Salar

Sounds good to me. I have fished off rocks and piers in Brittany and caught wrasse (lots), eels and mullet, using shellfish (mussel preferably)prised from rocks as bait. I went quite light though, size 6-10 hooks and 10lb line or less as I was happy catching lost of small stuff rather than sitting it out in the hope of a big one.

Size is not a problem... http://www.fishsarasota.com/prints.html 30 inch tarpon anyone??

Spot on, 100% agree. I think this topic started with advice about methods?? Lets get on with that then....

The King Fish Rig. I saw it used to good effect in Duck - a 44lb cobia caught from the pier!

Why would you want a handheld? Go for a fixed mount, DSC. It has better range, won't run out of battery and has a link to your GPS to send your position. If the handheld is a backup, then probably the cheapest will do, but check the power output. I would expect 5watt from a handheld, anything less might not give you range in an emmergency. Dont forget VHF is line of sight so a handheld will have a very low aerial and won't have the range a 9 foot whip in a mast would have, regardless of power.

I used to use a glass wine bottle with the funnel at the bottom - with care you can knock a hole in the bottom of the funnel without smashing the whole bottle. Worked well until a fish smaller than the funnel hole and larger than the neck of the bottle went in it. Like the one above, it is no more.

I bought one in the States for "minnows" for a couple of dollars in Wal-Mart. I used it successfully for catching bait fish when we were fishing for bass and catfish in the creek. Not used it here yet but only because I haven't got round to it. I did notice the same trap in a local tackle shop for many £££, usual UK rip-off. I think it would be OK legally if you were in the vicinity - no different from a drop net. You could always claim it was a prawn trap, you can drop and leave several of those without a problem.

My PB bag was a bin liner - round the prop! Not many fish can stop a boat like a bag can. Never underestimate them....

Fish constrained for some reason are often just not feeding and won't take anything. The bass and mullet in our marina gang up waiting for the cill to open at half tide (they seem to know when) and even though they are milling around by the dozen they are uncatchable. Watch your bass very carefully without showing youself - are they feeding at all? If so can you see what they are feeding on? Try ultra light coarse gear - a 5mt whip poked out from behind a rock, with freelined shrimp or a flake of shellfish on a size 10 hook or less, and 4lb line might tempt them.

What's all this about sweetcorn? I only implied that would be the most non-controversial bait! If you read the whole thread you would see the second post was my advice on how to fish a live pouting for bass which was an answer to the original question. Sorry if I sent it all off the rails. To quote a friend of mine on the other forum "why did I bother... "

A group of bikers were making a lot of noise in a pub and in comes a quiet guy and buys a drink. The bikers decide to have a bit of fun with him and go aover to annoy him. They punch him and poke him and spit in his beer but he does nothing. Then he gets up and quietly walks out. "Not much of a man was he?" says one of the bikers. "Not much of a driver either," says the landlord. "He's just reversed his truck over six bikes."

First Choice - Big Toys, its the only chance you'll get. Second Choice - 4 x 4, learn how to do it properly and be among the 0.5% of 4x4 drivers who know how. Third Choice - Rallying, but only if you feel you have something to prove to the teenagers. FWIW Have fun whatever. I'm only a couple of years behind you and I've done none of those...

Was it trying to eat it or s**g it?

Let's start the thread again

This is a Japanese fish printing technique, where you can take a print from a real fish. I saw this done many years ago in California, and on my last trip bought a book that had more information on it. It is really dead easy. This is my first attempt, from a roach casualty that went t**s up after being badly hooked. Never one to waste anything I thought here's my chance to try it out. All you need is a dead fish, preferably with largish scales and a flattish profile. First wash the fish in salty water to remove the slime, dry on kitchen towel and dab away any wet stuff coming from gills or vent - you may have to plug orifices with cotton wool. Then prop fins on blocks of wood, larger fish may need fins spread and held with sticks from behind. Then paint with water-based block printing ink (£1.40 a tube from good art shops), avoiding the eye. Then all you do is press a soft paper over the fish and gently peel away. I used a handmade-type paper I bought in the same shop, £1.35 for a huge sheet). This is the stuff you need You then paint in the eye with a fine brush, leaving a fleck to make it look a bit more shiny. Any imperfections in your print can be touched in with a brush - or screw up the paper and try again. You can keep going until your fish gets smelly! This is a far cheaper way of keeping a record of a trophy than having it mounted, and a bit different from a photo. As the ink is water based it can be washed off and the fish eaten, as long as its still fresh enough. Have a go, its kind of fun if you are a bit arty on the side. [ 19. July 2005, 09:23 PM: Message edited by: Salar ]

