End of season bass fishing

So, what a splendid year it's been for me, with some incredible fish (my personal best cod at somewhere between 15-16lb), some very hairy moments (coming back over those standing waves round the back of Filey Brigg in a big swell) and finally ending up with a lovely mellow September, which allowed us plenty of time to go bass fishing, even if my own work commitments weren't quite so forgiving!

In previous years I used to waste parts of my summer messing about for bass too early in the year. These days I know better and don't even head towards the bass grounds until at least August, but more usually September / October.  There is a risk with this strategy, in that in bad years you might only get one or two chances to go.  But in most years, you'll get three or four chances, and that's easily enough to get my yearly quota of bass for the freezer (generally around 10-15 fish).

This year, September was frankly a bit of nightmare work-wise, with barely a free weekend, which meant the few opportunities I did get I was straight out there catching fish.  Not much has really come on the scene this year with regard to new lures.  Yes, a couple of late additions to what have become de facto weedless type minnows and sandeel lures have come along from Sidewinder and RedGill, but they've both arrived a little too late in the year to get a thorough testing.  So once again I was down to the perennial favourites the 120 Fiiish Black Minnow (shore) in various guises and the 125 SavageGear Sandeel.   There's been a fair bit of 'ummming' and 'ahhhing' over which of these is the best lure.  The SavageGear is slightly cheaper, but the hook is exposed so you lose a lot more in the thick kelp that infests our marks.  But which catches more fish?

Well they both work, there's no doubt about that.  Casting from the kayak isn't an issue, so doesn't concern us here.  The resilience of the BM 120 is possibly a bit better, but I've had half a dozen fish on one SG sandeel without it getting totally wrecked, so they're probably about equal.  True, you can't really fish through the kelp with the SG eels, but provided you go gently over the top you won't loose too many of them.

Click to enlarge

Another engulfed SG sandeel

There is one thing I have noticed with the SG eels, and that is the fish tend to engulf them deep into their throats.  I don't know if this means the fish really believe they are sandeels or not. The SG sandeel has livelier action than the BM 120, it really waggles its tail and wobbles from side to side, and it did outfish a friend who was fishing exclusively with the BM 120 alongside me, but there are many factors at play also, such as depth, speed and type of retrieve, all of which might have played a part. As I say, both lures catch fish. But you can see how often the fish swallow the SG eel whole in the two photos either side. If you like to return your bass, this might be an issue for you. Fish hooked on the BM are generally mouth hooked.

The fishing this year has been steady rather than spectacular.  No red letter days of catching 20-30 bass or anything like that.  Instead it seems to be all single fish in small patches of water.  But over 5 or 6 hours, picking up a fish an hour gradually starts to add up.  It doesn't make for a wildly exciting day's fishing, but at least it's not a total blank.  My three sessions this year:

The largest fish in the last session was around 25", so about the 63cm mark.  A long lean fish, it gave a far better scrap than you would think given its condition, and took me about five minutes before I could get it anywhere near the surface, and this was in about 12 feet of water!

In terms of new tackle, the two recent entrants to the weedless category of soft plastics I spoke of earlier do seem to have come a bit late in the year, no idea why companies can't get their production sorted out during the winter months to have stock ready for the summer months.  What is the point of bringing a new lure to the market in late September? True the world's a big place, and it's not all about the UK, but for a company like Redgill I would have thought its main market was here and that the company would have wanted to test and try out the lures early in the season, so that they could be recommended to others for the rest of the summer!

30g Sidewinder Weedless Super Minnow in Pearl

The Sidewinder weedless minnow looks good, though the head is a bit heavy for fishing the shallow waters we favour for sea bass.  The hook has a long shank, which means it really extends right down the length of the body - this is generally a good thing, as it means you get those fish that like to nip the tail of the lures.  Choice of colours is a bit limited, and it has the feel of not really being made to target sea bass in particular, but the pearl colour is always good colour where we fish and I think this lure will do ok, particularly when the sea kicks up a bit in strong winds and you need to keep it below the waves.

