Catch fish with Mike Ladle.

Catch Fish with
Mike Ladle

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Freshwater 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).

Eureka.!!!

Having damaged my homemade, glow-in-the-dark, seatrout lure on the last session I'd made up a second, larger, luminescent spinner based on the remains of a size 4 silver Mepps. This one was armed with a strong (3x) treble hook and well coated in Aquasure plastic. Yesterday evening my wife was working on her archaeology report so I was told I could go fishing and I decided to try the new spinner on the local seatrout - the fish it was actually intended for.

When I got to the river it was still pretty bright (I needed the sunglasses) so, not wanting to lose confidence in the lure I decided to stick to the old faithful J9 black and silver Rapala until darkness began to fall. I opted to start at the upstream end of the stretch, heavily overgrown with thistles and cow parsely, and work my way down. I plugged away for the best part of an hour carefully fishing down and across with no sign of anything, then I came to a fast shallow run. I was making long casts to try and avoid spooking any customers before they saw the lure. The plug plopped in perhaps twenty metres downstream and close to the far bank. I held the rod above the undergrowth (which was as high as me) and allowed it to swing across, wiggling madly all the way. By fishing a long line the lure tends to cross more slowly than if it is on a tight arc so it was some seconds before it reached my bank. The rod wrenched over and almost at the same instant a fish hurled itself skywards. Seatrout!

The trout was full of beans despite being a bit red and it made a succession of searing runs against the clutch terminating every one with another crashing leap. With the rod held up and out over the vegetation I slowly trudged downstream towards a shallower spot, regaining a bit of line whenever I had the chance. Eventually I thought it was safe to slide down through the thistles into the water and attempt to bring the fish near enough to lift it out. At the third attempt I managed to heave it onto the bank and clamber up after it. Unhook it, take a picture and slide it back into the river. Phew!!! A nice cock seatrout of about four pounds - excellent!

By now the sun was going down but it was still a bit bright to give my 'lumilure' a fair trial so I hung on for another fifteen minutes. Put down the bag, unclip the plug from the wire trace and replace it with the spinner. Right, time for a dabble. At this point I was half-way down a fair sized pool, so I cast the spinner across towards the far bank and almost into the shallows below the tail of the pool. I held it against the flow and began a slow retrieve. A huge bow wave followed the lure up but I felt nothing. Bugger! I repeated the cast and again there was a follow but only for a short way. I'm long enough in the tooth to know that it's probably better to move on and look for another fish than to try and bore one into biting so I continued my progress downstream.

Twenty metres further down was a shallow riffle. Now it was fairly dark. I cast the glowing green lure down and across and let it swing round in the fast flow. Wallop! Splash! Crash! Zuzzzz! I was in to what was clearly a good fish. This seatrout fought even harder than the first one and it probably took me five minutes to bring it into the margin where I could man-handle it out to have its picture taken. What a beauty. I weighed this one. Almost exactly eight pounds and as fat as a barrel. Wonderful! I returned it to the river. Enough was enough so I packed in and went home. I'm sure it's not a 'magic' device and as my pal Dave pointed out I might have done exactly the same with a normal Mepps (Dave's always good at bringing me down to earth). Nevertheless it was enough encouragement to make me feel like giving the 'lumilure' another serious trial as soon as I get the chance. It has now caught mackerel, scad, pollack, perch, pike and seatrout so at least it's always worth a go.

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

Plugged.

The smaller of my two trout with the Rapala that tempted it.

Lumied.

I felt really satisfied that my gadget had tempted such a good fish.