Yesterday morning, the forecast was a bit bleak – extremely strong South wind as of 11 AM onwards. Having tried everything I could to get some quality fish the previous days, I decided to go for for an hour or two for needlefish in front of the house. My plan was to take advantage of the few hours of calm before the wind picks up, as I knew I would not be able to fish for a few days after that…
When I got there, I saw a pile of discarded shells on the beach – obviously someone was dragging a net for cockles while the tide was low, and that is where this person cleaned the net and sorted the catch. I walked to the pile as I knew I could find loads of sand crabs there. And indeed, there were quite a few damaged and half dead sand crab about, so I collected a few and proceeded to set up my rods.
First, I casted a rod with the needlefish rig – popup beads near the size 5 hooks to keep the bait afloat, baited it with a piece of sardine and proceeded to set up a rod for sand crab. By the time I casted in the crab, I already got a needlefish on the other rod… But then the wind stated picking up as forecasted and the tide started getting higher at the same time which made quite big weaves. But then the rod with the crab went off, and I got a nice seabream!!! Yeyyyyyy for me! Finally, a fish! My motivation restored, after getting the second needlefish on the shore, I packed up this rig, and casted in another crab. I even unpacked my 3rd rod and baited it with squid/clam combo on a 2 hook rig. In the next hour I got some more baits and landed 3 nice sargo, one of which as even bigger than the seabream I was so happy about. And the best thing is that the wind died off completely for about 2 hours – I guess I know now why they say “the calm before the storm”… So, I stayed quite a long time on the beach… But all good things must come to an end, the wind started picking up around 14:00 and the threatening clouds appeared over the ocean, so I hurried home for a cup of tea and my breakfast😊… Now, I can not wait for the storm to be over, usually fishing gets very good after huge weaves dig up sand, exposing cockles and worms… we will see…
