Jay La Roche, South East Lure Angling reports:
I got out last night for a few hours LRF and decided to use my Solpara, a rod which I have much neglected lately. I arrived shortly after dark and condition were lovely the only thing that I thought was against me was the falling tide which had about midway out.
There were some other anglers fishing bait in my usual spot nice bunch of lads but I decided to move as the space on the pier was taken up by their gear.
So I tried a different spot and rigged up a jig head with a new lure that I recently got. I could feel the bites but couldn’t get a hook up so I decided to change tactic to a drop-shot rig with a size 12 hook and one AAA splitshot as a weight. Instead of dropping down the wall, I cast and allowed the lure to slowly fall throught the water coloumn. It made a big difference and it wasn’t long until I got my fist fish of the session.
A nice little herring a steady stream of these followed all of them were in and around the same size as the on above.
I decided to try down the walls of the pier using the same rig and started to pick up pollack.
I had loads of these small they may be but on the solpara they can put up a great account of themselves.
I moved around the harbour to another dark little corner and I had left my head torch on. I was scanning along the waters edge looking at prawns flitting around in the shallow water having a smoke, when I spotted a little fish darting in and out from under a rock everytime a prawn came to close it chased the prawn off. I re-rigged this time to a splitshot rig , size 12 and a little piece of gulp rag in white. I cast down to the area the little fish was in and started to dance the little piece of lure around, which instantly got attention it chased the lure and made several attempts at it before finally hooking up and to my surprise…….
A little poor cod, which was the first time I had picked up this species from this particular pier.
Feeling very pleased with myself about this I continued to fish in around the rocks hoping for maybe a long spined sea scorpion or a blenny. It wasnt long until I felt a sharp tug on the line and then nothing. It was like the hook was snagged but before I could start to try and unsnag myself the ”snag” began to move across away from the rocks I began to reel in the fish and it went on a few little runs with plenty of head shakes, I presumed it was a decent size pollock or coalie but to my surprise out came a nice fat little codling.
A very welcome surprise on a very cold night. It was probably this time last year when I had my last lrf codling so I’m very happy about getting another.
There were other fish swimming about in good numbers just cruising under the surface I think that they were smelt but not a hundred percent certain they made plenty of goes at the lure. I just couldn’t manage to get one on the hook. I’ll try again another day.
A thoroughly enjoyable session with a couple of surprises thrown in. It was also my first night session in a while with most of my LRFing done during the day and my first proper lrf session of 2013.
The gear that I used was:
Major craft Solpara 0.5-5g solid tip
Daiwa Caldia 2506
Mikado ‘Dino Dynamic’ monofilament 0.08mm 1.9kg
Compliment of:
Jay La Roche
Web: www.wexfordbass.blogspot.ie
