Catch Report - Ilfracombe - 20th October 2019 (7)

Date From: 20/10/2019 13:10:00

Date To: 20/10/2019 16:35:00

Time of day: Afternoon

Location: Ilfracombe

Mark: The pier

Low Tide:

Moon Phase:

Weather: Mostly strong wind from the channel side, cloudy and sunny.

Sunrise/Sunset:

Sea: Very choppy with a swell of around 4 feet. Fairly murky close in and very myrky further out.

Method: Ledger (shop bought 2 hook flapper) | Float

Bait: Ragworm | frozen mackerel strips, ragworm

Caught:

The Session:

I had some ragworm left over from the previous days session so I decided to go for a short session on my local pier. I actually took along an LRF rod aswell as my float and ledger rods but it was too rough for LRF so after one go I packed the rod up again.

I set up the float rod first and put on a strip of mackerel with the float set at around 18 feet deep. I like to have a long hooklength when I am float fishing and so I had one around 4 feet long. With the strength of the tow in the water I reckoned that the mackerel strip was fluttering around at around 15 feet, almost alongside the weight. As usual I just dropped the float down so it began just a few feet out from the edge of the pier.

I had a bite within a minute and a small Pollock became the first fish of the day, it was nicely hooked in the corner of the mouth with the circle hook. Each sucessive cast produced a bite but many of them were very quick pulls meaning the float barely went under and others were something just pulling the float along the surface in the opposite direciton of the tow in the water, but within 20 minutes of catching the Pollock I managed to hook another fish and I was surprised to see a Mackerel appear out of the water. It was possibly the smallest one I've caught.

I put the float out again and began setting up my ledger rod and as I was doing so I saw the tip of the float rod shaking and bending briefly so I went over and lifted it and felt something on the end. It tried to swim directly away from the pier and as I saw it at the surface I thought it was a small Bass at first but then I realised it was a small Mullet. This was my first ever Mullet. It didn't fight too hard and I am told they do, but as it was quite small it could have been why, but I have had Pollock of the same size that have fought harder . In any case, I was very pleased that I decided to pop out after catching this third species of the day.

Now with the ledger rod out and me having the quick go with the LRF rod before packing it up again within 15 minutes. I dropped the float down again after adjusting the depth down to around 12 feet deep. I continued to get bites and I missed a lot of them which I put down to the size of fish and they must have been so small they weren't getting the whole bait in their mouth. Almost an hour passed before I hooked one and I was again surprised as a very small Garfish shimmered in the sunlight as I lifted it out of the water and it endlessly wriggled until it unhooked itself as I lay it down by my tackle. Aas with the Mackerel this was the smallest of the species I have caught.

With 4 species caught I was pretty much pleased enough to not be bothered what else I caught, though a fish on the ledger rod would always be welcome. It was not showing any bites though and the few times I reeled in to recast the bait had been taken, I assumed by crabs.

I decided to change my float to one I made myself by 3D printing it. It sat perfectly in the water with one of the weights that came with my other floats, in fact I felt it sat better because with it being plastic with air trapped inside its tendency was to stay above the waterline no matter how big the chop and swell was that came across the harbour. I only needed to see if the amount of air inside was too much for a small fish to pull under. It didn't take me long to find out. The float shot under and I felt like I reacted slowly but I managed to hook a the fish and it too was probably the smallest one of the species I've had, a tiny Sand Smelt which was hooked on the outside of its mouth. This was turning out to be an unexpected series of catches.

Within the next half an hour the bites slowed a bit but I still got the occasional indication a small fish was just taking the bait bit by bit but eventually a Pollock of the usual size took the float right under again and the float almost disappeared from my view before I reacted to the bite. I was getting short of mackerel bait now so I put on one of the last two scraggy bits of skin and dropped it down the edge again. The next fish took that and also the last piece so I bagan using ragworm.

I had looked away at the tip of my ledger rod when the float shot under again. I saw it beneath the surface as I looked back and it looked like it wasn't going to stop. Sometimes I wonder how far up in the water my bait really is, and how much the snags down there can make the sea level seem lower because it looked like the fish took this bait another 10 feet down and it was getting near to low tide, at time where I have become snagged several times before when fishing less than 10 feet deep on this pier. When I lifted the rod I saw the line travel away from me as it came out of the water. It signalled that it was another Garfish. It lept from the water just once before I lifted it over the edge of the pier. I immediately thought that it was the biggest one I've caught, which made it the smallest and biggest of a species in the same day.

The bites dried up for a while but then started again, even though they were just tiny pulls and as they were doing earlier, the float was moving quickly in the opposite direction of the tow but not being pulled under. I never hooked any more fish on the float and I began to concentrate on the ledger rod as I began to get some bites on that.

Unfortunately I never hooked anything on the ledger rod. There were two times I reeled in to find the line twisted up which indicated small Conger Eel were around around 70 yards out. I packed up because I only had two ragworm left and to stay longer would have needed topping up the parking so it wasn't worth it. As I was packing up another angler caught a nice sized Wrasse on ledger, close in by casting almost in front of me. Perhaps I should have cast my ledger rod down the edge too.

Of all the sessions I've had, while this has been far from the most successful it would be a contender to have given me the most unexpected fish, both in species and size. I found it interesting that when I changed to Ragworm bait I couldn't hook anything else and I wonder if I fished two float rods there one day, one with mackerel and another with worm bait, how the frequency of bites would compare.

Tackle used (price) [ time since first used ]: