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Fishy Tales
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Name: Alan Shergold
Age: 27
Occupation: Shop Owner
Bait Presentation.
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No matter if you are a beach angler or a carp angler, bait presentation is one of the most important aspects of fishing.
I am a firm believer that if you move into sea angling from freshwater fishing your rigs will be far superior to a traditional sea
angler's rigs. This is because of the time spent by fresh water anglers making small
finicky rigs with the smallest of hooks.
As anglers you would be amazed at how many times in my shop I see anglers (sometimes very experienced ones) choosing the most oversized or undersized hooks for the bait that they are trying to present.
From experience I have found that some anglers tie rigs with a
pre-chosen hook size on them without even seeing the size of the worms on the day of purchase.
You should try to scale your hooks to the size of your bait. For example when you receive worms that on average measure between 3-6 inches then I would say your hook size should be roughly a 4, 2 or at most a 1.
This size of worm will still favour a long shanked hook such as an Aberdeen for proper presentation with a gape between 1 ½- 2 cm.
If your worms on the day are between 4-9 inches then a better hook size would be a 1/0 or a 2/0. This may sound excessive but when the worm is mounted, the hook point will stand proud of the worm and be more likely to strike home.
In an ideal world your worms would be the same length every day but when there is a poor tide (when the tide does not go out far) the worms are quite often smaller than when you get a good tide.
A lot of traditional sea anglers screw up their faces when you suggest a size 1 hook saying
“That size hook won’t hold a bass!” But when you see the carp anglers landing 30lb plus fish on size 10 hooks day in day out that argument is well and truly blown out of the water.
The boat angling crew are starting to use smaller hooks than their predecessors with
black bream being taken on small strips of mackerel on a size 4 hook. I think it is all a matter of confidence when it comes to tackling down so give it a go and see what works for you.
As an experiment I tried to catch a double figured smoothound from the boat on a size 4 carp hook to 15lb Amnesia line to see if it could be done.
The bait of choice was a live peeler crab about the size of a ten pence piece. When I received the bite that I was waiting for the rod tip went over on my North Western DNA 12lb rod I instinctively struck (not my best idea considering the set up)!
As the fish took two or three runs I made sure that I had my drag set quite loose on my Penn 320LD and after a nervous 20 minute battle the fish came to the boat. Nice! A 17lb
smoothound! In its mouth, right in the corner was my size 4
Grauvell hook completely un-touched from the battle.
Now I’m not suggesting a size 4 hook for smoothies and I’m certainly not suggesting 15lb line with that skin but it just goes to show it can be done.
See you in the shop
Alan Shergold.
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