Deepwater Lure Fishing Fun! - 6th September 2015

With the success of fishing lures in deep water during the Penzance Kayak Fishing Meet i wanted to give it another go! This time Holly was coming along on the tandem. I had been to Seaview Angling at Plymouth to top up with some new lures - Fiiish Minnows and the new HTO Arctic Eel. The forecast was looking good with light winds and sun. On arrival at the launch it soon became apparent that the wind forecast was wrong!

The 5-10mph winds forecast were more like 15mph and this had chopped like water up enough to bring out the white horses. Not ideal, but there looked to be some refuge in lee of the reef. We would have to launch and see how it went. If nothing else it would be a good test for the Ocean Duo!

The lures were rigged up on the rods and ready for action!

We paddled out through the chop to find some deepwater reefs to fish. It was a bit of a wet ride smashing through the short interval waves but eventually we got out far enough to be in 80ft of water but the wind was causing us to drift fast. It wasn't long before the Pollack were finding my lure though....

We weren't keen for paddling far so kept the drifts short and gradually worked our way inshore to more sheltered waters. A few Pollack kept us busy and then i hooked something that felt different. Instead of the usual crash dive of a Pollack hitting the lure this fish took off along the surface. I had a sneaky suspicion it may be a Bass and this was soon confirm when it was thrashing its head on the surface. A few more dives beneath the kayak and i pulled it into the kayak.... 4lb 8oz and a new PB for me!

That was me happy! Holly was fishing the Arctic Eel and it wasn't getting much attention but eventually something hammered it

This Pollack liked Pink!

The tide was approaching low and the bites were dropping off. It didn't matter though as we had a visitor.... an inquisitive sunfish made its way to the kayak

It came right to the side of the kayak letting us get pretty close and even touching it!

It seemed to like this because whenever it drifted away from us in the tide it would spyhop (stick its head out of the water) to see where we were and swim back to us! This went on for over 30 minutes until we had to paddle back to shore to pick up Holly's little brother who would be joining us on the tandem for a quick go.

I could see that the sunfish was covered in parasites and i can only assume that it enjoyed scraping itself alongside the kayak and our hands to relieve the itch. We even had a few acrobatic displays as the sunfish repeatedly jumped out of the water, possibly in attempt to dislodge the parasites. I managed a few underwater shots. This one is out of focus but you can see the number of parasites covering its body

I managed some better ones too. They look majestical in the shimmering sunlight

We would have stayed to enjoy its company for longer but we had to get back to the beach to pick up Holly's little brother as he wanted to have a go at catching a mackerel for his tea. It was a stunning day....

With 3 onboard we didn't venture too far and stayed in close to land

We edged our way out to deeper water and started to find the odd small Pollack. The little one found a couple of mackerel for his tea as well. He was enjoying it!

It was low tide and we were drifting in close. Bites were hard to come by. If we were out far in the deeper water we may have had more action but conditions were uncomfortable out far and it was not worth the effort drifting out there. I wanted one more long drift. With minutes left i had a follow, pluck, pluck.....solid resistance. It didn't feel like a Pollack either. It was thrashing its head around with short dives. I was quite interested to see what had taken the lure. I was half expecting that it may be a big Ballan Wrasse and when a golden body appeared from the depths i thought i had a monster Wrasse. I soon realised it was in fact a Cod, and a half decent one considering i was so close to shore. Another new PB at 8lb!

It took a liking to a HTO Arctic Eel in Pearl White.

That was it, time to paddle in with Mackerel and Cod for tea. The lures had done the damage again and despite not being able to stay out on the most productive grounds they had produced a few quality fish. I really starting to like lure fishing!