After a
couple of unsuccessful lure fishing sessions earlier in the week, the forecast
for Thursday evening was for strengthening southwesterly winds. I got to the
beach about 45 minutes after low tide. Two anglers were already. I set up two
rods, one with a three hook flapper with size 1 and 2/0 circle hooks baited with lug
and the second with a pennel pulley baited with crab.
Nothing
much was happening until close to dusk. Then I felt a series of nibbles, but no
bites so it was probably small fish (flounder or coalfish tugging on the bait).
Then I had a stronger bite at about 10
pm. This time the fish was hooked and turned out to be a 27 cm
flounder, taken on lug.
About 5
minutes later I had a much stronger tug again on the three hook flapper rig. It
was a small bass, about 37 cm in length.
At that
stage I switched the pennel pulley rig for a two hook flapper (size 1 and 2/0
circle hooks) and baited it with lug and razor. About half an hour later I had another sharp knock on one of the rods.
At first I thought it was another bass, but as I hauled it out of the surf I
realized it was a dogfish.
It was
quite for a while; then about 40 minutes later I had another flounder, of about
25 cm. This was followed shortly afterwards by a small coalfish.
Ten minutes
later there was a sharp pull on one of the rods. I grabbed it and lifted into a
fish that was putting up a better struggle. A few minutes later I hauled a 46
cm bass out of the surf.
The bite
became more frequent over the next half an hour over high tide with a couple
more small flounder and another three coalfish. However, once the tide began to
drop the bites died off. I stuck it out for about 30 minutes after high tide
before packing up.
All fish
were taken on lug, but I had no interest in the crab or razorfish. The total
catch for the session was 2 bass, 1 dogfish, 4 flounder and 4 coalfish.