The Redgill Evo Stix sandeels are a more interesting addition.  Redgills have always been a staple in the boat angler's lure box and I think this is possibly the first time they've done a weedless variant of their famous sandeel which is known to every sea bass angler that has probably ever lived.  But their high point of fame was probably back in the 1980s, when many good bass were taken on the lure. Since then, the soft plastic lure scene has exploded, particularly in the last decade and Redgill gradually lost their way amongst the plethora of Japanese and American imports.

So what does their latest soft lure, the Evo Stix offer?  And I must say it looks good and it's a good price too.  The soft plastic used is the very tough type, you can really feel it gripping the hook, so I'm quite hopeful they'll outlast even the SG eels.  The hooks seem slightly on the short side, but one good thing about them is that they are a standard worm style hook.  Unlike lures like SavageGear's 4play, that require the company's own, slightly odd hook, as standard hooks tend rip through the noses much sooner. One nice feature is that the Redgills come with a variety of weights for the same lure. The weights are simply hollow cones that slide up the line.  Sometimes this type of weight can wear on the line, particularly around the hook knot, so it's worth checking them to see if there are any rough edges on the leads that could damage or fray your line. The 10g weight in particular looks perfect for skipping the lure along the top of the kelp beds.

Mounted Redgill Evo Stix 145mm in mackerel, shown with the three included weights of 5gm, 10gm & 15gm

The kit contains 3 weights, 2 Mustard hooks and 5 bodies, which is great value for £7, particularly when you compare it with a pack of rigged Black Minnows at £6.50 that contains just a single head and two bodies. My only doubt about the design is that the hook is mounted quite a long way up towards the head, but bass generally strike at the head of the lure anyway, so we'll have to see if this is a factor in missing the odd strike (though you could say that the weight forms part of the body, so in fact the hook extends further than it looks).  I'm looking forward to testing these.  I like their simplicity and I hope they do well.

All we need now is one last spell of calm weather before the season comes to an end and I can test them out and report back!  Until then I'll leave you with another new item of tackle, my Penn Spinfisher.  This sealed reel is only in its first season, so it's a bit early to say but so far so good.  It has survived a couple of dunkings in the brine, the drag is lovely and smooth (it needs to be, there's no backwind) and it feels as smooth as when I bought it (which Penn critics will say isn't much, but it's smooth enough!).  If I'm still doing the blog, I'll report back before start of the coming year, which is when any ingress of sea water will have done it's damage.

Until next time, tight lines!

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!

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!

The joys and frustrations of trolling for bass

Start of the autumn bass fishing!

Well it's that time of year again when the 'cod goggles' finally get taken off and I start to focus on sea bass. My sea bass window is surprisingly short, just a few weeks, as bad weather can be a curse at this time of year. You might ask why I wait until now to target them as a species? The reason is that although you can pick up several fish over the course of session during July and August, you only really start to hit the good sessions later in the year.  Besides which, before that there's plenty of great fishing to be had with the cod, pollack and mackerel.

Anyhow, it's late September and now the chances of picking up decent bass starts to increase. I set out yesterday to try some of my favourite marks despite the unpromising forecast. Winds were predicted to be westerlies with gusts to 30mph! However, the average wind speed was meant to be around the 15mph max. Little did I know what I was letting myself in for.

If the winds were a tad on the big side, so was the tide. The two flowing in the same direction made fishing almost impossible in the morning session. With my apologies for the poor quality photographs, you can see the short steep chop making the sea messy and unpredictable. Couple that with the wind knocking off the tops of the waves and you had some pretty challenging conditions.  One factor of the Pro Fisha 575 which is usually a boon worked against me yesterday. The 575 is known to weathercock in strong winds so that you end up with your back to the wind while fishing (this behaviour is due to the classic Stealth yak design of low backside and nose being clear of the water). Generally this is what you want. But yesterday was a strong westerly and as the sun rose bright as a button in the east, I was forced to fish into the dazzle. Even with good sunglasses and a wide brimmed hat, staring into the choppy glitter for several hours was not much fun.

Short chop and strong winds made fishing difficult.

