MOG Sea Angling Festival

I attended the Mull of Galloway Sea Angling Festival last weekend. This inaugural event had a species hunt format. With 35 boats participating and the weather as usual playing up, we only got afloat on one of the two days, the Saturday.

There was a staggered launch with two start times to prevent congestion on the beach. We were on the first wave. After a nice sunrise and an average coffee with a great view, we set about getting prepared for the day ahead.

I was aboard Argonaut, 13 species finishing 7^th The winners had a tremendous 21 species, great effort for one day. The social on the Saturday night was good, great to see some mates that I hadn't caught up with for a while as well as meeting a few new faces. I wouldn't change much about the event, possibly a limit on the hooks /rods per boat as opposed to per angler. This might level things a little for a boat with only two anglers. It took me 6 casts to get a Bass from a spot I fish from my kayak, kind of makes a mockery of 5 hours with a zero return last time out, that's fishing I suppose. Anyway, on a personal level ,I'll  attend again, it was well run and had a decent prize table, good effort from those involved. I would  have done things differently on the day given the choice. I might have that choice next year. It was also a decent result for my club, think we had 5 boats in the top 8.

The details of this years event can be found here

Chips, hold the fish

When I woke on Sunday morning, against what should have been my better judgement, I loaded the gear up and headed off. Under no impression that the wind would be in the least bit easy to fish in, the desire to catch a few more bass pushed me out the door. I told myself it would be a short session and by the last few outings standards it was, just over 5 hours.It wasn't easy to set up the drifts properly and casting while on the peddles was hard work. It was all I could take to be honest.It took me 3 hours before a bass slashed at my lure missing it completely. It was like a desert and the fish for whatever reason were keeping their head down.

I stopped off for a bottle of full fat Coke and grabbed a snack to see me through my journey home. I've not had these for years, cant say I've ever looked at the wrapper, closest I got to a fish on this outing. I thought I needed 3 bass to get me to 50.I was wrong, my total is at 43 so my motivation to get out in those conditions/tide was ill founded. I deserved that one.

Bass blanks- x 3 kayak, x 1 shore. Caught 5 times, 71cm, 65cm, 63cm and 55cm being the best four fish. On balance, I would have taken that as a result on 9 sessions at the start year.  I'm not done yet but I can see time passing too quickly from here to October with what I have on. I've really enjoyed the surface action this year and if I don't manage another one, I'm alright with that, been great being back at it.

Now for something completely different, back to species hunting, from a boat this time.

Well observed

This is an interesting observation from a guy who clearly spends more time chasing bass than me. As I've fumbled my way through targeting bass from my kayak last year but more so this year, I had been noticing a number of similarities in relation to what's being said on his blog post here  

           

Me with a Wexford bass from a few years back

When I live as far away from the main area I like to fish for bass as I do, at the same time, being limited to a couple of sessions a month, the conclusions take longer to arrive at. I'm not fishing in the exactly the same kind of situations but what I've noticed in the last two months has been interesting. Great post.

The forecast looks pretty shit this weekend.I'm currently weighing up whether I want to be fighting the wind on my Outback on Sunday....

No pain No gain

Yesterday was a hardcore day. I arrived home at a minute past midnight,had something to eat and was in my bed about ten minutes later. My kayak is still on the roof of the car and I'll decide later today if it stays there till Sunday. Nice tides this week, I didn't like the look of how the wind was doing a complete 180 over 2/3 days so took Friday off. There were squalls and occasionally the wind would drop off, for the most part it seemed a constant 15-20mph.

As I drifted into a bay I had an explosive take on my mag popper, as the wind caught me I had to get on the pedals to manoeuvre myself back out . At one point the fish snagged me but I managed to get above it and coax it free. I netted the fish on the opposite side of my kayak and peddled out to open water to sort it out. I like a long handled net, the main reason being you can rest the fish in the water and get yourself sorted out. This normally works well, not today. I brought the fish in from my left(my routine is to the right) sat it between my legs and managed to got a loose treble deep in my finger with the point showing through on the other side. I went straight for the Leatherman and cut the shank and put the fish back in the net. Nightmare. Back on the pedals and out I went again, took a couple of pictures on timer and sorted the mess out.

I've put an effect on here to salvage something for this post

I thought about coming out the water an hour or two later but didn't and stuck to the plan. The fishing wasn't exactly fired up but with five fish and two crackers, on balance ,it was worth it. The water temp was a little cooler but the surface route seemed to be still the way to go. I'm just glad I crush barbs and on this occasion I wasn't on X3 hooks. Treble hooks are an absolute menace on a kayak. Having thought about using singles occasionally before it's maybe time to have a serious look at them. It was a tiring day with various problems. Yet again, I have had exposure problems on my TG-4 camera. I' have it set to auto and have a piece of electrical tape across the dial that can move the settings, despite this, the four images I took were ruined, in fact the worse yet. It might be the case that with the reflective nature of a Bass, of a decent size in the sunlight, at the distance my camera is at is causing the problem. I've had the same problem with any decent bass I've caught this year.

This was the best of the images

That was the longest 11 hours on my Outback yet, it was a very weary retrieval......

No August blues this year!

I had a bit of company yesterday as my old bassing buddy Jamie dug out his Prowler and joined me for a session. We made do with plan B as I didn't fancy how conditions might end up in the afternoon. The 4.30am meet was a shock to Jamie's system but I think he felt relief when I told him that I had a few 2am starts in the last month or so. As I put my Outback in the water the first thing I noticed was how warm the water still is. Now I don't track water temps much other than around May time, an 18.7c surface temp at 6.30am is high I would imagine.

As we set off there was a light breeze and a fishy looking spot so I clipped on a mag popper and went about making a few casts as we drifted off. On the third cast, as I let the lure settle for a moment or two before retrieving it, a small bass nailed it. I had another hit the lure right at the side of the yak about ten minutes later, both ultimately came off but it was an encouraging start. We tried a few spots, trolling and casting and found an area with some fish, we had some fun on surface lures before splitting up to see if we could locate a better fish or two. Jamie trolled off into the distance. I tried a different approach.

I've been thinking a lot about presentation recently. The kayak provides a lot of advantages but at the same time, a few issues to deal with. I'm pretty sure I'm missing opportunities to catch bigger bass, all part of the game I guess. I'm keen do some night sessions afloat and also some more anchoring rather drifting. This would enable me approach things differently and fish some areas more effectively if done quietly and with stealth.

I set up a few drifts using the Wexford worm fished weedless and weightless. Now I've not used these for a while but the Wave Worm tiki stick casts well and I did catch my PB on a white one, I just hadn't got around to using them afloat yet. I wasn't too happy with my hook choice as the Nogales Monster is quite a heavy hook and I didn't like the way the lure was sinking. This kind or stuff does my head in.... Anyway, I had a couple of fish and lost one before I joined up with Jamie again. The  afternoon was a dour affair, the wind got up and we couldn't find any fish. It was long session and a good effort from the big guy who hasn't been out for over a year. I guess we fished from 6.30am till about 3.30pm. To be honest I'm rinsed today myself, really felt that one! August is normally a month that I end up feeling burned out.At the minute I'm stuck to windguru and tide tables. I can't wait to get back on the water....

A weary paddle home for Jamie