I'd bought some new toys - a load of lures and a new shoulder bag arrived with the postman this morning. With one hour to spare before dinner, I raced off down the river to try them out.
First put in with a HTO mace lure, and the perch were straight on it.
Within 15 minutes, I'd already caught 5 fish. They were having it.
The lures are a tiny bit bigger than the 2" things that I normally use, but the perch certainly didn't seem to mind. Quite a few were nibbling at the paddle tail, but I was still getting good takes on the retrieve.
Then, just as I was bring the lure to the surface, there was a large swirl. Oh-oh!
Mr Pike decided to put in an appearance. It was a short, very stocky fish in great condition, and it put up a good fight. Still, with a bit of patience and the drag on the reel set lightly, I managed to get him in.
I'm still not great at guestimating pike weights, hmm maybe 5-6lbs? Who cares anyway, lovely fish and the mace lures sure seem to work well.
Moving to another swim I took 3 or 4 more perch on another new lure type - a vibro worm. They didn't seem to stand up to much use though, as the perch managed to bite the tail of 2 of them.
..and by then my hour was up, the Mrs was on the phone asking me to come back and put the dinner on. Brilliant little session - a dozen or so perch and a nice pike. All in sixty minutes!
(post reproduced from report in World Sea Fishing forums)
So I gave it a go yesterday for a few hours. Parked up at Duke Street
Bridge, and spent most of the time mooching around there, but also had a
quick play at the east end, near the hydraulic tower / engine house.
Pleasantly surprised at the water clarity / quality in the main
East/West float area. Walls encrusted with mussels were a bit of an
issue, and had to make sure my jigs didn't dart or glide inwards towards
the wall, which usually resulted in a snag or snapped braid. Otherwise,
it was the ideal location for vertical jigging.
I was getting rattles and nibbles right from the first drop in. Needed
to add a tiny drilled bullet or a couple of split shot to my rig, as the
2g freshwater jigheads I normally use were not right for the depth (30+
feet drops in places).
I was struggling to hook them, so gave it a try right down to the
bottom. After a few seconds to jigging about on the deck, I got a
positive bite which resulted in my Merseyside LRF saltwater species...
Not a fish though, but a gungy -looking snail thing.
Back up to mid-water, and I was getting rattles again. After a bit of
trial and error with my striking, I managed to land one. A tiny whiting.
As I quickly discovered, all the bites seemed to be from tiny whiting. I
landed half a dozen, and had twice as many drop off during the next
hour or so.
I explored a few likely-looking spots, following the wind to where
debris had blown into corners where something different might be
lurking. Still only managed to catch more whiting though.
All in all, I enjoyed my first Merseyside LRF adventure. I'll defo be
going back and trying some different tactics to try and tempt a
different species or two. Thanks to the guys above for the advice.
