  But if you've never kayaked there before considering going with someone else for your first trip.  The Brigg has two very different sides.  One is all calm and tranquillity, the other can be horrendous.  Never get tempted to short cut as you go round, the waves can swell up and break from nowhere, even a hundred metres or so beyond the end.  Give it a wide berth and play safe.  Even so, you'll still have to cross the whirlpools and swirling currents that you can feel gripping and spinning your kayak as you go round.  Once you're round the other side, you've then got the clapotis (reflected waves) to deal with. They can be disarming as they come at you from unexpected angles. So play safe, only go when it's calm and if it's your first time go with someone.

Tight lines to all those going fishing!

The cod are back!

It seems like a long time since I last hooked up with a decent cod, but I heard that a few had been taken on shads off Filey Brigg and that the May bloom was clearing at last.

Back of the Brigg with Filey in the distance

For those that don't know it, the Brigg is a daunting place. You don't need much of a swell to have huge breakers booming against the far side, sending up sheets of spray twenty foot or more, while the Bay side can be in perfect tranquility! It's a funny spot, one that had to be treated with caution. It's all too easy to assume it's calm on the Bay side, get close to the end of the Brigg and be suddenly faced waves that appear from nowhere.  And it's not just the size of the waves that can be a problem.  On a big tide the currents swirl around the end creating whirlpools and causing waves to come at you from all angles.  Indeed, even once you're safely past the end of the Brigg on a calm day you can find that the clapotis (reflected waves from a cliff) can throw you about in unexpected ways. It's a place you need to keep your wits about you.

Looking along the Brigg towards Scarborough.  This is where the roughest ground is found, and some of the best fishing.

That said, when conditions allow it, the fishing round the back of the Brigg can be nothing short of spectacular. It's a big cod and pollack ground, a tackle graveyard for the unwary, and of course in the summer months the mackerel descend in their thousands.

The weather had been hot and sunny, not generally good conditions, but with the water still a bit green I didn't think it would do any harm if as much light as possible could get down into the depths.  It's amazing what a difference a week makes, last Monday the sea was dead when I went out.  Nothing except the minutiae in the bloom was moving.  Today it was a different story.  It smelt different, I swear I could smell something that said fish are about!  Gannets were diving in the distance and cormorants, guillemots and puffins were bobbing up all around me.  Sure enough I started getting fish the first drift.  At first it was mostly small rubbish, a lot of which were getting foul hooked on the big shad or chasing the first jelly up.  

Lots of small rubbish about!

Sometimes this is a sign that there aren't many bigger fish about.  But then bang!

Finally a better stamp of fish.  Taken on a six inch shad on home cast lead head.

First of the better fish to come to the big bottom shad.  You can see here that a 150g six inch shad isn't any bother for a 5 or 6lb cod.  Yes, four inch shad might get you more fish, but the big shads get better fish.  Sure enough, I started hitting big fish every other drift.  As some of you may know, last Monday I lost my rod and reel over the side (aaaargh!) after experimenting with a shorter paddle.  Today I was forced to fish with a back up spinning reel loaded with 18lb braid.  Not really heavy enough for the Brigg.  I got broken twice by big fish heading for the depths.  The first was definitely a pollack.  I didn't have my drag screwed down tight enough and the fish just stormed away into the rough where it snagged up for a break.  The second time, I tightened the drag and guess what?  Yep, got broken after discovering that you really can't hope to hold a big fish back on 18lb braid!  Still, I tied on a new rig and I was back in business:

Doesn't look it, but this fish was not far off the first one.  A lot fatter to boot.

The Stealth 575 was well and truly blooded now, and I always like to check what the fish have been feeding on.  For those of sensitive disposition, look away now...

The Stealth 575 is well and truly blooded with it's first cod guts!

So that's three intact crabs, one flatfish (what was that doing in rough ground?) and a good fistfull of part digested other stuff, mostly crab from the feel of it.  But no small fry or sandeel. Early yet, but worth noting.

The other thing of note that happened was that a seal came up right behind me while I was fishing. I never mind seals - they generally indicate I'm about to catch a fish.  Sure enough, I hit one right as this one was bobbing about behind, about a yard or two off.  I didn't know what was best, as I was in pretty deep water, I lifted it clear of the rough and just left it there on the end of my line, waiting for the seal to bugger off.  I turned round to see where it had got to, and found the bugger trying to climb onto my yak!!  I shouted "Oi!!", at which point the seal suddenly seemed to twig there was a human on board this bit of flotsam, panicked and dived at the great rate of knots.  I waited a few minutes and then winched my fish up as fast as I could.  Amazingly I got past the seal, as he came back a bit later, swimming right under the yak.  Great sight and a great way to end the day.  

