this year we in guernsey,we have had at best a pants year for bass in general, so i thought to myself why am i targeting just bass ?
So a plan was formulated that was going to have an sp (softplastic ) summer, the main targets were, black bream,gars mackerel,pollock,and wrasse.but they had to be specimen size to count.
The flounder and plaice are as rare as unicorns round are way.
Well i can now report i've had a brill summer, granted the gars and mackerel were easy, but taking mackerel in a foot of water really surprised me, i was mulleting at the time, and right at the harbour's mouth i noticed fish really going mad in the shallows, now i tried fish strips to catch them and nothing,bread nothing, small feathers same nothing.
So out came the supermix 2.10 with a small xlayer flicked out twenty yards , well if these fish didn't hammer it every time, i stopped after ten min's as i had ample for the barbecue, but i was so happy this little method worked out.
Next was the bream, i have a few spot's where we take them very close in here in the island, so loaded with some home made jig heads, homemade weighted hooks and a few packets of verious softies i was off, to start things we're slow but still i was catching , then the bream really came on the feed and hammered evry soft plastic that was twitced in the depths, but without doubt the pearl x-layer was unstoppable on a homemade jighead (two ssg shots squeezed onto a size 1 gamakatsu) my best this year being a fish couple of scales under 3lb
Wrasse will come as no surprise to any of you as its been well written on the soft plastics ability to sniff out big wrasse, my best came on a dropping tide, as i've seen these fish in the shallow's moving down from reef to reef as the tide drops.
My best came on a 15g storm jig head loaded with a brown spindleworm . an by hell did it fight in five feet of water 6.3 lb to be exact , with many over 4lb mark coming throughout the summer
Pollock have been a pain in some areas,with the best time for bass on a couple of my marks being the hot time with pollock, so i tried for a whole week to land a decent pollock on the sp's but to be fair i really struggled getting past the small.
So i gave it the whole big lure big fish mentality, and although this didn't stop the 2/3 pounders i did manage a 5.10 on a 9inch slug-go fished dangerously close to the kelp. so it does pay to keep going till you find the fish.
So to round up , if have the area's where flonders/plaice feed in the shallows i see no reason why they shouldn't be attracted to slow twitched along the bottom.
My tools for the job were, tenryu supermix 2.10,small daiwa caldia (or calida) loaded with 15lb power pro, xlayers/slugo's and spindle worms of many shapes and sizes, and a wide range of jig heads and weighted hooks. Oh and targeting these fish really made up for the lack of bass
