Over the summer I teamed up with my old mate Cliff to target perch on the river Tees with lures and later with prawns under a loafer float. We had some decent results and I even managed a new personal best of just over 2lb on a soft plastic lure followed by another nice fish just before dark on a Big S pike plug
I returned to my local club water with perch on my mind but with a plan B up my sleeve. I opted for a waggler approach with prawns on the hook and loose feed with grounbait and a prawn and maggot mix. I fished the bait about a rod length out and a couple of inches over depth. I also took the opportunity to dust off y centre pin because I knew that on this water the tench wouldn't be far from a juicy prawn hookbait. Yep that was my plan B, tench!
The plan worked well but a decent perch eluded but several small perch came my way along with 3 tench and a carp that took me on a tour of the lake before slipping the hook.
I always look forward to the first session of the year lure fishing for bass and a few weeks ago I managed a trip out under the North Yorkshire cliffs with an old mate. The sea was nice and calm an crystal clear as we threw various lures in search of some fish. I didn't manage a take this time but the summer is still young.
A month or two ago I ventured back on to the beach to see if I could find some early season bass of flatties. It's a funny time of the year on the north east coast and the sea was fairly flat and clear so my expectations were quite low... the best I can say is that it was a nice sunset!
They say endings are just new beginnings but this winter cod season has been hard. It started off really well in October and November but trailed off from there. Catching the dreaded Corona Virus in the middle of the best part of the season didn't help and from there I couldn't seem to buy a bite! I thought I'd have a last couple of sessions but storm Darcy ha other ideas.
Looking forward to some better weather and the end of lockdown restriction hopefully this year will be better than last!
I ventured up to a cliff top venue that can normally be relied upon to deliver a cod or 2. The cliff tops can be very reliable and have the advantage of having no climb down to the waters edge, a nice grassy fishing position and no issues with moving with the tide line. They do however have some noticeable drawbacks, its a long way to winch a reasonable coddling up, if anything goes wrong it's a long way to fall and sadly any fish you don't want to keep wouldn't survive the drop back into the water.
The picture shows my set up. A 15ft Any Fish Anywhere 6 an Bait, Penn Battle 2 8000 with 80lb braid. On the tripod you can see a baited trace waiting to be swapped over baited with cart and squid.
I seem to have been doing a lot of sea fishing recently so I decided to do something a bit different and headed for a quick session on the River Swale near Thirsk looking for Pike and Perch. Unfortunately nothing seemed interested in my lured but it was nice to be out and doing something different.
