A night on the pier.....

I got out last night fopr a few hours LRF and decided to use my
Solpara, a rod which I have much neglected lately.
I arrived shortly after dark and condition were lovely the only thing
that I thought was against me was the falling tide which had about
midway out.

There were some other anglers fishing bait in my usual spot nice bunch of
lads but I decided to move as the space on the pier was taken up by their
gear.

So I tried a different spot and rigged up a jig head with a new lure that
I recently got. I could feel the bites but couldnt get a hook up so I decided
to change tactic to a drop-shot rig with a size 12 hook and one AAA splitshot
as a weight. Instead of dropping down the wall, I cast and allowed the lure
to slowly fall throught the water coloumn. It made a big difference and it wasnt long
until I got my frst fish of the session.

A nice little herring a steady stream of these followed all of them were in and around the
same size as the on above.

I decided to try down the walls of the pier using the same rig and started to pick up pollock

I had loads of these small they may be but on the solpara they can put up a great account of
themselves.

I moved around the harbour to another dark little corner and I had left my head torch on.
I was scanning along the waters edge looking at prawns flitting around in the shallow water
having a smoke, when I spotted a little fish darting in and out from under a rock everytime a prawn
came to close it chased the prawn off.
 I re-rigged this time to a splitshot rig , size 12 and a little piece of gulp rag in white. I cast  down to the
area the little fish was in and started to dance the little piece of lure around, which instantly got attention
it chased the lure and made several attempts at it before finally hooking up and to my surprise.......

a little poor cod, which was the first time I had picked up this species from this particular pier.

Feeling very pleased with myself about this I continued to fish in around the rocks hoping
for maybe a long spined sea scorpion or a blenny.
It wasnt long until I felt a sharp tug on the line and then nothing. It was like the hook was snagged
but before I could start to try and unsnag myself the ''snag'' began to move across away from the rocks
I began to reel in the fish and it went on a few little runs with plenty of head shakes, I presumed it was
a decent size pollock or coalie but to my surprise out came a nice fat little codling.

A very welcome surprise on a very cold night. It was probably this time last year when I had my
last lrf codling so I'm very happy about getting another.

There were other fish swimming about in good numbers just cruising under the surface I think that they were smelt but not a hundred percent certain they made plenty of goes at the lure. I just couldnt manage to get one on the hook. I'll try again another day.


A thoroughly enjoyable session with a couple of surprises thrown in.
It was also my first night session in a while with most of my LRFing done during the day and my first
proper lrf session of 2013.

The gear that I used was

Major craft Solpara 0.5-5g solid tip
Daiwa Caldia 2506
Mikado  'Dino Dynamic' monofilament 0.08mm 1.9kg



Tight lines all and welcome to 2013
Hope you enjoyed the read,


Jay