Catch Report - Ilfracombe - 1st September 2019 (1)

Date From: 01/09/2019 16:15:00

Date To: 01/09/2019 20:20:00

Time of day: Afternoon - evening

Location: Ilfracombe

Mark: The pier

Tides:

Moon Phase:

Weather: Sunny, with a constant wind.

Sunrise/Sunset:

Sea: Very murky close in and in the harbour, clearer further out.

Method: float | lure

Bait: Frozen mackerel strips | iSome extra large red sandeel.

Caught:

The Session:

After having some light gear for some time I finally went out to try for some small species. I had been watching the youtube channel 'devon lerfer' for some time and they have made me want to try lrf fishing as there are plenty of small species around that I have not seen. The thing which then pushed me that bit more was with a previous session I put on my blog where I fished with Bob who had over 50 fish using lrf hear while I blanked on my ledger rods.

I took a float rod aswell, just in case.

It was lucky that I had the float rod as when I arrived the water was a choclate brown colour and the pier was packed with anglers fishing a friendly competition. The higher part of the pier had barely any water that was fishable from it yet and with the colour being brown I felt it wasn't ideal beginning my first lrf session in a foot or two or dirty water. I went along the pier and set up on the rocks right at the end and began float fishing. It wasn't very comfortable really and the tow in the water was pulling my float along so fast it was in the water barely a minute before I needed to recast. Over about 2 hours I had 3 bites that were very quick and I was unable to hook anything. When the competition finished I moved to the lower pier and had a couple of casts with the float hoping for just one fish.

After around 20 minutes I moved to the upper pier and set up the lrf rod with what tackle I had. I had a tiny 1000 size reel with line already in it, I had no idea what breaking strain it was but it felt around half the thickness as my 20lb line so I put it at 10lb. I put the hook on and tied it in a dropshot style and just used a small bullet weight that came with my floats for the dropshot. I tried different bits of the upper pier and different bits of the iSome worms I was using and now and again I could feel the tiny vibrations as fish were checking out the bait. Eventually a tiny pollock either hooked itself or had the bait long enough for me to set the hook and made itself my first LRF caught fish. I felt as happy as when I caught my first coarse fish (from what I remember) and my first sea fish. It was good catching something using a new method and although I had nothing else I am interested enough to give it another go one day.

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