Gone to the dogs

Well I haven't quite got there yet - there's life in the old dog yet. But as they say in the movies when the going gets tough the tough get going....so faced with terrible bass fishing conditions yesterday we went after the dogs or small sharks to be precise.

The first trip of season 2014 could not have been better, the sun came out (weakly), the sea was calm (ish) and the fish bit! Tactic was to anchor in a strong tide on the edge of some rough ground just to see what was patrolling the margins. I thought whiting, what we got was way better than that.

A pack of big spur dogs were at home and what fun they proved to be; big heavy females - one weighed out at 11.5lb and hard fighters too. Both Mark and Kate had a real battle trying to get them aboard and out came the landing net. It is always nice to wet a net!

These fish are great eating but we put them back. It just seemed too much to kill in pup dogs. There will be more swimming for another time. A double hooked trace with one bait hard on the bottom and the other on a boom 50cm up and big chunks of ammo squid were the bait. I would have loved to put a live whiting down but one never came up...

The water is warm, much warmer than this time last year. Reaching 9.2 C on my sounder...hmm,. nice. This is going to be a good season!