So it's official I have started my 2023 species hunt!
Ok ok I know it's not officially 2023 yet but it's only a week away and I was excited to start it.
Ep 1. Where should I go to get me off the mark? Woodside Ferry was an obvious choice for me as it was comfortable fishing and I was fairly confident that I would nail four species straight off the bat.
I'll be honest, the session started out like an
absolute nightmare! Snag after snag, copious amounts of rigs and weights lost. I was ready to give up, call it a day and go home but Liam Fisher, who was fishing with me, decided that it wasn't time to go and ordered us a kebab. The gentle persuasion of warm, processed meat, covered in a garlic egg based substance seemed to bend my arm!
Well what a difference the food made, with a full belly and a new spring in my step, I decided to move a bit further down to hopefully avoid the snags and start catching some fish! The move did not disappoint!
I started off the session with all intentions of fishing small and staying smallish, as this was the best chance, to bag some of the smaller species. So I fished with a 3 hook flapper, size 8 hooks and on the bigger rod I fished a 1up 1down with size 1/0s.
I would normally fish a 3-4/0 penal rig on the bigger rod, but the past few weeks i've missed a lot of small cod as they have been snatching the bait and running with it.
Anyway, I stuck with the 1/0s for about an hour and it was a whiting fest! Upped the hook size to 4/0s. Guess what! I caught bigger whiting!!!
Before the move and an hour into the session i'd had my first species multiple times.
We moved down a little bit, feeling confident with a full belly and a new mindset. Boooooom!!! Slack liner. I wound in as fast as I could until I felt the weight of the fish and set the hook deep! The first codling of the session bringing my total to two species. With him only being a couple of pound we let him go to get fatter for next years run.
I was pumped now, with 2 species on the board, I needed more. I knew that this particular spot was home to Dabs and Rockling, so little tiny pieces of black lug with a pin head of bluey did the trick, within minutes I had my Dab.
Then straight down the wall, tiny knocks, rattles and then still. I knew it was a 5 bearded rockling. I held my rod waiting for the tip to go. Then boom we connected and I had my 4th species of the day!
I did have a conger bait down the wall with a full bluey hoping for a 5th but that didn't happen. The conger haven't shown up there this year. The past few years have been awesome for them there. If i'm honest I think the ground has changed a lot and alot of sand and silt has moved up the river, covering a lot of their hiding and hunting grounds.
So it was coming to the end of the session and what started out to be a nightmare, was ending pretty well. I was all happy checking my phone, checking back through the footage I had filmed for The Fishing Place YT channel. Then all of a sudden, my tiny bass rod almost got pulled over the wall. I dropped my phone in the panic and grabbed the butt of the rod with my finger tips, the battle was on and what a battle it was. It ended up being a Coddling around 3lb, caught on a size 8 hook with a tiny piece of black lug.
This is the second time this has happened to me this year, fishing down the wall with size 8 hooks and tiny piece of black lug. It just goes to show fish small catch em all.
Here is the first episode of the species hunt
Give it a watch and let me know what you think. I'm really looking forward to seeing where this playlist takes me and what species I will encounter on my travels.
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