But the water looked good. Reasonably clear, but with a pronounced green, milky tinge to it. Perfect for bass fishing. If I could just get more than three casts in over a drift! It was a case of paddling 10 mins back up to the start of the mark, then hurtling down to the bottom of the mark in about 3 mins! After just a single fish over three hours, and battling almost continuous wind and wave spray, I called it a morning and went on shore to share a sandwich with some fellow kayak fishermen.

Fortified with food, the shifting position of the sun and noticing a slight drop in the wind, I set out again determined to find the bass. The tide had slowed a little as low tide was approaching, and all of a sudden the bass started to appear in numbers. The frustrating thing was that I just couldn't find them while casting! The only way I could catch any was to troll my lure behind the kayak. Inevitably this would result in an immediate hook up. I landed fish after fish, each starting to fish immediately in the area where the fish was hooked, but I couldn't entice a single fish. Eventually I'd give up, cast out and start trolling back up to the start of the mark and bang! Another fish on!

I don't have the explanation why trolling sometimes beats conventional fishing.  It must be something to do the speed, depth of the lure, etc. But it might also have something to do with the rocking action of the kayak imparting just the right movement to the lure. I tried everything I could think of to mimic the trolling action of the kayak, but I could not get a fish to bite. It's bizarre, but it's happened to me before. One of the problems when you try to recreate the action of trolling is that it's very difficult to judge the speed at which your kayak moves through the water when trolling and to then copy that using your reel while trying to counteract the effect of your drift speed. The rod too points upwards in the rod holder, meaning that the lure probably also rides higher up in the water than usual. Then there is the rocking motion of the kayak. Generally it's pretty slight, but yesterday the conditions were as rough as I'm prepared to paddle and the rod tip might have been moving more than usual.

Rare underwater shot that actually worked of a bass coming in!

Whatever the reason, thanks to being able to successfully troll I was soon getting a fish a drift and quickly got into double figures. As I went along I took some for the pot and returned the rest.  Some involuntary - one was just about to get clobbered with my priest when it gave one last wriggle for freedom, got out of my hands, over legs and into the water.  I had to laugh - bass are an aggressive fish with plenty of attitude, one of the reasons they give such good sport.

Black minnow 120 doing what was it was bought for.

Once again the soft lures proved their worth. I still meet with anglers who believe in the hard lure propaganda spread by obsessive tackle tarts on the forums. Most hard lures are an expensive rip off. Yes, I was sponsored by Duo last year. But if I can be converted to soft lures, and I got some of the best hard lures that money can buy for free, then anyone can.  Let's look at the main advantages:

1. They're cheap and effective.  About three to one against hard lures in terms of their price.
2. They use a single hook. This is so much safer in a kayak that there shouldn't really be any discussion about the matter. Why risk landing a flapping fish with three sets of trebles in between your legs?  It's bonkers! Stick with single hook lures and let's have no more horror stories of treble hooks embedded in thumbs while at sea and needing to paddle home. It's an accident waiting to happen.

Another slab-sided Yorkshire bass.  Cracking!

So despite the weather, I ended up with a bag of eight fish, with probably double that caught over the day. I've probably one or two more sessions left before the season closes for me personally. You might think that just three bass sessions per year barely counts as fishing, but it's all in the timing. I will catch more in those three sessions than I would have if I'd been ten times earlier in the year. Trust me, I've done it. Fingers crossed that the weather is kinder next time!

Tight lines.

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!

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!

Review of Sakura Meiho Lure Box - SK9243

Some of you may have read of my various attempts at trying to sort out the saltwater lure box problem on kayaks (see here for my review of the Savage Gear Hang Bag).  In fact, it's a series of problems.

1. You need to be able to fasten to the kayak.  If you roll, what happens to your expensive lures?  Will that lid open if under water?
2. The box should fit between the legs and be easy to open with one hand, and give quick simple access to the lures.
3. Ideally a lure box would be waterproof.  However, for most kayak anglers that presents a problem, in that you can't guarantee to keep salt water from splashing your lures.  When that inevitably happens, then you need to be able to easily rinse the lures in freshwater when you get home.  Removable trays, mesh-bottomed drainable tubes, I've tried them all.  Never found one that dried off properly afterwards.
4. It should allow a mix of lure types, soft and hard, to be carried along with small items like snaps.  If you use hard lures, then the box should have a tangle-free method of storage.

