Jimmyfloydreturns
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Yes I know, who in their right mind purposely targets whiting ? But you can only catch what’s there, and better catch whiting a short walk from home than a two hour round trip to Dungeness to catch the same thing!
So over the festive period I’ve had a few local sessions on the swale looking for some sizeable whiting for the table. Not had a great deal of luck so far, but had another bash today and did better.
First port of call was to get some bait yesterday - 45 minutes with a fork and a sore back later, I had plenty of juicy blow lug for a session or two:
It’s so mild at the moment (more on that later) that digging was easy, casts everywhere and the worms were not deep.
Onto today it was a brisk SW wind with a big tide. Water a bit clear but with the volume flooding in I was hopeful… Had to use my big boy gear today because of the wind and big tide:
Now fishing an estuary you expect there to be a lot of crab activity but for the past few sessions, probably because it’s so mild still, crabs have been stripping baits in less than three minutes! So I decided to modify my rigs to include a couple of very light snoods, small hooks and floating beads. Coupled with smaller baits this should lift them off the seabed slightly and make it more difficult for those pesky crustaceans!
Long story short I caught plenty of whiting - not massive but a sizeable 30cm or so - and ALL of them were caught on the snoods with floating beads.
So there you go, always keep some floating beads with you for a change of tactics!
Fish all cleaned and ready for cooking tomorrow:
One final thing that was interesting is checking what they’ve been eating. They’re certainly spoilt for choice here, whilst unhooking they threw up plenty of gobies and small bait fish. But also evidence of worm, crab but mainly shrimp:
There are brackish pools nearby that are infested with shrimp so I’m tempted to catch a few and try them too. I reckon they’ll be killer for bass in the summer!
Cheers,
Robert
So over the festive period I’ve had a few local sessions on the swale looking for some sizeable whiting for the table. Not had a great deal of luck so far, but had another bash today and did better.
First port of call was to get some bait yesterday - 45 minutes with a fork and a sore back later, I had plenty of juicy blow lug for a session or two:
It’s so mild at the moment (more on that later) that digging was easy, casts everywhere and the worms were not deep.
Onto today it was a brisk SW wind with a big tide. Water a bit clear but with the volume flooding in I was hopeful… Had to use my big boy gear today because of the wind and big tide:
Now fishing an estuary you expect there to be a lot of crab activity but for the past few sessions, probably because it’s so mild still, crabs have been stripping baits in less than three minutes! So I decided to modify my rigs to include a couple of very light snoods, small hooks and floating beads. Coupled with smaller baits this should lift them off the seabed slightly and make it more difficult for those pesky crustaceans!
Long story short I caught plenty of whiting - not massive but a sizeable 30cm or so - and ALL of them were caught on the snoods with floating beads.
So there you go, always keep some floating beads with you for a change of tactics!
Fish all cleaned and ready for cooking tomorrow:
One final thing that was interesting is checking what they’ve been eating. They’re certainly spoilt for choice here, whilst unhooking they threw up plenty of gobies and small bait fish. But also evidence of worm, crab but mainly shrimp:
There are brackish pools nearby that are infested with shrimp so I’m tempted to catch a few and try them too. I reckon they’ll be killer for bass in the summer!
Cheers,
Robert