Bring on a few more days like today and I'll be a happy kayaker!

Weedless jigging rig for cod and pollack

This time of year is prime for the spring cod run in the north east, before the dreaded May "bloom" kicks in and kills the fishing somewhat. If you've visited this blog before or searched for cod rigs, you'll know that I gave up using the traditional pirk plus hokkais combination some years ago.  Even when you rigged the pirk with an assist hook, you still ended up with quite a bit of tackle losses as a result of fishing close to the bottom, especially if on a fast drift or over a big swell.

Lots of different ways to store a pirk
plus hokkai rig - simplest is just to wrap
it round and tie it with a rubber band.

The bog standard pirk plus hokkais rig used all
over the north east for cod.

Tackle losses are to be expected in such conditions, but after I replaced the pirks with a big jelly shad (5") and a heavy lead head, I lost far less tackle due to the shad tending to rest on its head or side when it hit the bottom, so the exposed hook had less chance to get stuck into anything.

I also found the big shad attracted a better stamp of fish.  This fish had a few goes at a Storm Giant Jigging Shad before ending up in the yak.  Sometimes if you feel a nip, it's wise to reel in and check they haven't bitten the tail of your jelly lure, thereby rendering it useless.

Unfortunately, although we lost fewer rigs overall, that improvement tended to be offset by the far greater initial cost of the big shads compared to a traditional pirk.  Even with home cast lead heads and cheap jelly bodies, we still weren't curing the problem because no matter how well designed the lead head is, if the hook is exposed, there is every chance that you come up against the kayak fisherman's worst enemy: the pot rope!  Even if your fishfinder shows these up in mid-water, on a fast drift / tide it can be hard to get your tackle up in time to avoid them and the fishfinder doesn't always pick them up when they're close to the bottom.

Homemade shad heads: expect heavy tackle losses and arm yourself with enough for the year!

My plan this year is to go with all jelly lures and by rigging the whole lot weedless, to hopefully end up with a snag proof rig that'll avoid the bottom snags as well as avoiding the pot ropes.

First stage is to look for a replacement for the hokkais.  Hokkais are simply a better form of the old fashioned mackerel or cod feathers.  Yes, they have glowing beads and a few glittery bits, but basically it's the same idea that is very difficult to rig weedless.  Luckily, over the last decade or so, ultra light rock fishing has become popular in Japan (and here too).  This has meant we now have an excellent choice of tiny paddle tail jelly lures that can be rigged weedlessly.  These are the Reins Rockvibe Shad 2" UV Super Glow B63 and the slightly larger 3" Neon Wakasagi:

These are from the Reins freshwater range, with the right hook they can be rigged weedless.  

So that's hopefully going to cure the pot rope snags.  It's true that these won't have the resistance that hokkais do, but even hokkais get torn up after a few mackerel.  The tiny paddle tails are cheap (10p each) and easy to replace.

Now to cure the shad problem.  I still want a big paddle tail, but there's not much out there that can be easily rigged weedless.  But early last year, my prayer's were answered when the first "daddies" of the Fiiish Black Minnow range came on sale.  At 16cm, it's quite a long lure (a near perfect launce imitation in my opinion), and with a maximum head weight of 60g it remains to be seen whether they'll keep their depth in a really big tide or an uptide drift: 

The big daddy of the Fiiish Black Minnow range, 160mm with a 60g offshore head. The perfect launce  imitation?

As we know big launce love baby sandeel and sandeel imitations (I frequently catch them on hokkais), it makes sense to rig them so that it gives the appearance of a launce chasing a smaller sandeel.  Generally it's the bottom sandeel imitation that the pollack grab, while the bigger cod nearly always hit the bottom shad.  I stick to just three sandeel imitations, any more than that and you're asking for trouble when the mackerel hit it in numbers.

That's it!  Hopefully a cod and pollack jigging rig that is snagproof on the bottom and against pot ropes.  Of course if you're travelling at pace, I would still expect the tiny paddletails to snag up against a rope as the soft lure only barely covers the hook point. We'll see. I'm confident it'll catch, and I'm confident it'll be better than the rig I was using last year, where every hook on the shad or hokkais was exposed.

And that's what it's all about isn't it?  Trying to do things better, to make it easier to catch more fish.

Tight lines for the coming season!