Simple, right?  Wrong!

Such a box doesn't exist.  Never mind.  

In the absence of such a box, we must make do with boxes that fulfil part of the criteria above.  Granted this  is lot easier if you only carry one lure type.  The easiest lures to find boxes for are soft lures and that's what I'm focusing on today.  

By virtue of their design (single hook, separate heads and flexible bodies), soft lures can pretty much fit into any box.  Because they generally have just one hook, tangled lures are rarely a problem and the jig heads or fully assembled lures can be laid flat in sections.  This means the only remaining requirements are whether you want a waterproof box or one that drains easily to allow rinsing the lures, some means of fastening it to the kayak and one-handed opening.  Size is a personal preference - I tend to go for the biggest I can get in the limited area between my legs on the yak.  Long and thin is an advantageous shape here, and the box should be too tall so that it remains stable on a choppy sea.

There are probably many boxes that meet these criteria.  But I wanted a heavy duty box, and one that would allow me to fasten it to the yak without drilling a hole in the box compartments.  This is what I found:

Very strong ABS, one handed operation possible with sturdy catch.

Internal compartments with plenty of options.

Comes with some odd stickers and pads for the bottom.  Suspect these won't last long!

There's some limited room to drill holes for a leash to attach the box to the yak:

But perhaps the box's best features are its simplicity.  Nothing to go wrong here.

The box has a pretty tightly fitting lid.  Certainly shaking it upside down I wasn't able to spread the snaps or hooks around into other compartments.  My only criticism is that there's no easy way to rinse the lures if salt water does get in, which let's face it, on a kayak is a certainty.  But the risk of hook corrosion is obviously less when you're using single hooks.  We'll see.  As always I'll post back how the box did after its first year.

Sure looks pretty filled with my two favourite soft lures of the moment:  Savage Gear Sandeel and Fiiish Black Minnow!

Now, trying to find a box that would work as well for hard lures is much more of a challenge.  Any suggestions please let me know.

Tight lines to those fishing.

October sea bass and the Black Minnow

Once again, another bad summer leaves us desperate to continue the season for as long as possible, in the hope that one good session will make up for all the miserable weather we had this year that stopped us getting out on the sea.  This was my first ever trip for sea bass in October and I'm pleased to say that it was a success.  I'm now back, with aching limbs and back, having had the best session of the year.

Another spirited bass comes to the yak.

The autumnal weather was glorious, more summer than autumn, with bright blue skies and a steady warm breeze.  Water clarity wasn't great as usual at this time of the year.  It was more milky green than milk chocolate, and although sporadic brown chocolate patches that seem to appear and disappear as the tide swings round were there throughout the session, they certainly weren't enough to put the fish off.

This year has really been a revelation for me concerning soft plastics. After last year's nightmare of getting a treble hook deeply embedded in the end of my thumb and nearly passing out trying to rip it out with a pair of pliers, I've found that I'm reaching for my hard plastics (often with three sets of treble hooks) with a certain reluctance.  Small bass are a nuisance in the kayak and in my opinion, so is a net. Most soft plastics fish with a single hook which is a great advantage when you've got a frisky young bass thrashing about between your legs in a kayak.  You really don't want a set of needle sharp trebles getting stuck into anything down there, including your expensive dry suit or otherwise!  

But soft plastics also catch fish.  In fact, I am coming round to the opinion that they will out fish hard plastics on most occasions.  And finally, while hard plastics are undoubtedly works of art, they are very expensive. Yes, soft lures will never cast as well as a good plug from Duo or Megabass and from the shore that's a problem, but they are a third of the price.  That's a big incentive when it's so easy to lose a lure to snags (pot rope anyone?), and when you add the single hook benefits for kayakers and weedless rigging, you can see why I've been reaching for the hard plastics in my lure box less and less often this year. 

