The unexpected on the course
I'd been looking for a few worm crabs the day before and prepared my rigs. Early on the water on this Monday morning, I headed for one of my usual first spots. On the way, lots of surface activity. I postpone my crabbing and head off to the hunt. Big horse mackerel and sea bass mixed in. They're on micro forage, and the small jigs are perfectly suited to this type of hunt. I'll also be using Yo Zuri's Hardcore Minnow Flat for a few bass.
After an intensive hour, I decided to return to my original idea, the search for emissoles. Heading for another spot, I'm back on the hunt again. Same thing, horse mackerel and sea bass and still on small fry, I'll spend another hour having fun. It's nearly 11:00 a.m., I choose to take my snack break, before which I pass a small beach where I pick up a few good handfuls of freshly grown samphire. Blanched for three minutes in boiling water, then pan-fried in butter and finely chopped, they are the perfect accompaniment to mashed potatoes and a fish fillet.
Once I'd had my snack, I headed back to my starting point to really try my luck this time. After 20 minutes, my crab still hasn't found a taker and once again a hunt is developing quite far from me, on the side of Arun Island. This time it's bigger than the last and accompanied by hundreds of birds diving and diving again. So much for the emissoles, that's for another outing.
Another hunt
Heading for this hunt, I reach it in 20 minutes, the downdraft having helped me a little. This time it's all sea bass, many of them well meshed. They're on sardines (as I'll see on the way back when I examine the stomach contents of the fish I've sampled). The sardines explode on the surface, delighting the many seagulls and gulls on this hunt of several hundred square meters.
So I take the opportunity to do a surface lure session, in this case a small Yo Zuri in 7.5 cm, a 3 DRX Pencil. It's the right choice, I nearly hook a fish on every cast, the lure being attacked every two meters of retrieve. Quite a few fish in the 50/55 mesh, and others more modest and only sea bass, no horse mackerel or mackerel, sardines probably being too big a prey for these species.
After an hour, I decide to stop, although the hunt is still on. I'm also planning to test a modification I've made to my float. I've fitted longer seat rails so that I can position my seat correctly to switch propulsion to the propeller pedals.
This outing, although different from the one planned, was a good one, with ideal weather, plenty of fish and miles of water. It ended with my test session, the only thing I'd planned that actually happened.
