With the Easterly onshore winds on the cards for the Saturday I headed off towards the West coast with the 12ft tin in tow, a solo fat West coast carrot mish was on the cards. I was keen for just a lax day on the water and started a little late than the norm, reaching the ramp around 11.00 the Easterly had already made its journey across the land and was now blowing around 6-7knts. Fishing these West coast Harbour's with even that kind of wind you have to understand the area and being in the little tin more so, I new the low was around 4.00 so once at my carrot patch I'll have 2-3hrs up my sleeve. The plan was to fish while the wind was with the tide and head back before the turn, with strong currents and sand bars everywhere it can get a little tricky even with light winds if you don't know what your doing or if you don't have experience in such places. This time of year fat Carrots make there way in to the Harbour's searching for the abundance food they hold, little shrimps, crabs and even baby flounder are there favourites. It took a good 20mins to make my way down the harbour to my spot, I fish an area where there is a couple of large long banks that come out of the water as the tide recedes this is where the Carrots drop off them and feed in the little channels and holes over the low. Being in 3-4mtrs of water I tied the berley to the anchor, with suck strong current you want your berley just off the bottom otherwise fish could be sitting back anywhere between 30-40mtrs due to the time it makes it way to the floor. I also cut up a few Pillies into cubes and throw out to help. It didn't take long before I started to get those first interests in my baits, being solo I decided to fish two rods one with a little ball sinker to the hook and decided to run a single hook dropper on the other. For some reason Gurnard love to come up off the bottom to grab baits this is why flashers rigs are lethal on them, it was great to run the two to see what fished better and after catching my first on the stray line rig the dropper slowly but surely took over. Over the 2hrs of fishing it got pretty intense running the two and resisted the urge to put one away as I normally do, but with so much Carrots that feed in this spot it didn't matter missing a few between the madness. Over all the dropper took out the day with 80% of the catch to the stray line, I also got a couple nice ones around 50cm. Even with still an hour and a half of the tide left I called it a day with 7-8 carrots in the bin which was plenty for the fam and me for the next couple days. The fun wasn't over knowing with a big tide I was going to have a mud bath back at the ramp but this just adds to the little adventures I love to have. Tight lines https://www.facebook.com/ReelKiwiFishing/?fref=mentions" rel="nofollow - Fish Whisperer https://www.facebook.com/NZfishing.co.nz/?fref=mentions" rel="nofollow - REEL KIWI Fishing https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/lovemyfishing?source=feed_text" rel="nofollow -
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