Forced myself to try a new spot today in the spirit of recent exploration.
Got there and set up about 2 hrs before HW. Calm, t-shirt job.
Bites from the off but snags, snags, snags. 3 lost rigs first 3 casts. Think most of the interest was from small fish but had 1 or 2 very good pull-downs into snags. The pulley rig wasn't being pulled very far : (
Over HW I started to chop and change and scaled down hooks on longer rigs resulted in a wrasse and a coalie around 1lb each.
As the longer drops seemed not to snag as much, I scaled the hook back up to 3/0 but on the same style of rig. Back to bigger baits.
About 2 hrs after hw, as the water was just starting to drop in earnest, a purple patch began. This of course coincided with the beginning of the end of the day's light.
A decent pull saw a cod a bit over 1lb. Next came a different style of pull altogether. A good scrap and yank free from the bottom saw a nice pollack going 4.25lb on the scales. Interspersed were smaller pollack and codling and I was struggling with 2 rods at this stage.
Just as I had put the left rod out, it lunged forward and stayed that way. Lifted into it but bizarrely nothing doing. Retrieved 5 turns and set back down again as bait was still fresh. Went back to work on the other rod and got it out. Tap-tap-tap on the left rod and by this time, especially with one missed bite it was time for it to come in. Lifted into a fair weight that didn't want to come up. Mindful of the fact that I no longer had the luxury of a pulley rig and was instead trailing a lead 5 ft below the fish on a rapidly dropping tide, I'll say I retrieved this fellow in less than sporting fashion. When the big fat bronze head came up in front of me, I was glad I had. Hand-lined him up and got him on the scales. 4.75lb of sweet success : )
By now it was getting dark and true to to recent form, action died completely as the light fell. I was glad as I hadn't prepped for dark and my head torch battery was goosed.
The smaller cod were grey today but the big one was red. Interesting to see when the the main run comes and of what stamp they'll be.
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