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).

A good hike.

Ben and I decided to have an evening down at Worbarrow Bay this week. Well I say "- an evening" but in truth it's a sore point with me that I can no longer fish the 'change of light' at this time of year. In years gone by, when the Army ranges were open, you could (if you wished) stay on and fish the 'prime time'. Now the wardens lock the gate at ten o'clock, on the dot, and unless you are prepared to stay all night you have to leave before the fish really begin to bite. Similarly you can't fish the dawn period either because the gate doesn't open until 6am. The reason that anglers (and others) have to be deprived in this way is simply because a few stupid people used to cause a nuisance by having 'raves' down at Worbarrow. Why should the majority of law abiding people be deprived because of a minority of idiots? It seems very unjust to me.

There - I've done my grumpy old man bit so what about the fishing? Well we arrived at about seven o'clock and fished the length of the shingle (a fair old hike) without a sniff. having reached the cliffs at the far end we were left with two options - either we could hang on and fish there waiting for the brief period when the mackerel came in as the light began to fail or we could walk all the way back and then scramble and climb our way over the rocks and out onto the Tout in order to fish the deeper water. We opted for the latter.

Back we trudged (somehow it seems further on the way back than when your going out). Out over the rocks towards the Tout it was mostly unfishable because of the forest of japweed. When we got to the end our first thought was to try and catch a mackerel for bass bait. To this end both of us were using wedges. Ben's was armed with the standard treble and mine had a singlehook. First fish was a small pollack on Ben's lure, not what we wanted for bait so it went straight back. A little while later Ben had another bite - a mackerel? - this one dropped off on the way in but my next cast produced a bite and this time I landed a nice, bait sized, mackerel, neatly hooked in the lower jaw. Ben grabbed his livebait rod and began to fish for bass while I switched lures to a large Pencil Popper also hoping for a bass. Neither of us had a sniff before a look at the watch told us it was almost time to set off back to the car park. Before we packed in I took over the livebait rod while Ben had a couple of chucks with his wedge and caught two more mackerel for eating. Would we have caught a decent bass if we'd been able to stay on - we'll never know!

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

Time to go!

Ben, catch in hand, packs in well before the 'taking time'.