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).

Various lures.

Since my last saltwater page I've been to the coast a couple of times. Needless to say after my mixed bag of garfish, bass, pollack and scad I went again the next morning to try and repeat the exercise. If anything it was rougher than the previous day and again there was no sign of a mackerel for bait. The waves were big enough for one to soak me with spray which is unusual at this spot. The scad seemed to have gone but I had lots of missed bites which were presumably garfish. This time I had eight reasonably sized pollack and four bass of between two and three pounds apiece. The biggest bass took a Dexter Wedge but the others were all landed on a plug with single hooks replacing the original trebles. Not bad for an hour's fishing between 06:00 and 07:00 just as it was getting light. As a matter of interest I tried again, with my pal Brian, a few days later when it was flat calm and we only caught a single pollack between us. Still no mackerel.

My other session was in the evening along with Bill and Nigel. It was a big spring tide so we anticipated surface feeding mullet and bass. As it turned out, although it was pretty windless there was a huge surf running on the Purbeck coast and the surfers were out in force. We trudged past them along to our mark, which was relatively sheltered,to find, disappointingly, that there were only a few mullet feeding and the water was dirty. However we flogged away to see what was about. There was plenty of sandsmelt activity. The little fish were 'ringing' the surface and seemed to have attracted a few bass. Over the evening Bill managed three bass on Evo Stix lures Nigel had one on a Delta fished on the fly rod and, although I only fished for a short time (I left the others to it), I had two on the Mepps that I've recently been using for seatrout (I thought it was a good copy of a sandsmelt and had plenty of attractive vibration in the murky water). Typically most bass turned up after I had left but apparently they were generally very small so the lads missed lots of bites.

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

Wedge.

Plug.

Got one.

Bass.

Mepps.