East Antrim Beach 16/10/19

[guernica84]

Member

Fished 4pm - 1am
LW 7pm
SE breeze c10mph, fairly flat sea, quite cool

Had the urge to have my 1st beach session in what seemed like months after being on the rocks spinning all Summer.

The beach was an absolute mess of weed so I waded to find a clear patch. Saw flounder shoot by me which gave me instant optimism.

I started with a simple single 1/0 hook running leger rig, keeping rigs as simple as possible to start with the weed in mind. Once I'd established that my spot was staying largely weed free throughout, I switched to my usual 2u/1d flounder rigs. I had a vast array of baits.

I ended up with 10-12 small fish but it was a poor session. All fish bar one came in the 1 hr before low and the 1 hr before high period with 7 of the 9 hrs blank.

I did spend an hour wading the length of the beach spinning over LW slack for something to do. This was perhaps the most interesting part of the night as I saw 2 or 3 what must have been actual fish rising and then what I'm fairly sure were sandeel (it was dark and I was keeping my head torch off the water) jumping across the water fairly frequently all around me. I can only assume that they were being chased by a predator. I only took 1 spinner, a metal, could've been very interesting with a surface popper or slider. The metal was just snagging the weed. I tried bunny-hopping it across the surface but it just wasn't imitating the bait fish well. I did manage to foul hook the smallest flounder of the night on it. It was near the mouth though. This has happened to me before and I guess the fish are attacking the lure.

When I returned to my bait fishing peg I considered moving up to that spot but decided against it because of the weed and hopes of better fishing on the flood. In hindsight I should've moved but something learnt.

Species caught were flounder, coalie and pout.

[chuckaroo]

Fair play guernica. Am looking forward to an odd bait session over the winter now