I previously mentioned how good a lure SavageGear Sandeels are for cod, pollack and sea bass.  The different sizes let you fish for all three, and you can buy replacement heads for them.  The one great weakness with soft plastics, and this is something that particularly affects SavageGear Sandeels is that the soft plastic is easily damaged by repeated casting or by the mouths of fish.  I'd estimate that the 25g SavageGear Sandeel lasts at most for four fish before it's too badly ripped to continue using. Of course, your mileage may vary - you might have it ripped after a single fish. On a busy day, when you're getting a lot of schoolies, this can get annoying as you can go through several packs quite quickly.

Luckily, a French company has come up with a really novel soft plastic design.  One that both protects the soft body from casting stress and fish attacks, and yet allows you to rig it weedless.  I am of course, talking about the Black Minnow Fiiish®:

Both the models pictured here (120mm) are suitable for using from the kayak.  I probably prefer the 12g model, as you can work it more realistically over shallow ground, as I'll discuss later.  Anyhow enough about the Black Minnow, let's get on with the catch report!

The sea was a little bit too lumpy arriving at my chosen mark for my liking, but as time went by and the wind dropped, the sea flattened off and made it very fishable.  Indeed, as the tide picked up, I started getting fish to my sandeels on a regular basis.  Nothing huge, but at least I was catching. But after five or six fish, and three body changes on my SavageGear Sandeel, I just ran out of the 25g size.  I didn't want to go heavier (42g), as it was only a few metres deep, probably less if you include the kelp, so I decided to give my new lures from Fiiish a try.  The Fiiish Black Minnow 120 has an ingenious method of attaching the soft plastic and the hook, which leaves both the hook and plastic free to move about.  Whether this really contributes much to the lure's action I can't say (doesn't look as if it does), but where it gives the lure a big advantage is that the lure is pushed up out of harms way when you hook a fish.  As the hook is not actually embedded in the lure (it goes into a slot in the body), there's nothing to rip out, and as a consequence, the soft body lasts much longer than most soft plastics.

I started to get quite a few fish on it.  Some were decent fish, around the 55cm mark.

I was even confident of the hook hold to try my luck at a few underwater shots.  The Black Minnow seems to get a really good hook hold:

I found that I could even lift the smaller fish in by holding onto the jig head of lure - unlike a hard plastics, there's no risk that I'll end up impaling myself on a stray treble:

You can see here how the soft body has moved up the hook shank out of harm's way, avoiding getting ripped and damaged by the mouth of the fish.  Great design, and a very impressive lure.  I ended up with 8 fish to the Black Minnow and the body was still usable.  Sure it had started to rip in places, but it was still catching fish. One thing to also note is that if you leave the Black Minnow hook inside the body after it's been in the sea, you can expect it to rust. Best to dismantle it after a session, or at least remove the hook. Compare this to the SavageGear Sandeel after 3 fish and you can see what a difference not having the hook actually embedded in the plastic makes to the longevity of the lure (click to enlarge):

 

What interested me most was that using a straight retrieve (slow, as there's no risk snagging with the Black Minnow - another great feature!), I was hitting a lot of smaller bass.  Then I tried "twitching" it back to me, twitch, reel, twitch, reel, twitch, bang!!  I started suddenly getting bigger bass.  It was like magic.  From that moment on, the pesky little schoolies stopped and the lure seemed to attract  bigger fish.  Best of the day was this handsome beast, just short of 60cm nose to tail:

Over the four hours I had maybe twenty fish.  I even managed an hour out to try and get some cod over deeper water once the sea had flattened off.  But I am cursed this year for cod!  Yet again the cod wouldn't show and I still don't have a single cod in my freezer - very frustrating year.  A couple of small pollack were all I could find while having my "time out" for cod, so I gave up and went back to the bass, catching another five or six more before calling it a day.  

All in all, a great way to end the season.  And a fantastic new lure to add to my collection.  I'm convinced this type of lure is the future, at least for kayak anglers where casting distance isn't an issue and where landing fish (without a net) can be dangerous when there are stray treble hooks flying about.  The Black Minnow is a very clever design, and for me it's probably the best soft lure there is at the present moment.  I'll definitely be adding some more to my collection this winter!

Tight lines to all those still fishing.