Couple of sessions from a few weeks ago

Early in the month I had a couple of beach sessions but didn't get a chance to post up a report as I was going on a week's holidays from 5th April and then on the flight home last week I was hit by a chest infection and bad dose of flu. I am just getting back to normal now.

Session 1
I got to a beach mark about 2.5 hours before high tide in the afternoon. There was a moderate surf and the water looked weed free. I set up the first rod and put a large lug bait on a 4/0 pennel pulley and cast out. Only a few minutes later, while I was still setting up the second rod I had a strong tug on the first then the line went slack. I grabbed the rod, reeled in the slack line and connected with a strong fish. It was pulling hard and fought strongly all the way in. It was a fine plump bass of about 4.25 lbs. That was a good start.

Less than 20 minutes later I had another tug on one of the rods. This felt to be another good fish and put up a similar fight. It was slightly smaller, just under 4 lbs.

A little later I had a third bass. This was a smaller fish with a weight of 2.5 lbs.

After that it got quite, apart from two flounder both of 40 cm. Not sure if it was the same fish I caught twice. On the photos they dont look the same but the light angle is different, the patterns on the second are much clearer than those on the first.

I also had a couple of small coalfish close to dusk.

Session 2
I had some lug left after the previous session so a couple of days later I finished work early and headed to the same mark, arriving about 2 hours before high tide. It was windier and there was a nuch bigger surf compared to the previous session. About half an hour after setting up I had the first bite, a 3 lb bass.

This was followed 15 minutes later by a second bass of 3.5 lbs. I noticed some subtle taps on the rod at first, I picked it up, held it until I felt a more substantial tug and then struck hooking into another strong fish. It surged to the right and put up a good struggle in the surf. When I eventually landed it I found that the lower hook of the pennel was embedded in the fishes gills. So thought it best to keep that one for dinner. It's egg sacks were exceedingly bloated so looks like it was very close to spawning time.

After about another 15 minutes I had a third bass, the smallest of the session at 2.75 lbs.

The bass appeared to move on after that. I was getting plenty of nibbles from small flounder which excelled at whipping the works off the hooks without been caught although I did manage to hook tow of them, both small fish under 20 cms in length. After dark I caught a small coalfish before packing up as the tide began to drop .