Two days of October wrasse fishing in summer-level air temps and calm conditions. Feeling entirely blessed!
It has been a great couple of days targeting Ballans from the boat this past weekend. The forecast was perfect and despite a bit of residual swell limiting us from the very naughtiest fishing ground, we were still able to target fish feeding hard up in the shallows ahead of winter.
Sometimes you just have to fish the ‘wrong’ way. I know that most of the bigger Ballans are killing fish (and not just small fish) this time of year, but I had a strong desire to fish creatures on the Free Rig. Not only that, but at the start of the season I set myself a goal to introduce casting gear (baitcaster) into the mix. And frankly I’m running out of time this year. So out came the Zillion HD loaded with 12lb fluoro straight through. It felt so clumsy to start with on the first day, but by the end of day two felt almost entirely natural. I won’t say there’s a clear advantage to a casting outfit, as it’s far too early in this journey to say, and it’s not a fair fight up against thousands of hours with the spinning gear – but I really enjoyed being a bass pro for the day!
Fished the Free Rig almost exclusively through the weekend, except a brief and largely unproductive period throwing Jika (for a change). Started working systematically through my creature bait collection. If it fit on a 1/0 or 2/0 it got an airing (watering?). Featured in the images here are the Deps Spiny Craw (so soft!), Bottom Up Bull Hog (great action!), Nories Escape Jig Twin Flip (just cool!), and my favourite capture of the weekend, a 46cm wrasse on the sublime Deps Bull Flat. I’ve wanted to tick that one off for a while. Such a savage hit!
Here’s hoping for some payback for the windy summer with more of these calm Autumn and early Winter days with bluebird skies!