We have been having loads of rain last 7 days or so, high winds, plus I have had loads of other things to wrap up – mainly administration for this and that – so I did not quite go fishing in a long while. I did try a few days ago, just before the storm, but there was sooooo much seaweed around, fishing was not possible.
Finally, yesterday I caught a breather, and went down to the beach. Even before I went down, I checked the beach cam of Praia Da Alagoa and saw that surf waters were not clear, but rather brownish coloured – either because of the rain, or because of very strong winds and high weaves from the previous day. I was reserved in my expectations, I only hoped there is no sea weed, so I can put in a few hours. When I got there it was low tide, but the ocean seemed clean, so I set up three rods – one sardine and two squid and waited around a bit… I collected some cockles in the sand thinking I may need to offer something special to get a bite. When I went to check the baits – squids were gone… And I did not even saw the strike. First I thought it was crabs, but I soon realized it is the tiny, tiny fish which had swarmed the surf… Soon after this I started casting very, very close and decided to replaced sardine skeleton with a mucharra fillet. I put on a system with hooks size 6, and sure enough got a mucharra on the first cast. While I was busy filleting it for bait, I got an interesting surprise – a stripped seabream hooked itself on one of the small hooks – which means the water has become warm enough for seabream… If only I could get around the mucharra…
I stayed on for quite a while, the water started to rise, and rose to the maximum and still all I got is tiny nibbles by the mucharra and empty hooks. When the water started to recede, I got a small seabass, less than 30cm which I immediately released as it was barely hooked on the lip. A nother half hour later I got a mini pregado, a flatfish of enormous 10cm or so which had completely swallowed size 2 hook!!!! And that was it for this session… I hope things get better next week after the rain…