The only safe baits would be bread and sweetcorn - even luncheon meat involves killing pigs. Most sea baits - worm, crab, squid, mackeral - are live or were once. I can understand anglers who only use flies or lures for that reason (and plastic baits like Gulp! are getting so good they might take over naturals), but in the USA for example they use live baits far more extensively than we do here. I think it is a matter of personal conscience, for some odd reason I use live worms but I always kill crab or fish baits, I don't feel comfortable otherwise. The only exception is sandeel, and I'm not too sure about that either! If this was an ethic debate, you could argue that fishing catch and release is no different than hunting foxes but instead of the hounds killing it, it was grabbed by the huntsmen, held under water for a photograph, then let go. Let's face it, antis could have a field day with anglers if they wanted - but I think we should all be allowed to set our own personal boundaries and standards.

Join a fishing club with an active boat section and offer to help with the boats in exchange for some trips, you'll get lots of free advice if you provide willing hands in return.

I wonder who was brave enough to try that for the first time. Can you imagine going down to the local pier and putting a tube of toothpaste on your hook? I think you'd be sectioned!

OK, this isn't Sea but it is Kids and it is recent. I fished an informal company club match on Friday afternoon, and let the kids join me for the last hour. Josh (left) caught two carp and Aedy (right) help her pal Susannah catch her first roach. Just look at those happy faces. Who cares that I came last in the match? It made my day. [ 18. July 2005, 10:30 PM: Message edited by: Salar ]

To make it wriggle and bleed and not swim too well which makes Mr Bass think he has an easy meal.

Can you explain a bit more? (confused - I must be missing something)

The best way of ensuring non-bony fish don't taste of ammonia is to skin and fillet them and freeze the portions. When you thaw then (I leave them at least a fortnight) they taste fine. Whether you like the taste depends on how you prepare them. Skate wings are great pan fried in butter with a mustard cream sauce. Dogfish, smoothhound and tope are best deep fried in batter but are OK is a fish curry. But only keep what you can eat yourself, then put them back or fish for something else.

4 inch pouting hooked once through the nose with a fine wire hook size 2/0, on a 6 foot trace of flourocarbon on a running ledger. Alternatively a joey mackeral, but don't touch the joey before you use it or it will die in your bait well. Or sandeel, of course, but that's obvious. Drift the bait near the bottom around pilings, piers, sandbanks or on steep drop-offs on the edge of channels. Some people like to damage the fish a bit to make it bleed and struggle but personally I think thats a bit too cruel.

I wish that were the case. I occasionally fish coarse lakes and did so again recently. At least a quarter of the fish had some damage, either missing scales, torn mouths, torn fins or even great big sores on their sides. They didn't get those by swimming happily among the reeds. So I don't think coarse fishing can take the moral high ground on this subject.

If trawlers trawl, then they are going to catch fish they dont need, which are dumped or used as pot bait. By the time a fish has been dragged along in a cod-end for a while I doubt it would survive being put back in the sea. The prawn trawlers are worse, their by-catch are thousands of immature fish of all species. Rather than have an emotional rant at the sight of a few smoothound in a box, lets spend our energies persuading the supermarkets to only sell fish from sustainable resources or farmed fish, its the only way to effect change. No amount of petitioning governement will have any value. Its the supermarkets that hold the power, believe me.