Tuesday, 4 April 2023

OTT start to April.

 Went out on the 1st of April hoping to see some more surface action from the coalies that have extended their stay this year. Usually we'd get plenty over winter but then they'd go quiet around March time until we hit May. Not this year though as it appears that they and the pollock are in and in feeding mode. 

Started the day on a shallow mark and sure enough the Autowalker 83S found the coalies. Definitely had a couple pollock swat it too but hooking the fish was another matter. Despite the numerous blow ups, it took some tweaking to get them hooked. Again the slower retrieve whilst connected on the middle ring of the lure gave the most positive bites. Saying that, towards the end of the day the fish became more aggressive and the normal way of rigging had more success. Even made a wee vid for old times sake...

Ravenous skinny coalies!


After changing spot and  having enough of the light game, I switched to the heavy setup looking for some bigger fish. They were very positive towards my soft plastics with red being the preferred colour, though they got even more fired up when the A-rig came out! I love power fishing for them like this around spawning time and this is definitely a presentation that seems to deter the smaller fish.

Love how they get a subtle purple colour this time of year.



A-rig doing the damage.



The action only seemed to be getting better as the day got on but I felt very satisfied with the fishing and decided to call it a day. I'm fairly sure that I have now had a fish on topwaters every month of the year! Who needs tropical predators when you have coalies... Hopefully we'll get some more settled weather and the fishing continues like this, water temperature has risen half a degree in the past couple weeks to 8.5C so I suppose it's only gonna get warmer now. Its amazing to see that even with all that snow and ice, it barely got below 8C this year and already rising...

Tight lines.

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