Bass amongst the dogs - 30th August 2012

I headed out to bait fish a couple of hours of the ebbing tide and an few hours of the rishing tide last night. It was a nice night to be out, mostly clear and the beach was illuminated by a bright full moon. There was a moderate surf and very little seaweed.

I didn't have time to dig lug earlier in the day so just had some razor out of the freezer. I set up two rods with 4/0 pennel pulleys (although later changed one to a 1/0 three hook flapper). No sooner had I cast out the first bait and had just put the rod on the stand when there was a subtle knock on the rod - I struck but the fish didn't feel like a bass as I retrieved. It was a small dogfish.

Another dogfish followed. Then close to low tide I had another fairly strong bite but the fish was not putting up much of a fight and turned out to ba a small 42 cm bass.

I had a couple of missed bites after that. One was most likely another dogfish but the second felt to be a strong heavy fish before it came off after a few seconds. Then as the tide began to push in a dogfish onslaught commenced. I had about five in quick succession and lost a few more. These were bigger dogfish than the first two and fought strongly all the way in. Each time I was convinced I had a bass until I saw the fish do the sideways twisting  motion in the shallow surf characteristicof dogfish.

Since it looked like that was all that I was going to catch that night I packed up and headed home to bed.