Catch fish with Mike Ladle.

Catch Fish with
Mike Ladle

Information Page

SEA FISHING

For anyone unfamiliar with the site always check the FRESHWATER, SALTWATER and TACK-TICS pages. The Saltwater page now extends back as a record of over several years of (mostly) sea fishing and may be a useful guide as to when to fish. The Freshwater stuff is also up to date now. I keep adding to both. These pages are effectively my diary and the latest will usually be about fishing in the previous day or two. As you see I also add the odd piece from my friends and correspondents if I've not been doing much. The Tactics pages which are chiefly 'how I do it' plus a bit of science are also updated regularly and (I think) worth a read (the earlier ones are mostly tackle and 'how to do it' stuff).

09 July 2008

Baja 2

A few more holiday snaps, mostly taken by Steve (you can always tell, they're better than mine). When you fish in the tropics it's even more important than over here to be on the shore at the right time of day. As a good 'rule of thumb' I always try to be fishing half-an-hour before sunrise and a similar time before sunset. This is usually the 'taking time' for a wide variety of species and it may last for only ten or fifteen minutes. Of course it doesn't mean that you can't catch anything during the hours of daylight but if you miss out on the change of light you're crackers.

Our stay on the Sea of Cortez found us, every morning, standing on the shore and casting a variety of lures to see what was out there. In addition to the countless lizardfish mentioned before we caught all sorts of predators. Some species we'd seen before such as small jacks, ladyfish, lizardfish (different species but same appearance and habits) and houndfish: others like pargo, grouper and strangest of all a lookdown fish were totally new. We had them on poppers, shallow diving plugs and spoons, you never knew what was going to take the lure next.

Our approach was usually for each of us to try a different lure so it was more or less pot luck who caught what. Tobys and similar metal spoons were best for houndfish and ladyfish, although many escaped as they sprang into the air. As always plugs seemed to tempt most species and in this instance poppers were not much good (if we'd found big jacks I expect they'd have been the favourite). Anyway, heres a selection of species. We did not take any pictures of Steve's pargo or my goby (about the same size as my lure).

If you have any comments or questions about fish, methods, tactics or 'what have you!' get in touch with me by sending an E-MAIL to - docladle@hotmail.com

Sunset.

It's ALWAYS worth fishing as the sun crosses the horizon.

A small jack.

I guess that this is just a crevalle jack like the ones we catch in the Caribbean - it looks like one anyway.

Houndfish.

We caught a number of houndfish and probably missed/lost several more.  They are difficult to hook with that long beak.

Grouper.

This is a different grouper to any that we'd caught before.

Lookdown.

These bizarre fish seem to have a predatory bent despite their weird appearance.