Pessimistic optimist

Stewart and I haven’t fished together for a while so we hired a boat and had a day afloat making the most of the unseasonably nice weather. We didn’t have the best start, problems with his fish finder, problems with my back up GPS, I thumped the jetty full on with boat within the first 10 seconds, oh how we laughed. Could it get better? Maybe yes, maybe no, that’s fishing some days; there are worse things to be dealing with on a sunny Friday in October, it’s only fishing at the end of the day.

The first 2 spots were unusually devoid and despite deploying some nice baits and lures which I know should work we didn’t have a fish by 1pm which was odd. On the third move, I was surprised when I hooked a big stripey on my first cast. I was hedging my bets and was already using a lure as the bait settled. At this point I felt we needed as many options as we could muster. I had to drop the lure rod to pick up the other one which was just about over the side of the boat. This ended in a mess as it tangled both lines and I ended up pulling the hook when the fish went between the transom and the engine; enter stage left, the circus theme tune…

Thankfully from here on in it was all action, lots of small Perch but with a handful of nice fish split 50/50 between lures and bait. I’m sure the Perch were using the shade of the boat as cover in these conditions so when it turned with the breeze I followed the shadow dropping down a bunch of worms which resulted in the best fish of the day.

Stewart setting a variety of traps. I'm just glad there was no lightning in the forecast.

Anyone lost a worm?

We were both surprised no Bream showed as we were looking forward to catching a few.  To be fair at one point a bite was a surprise. For a pessimistic optimist I thought it ended well.