Tight lines

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How to detect a bite

There are many factors that effect your bite detection when you are sea fishing and they can all effect one another to give you a misleading picture about what is happening under the water. The ways of detecting a bite are as follows,

• Rod movement
• Line movement
• Indicator movement (eg float)

Detecting the bite

The basic key to this is practice and vigilance. Watching the rod, line and/or indicator for any movement, not in time with the sea or wind. Looking for a jerking motion on the rod tip or line, a bobbing on a float, even a rattle. Trout fishermen are always watching the line to detect that sneaky take. You will notice the line move without being able to feel it!

Holding the fishing line and rod is best practice. It will focus you and allow you to feel the rhythms that are going on under the sea. You will be able to tell the type of sea bed with a little practice. It can be hard work and tiring holding a rod while stood in the surf waiting for that Bass to bite, but its worth it.

Use the factors below to consider what might be happening. The are many variables and patients and practice will teach you how to assimilate all those knocks and taps and detect the bite you have been waiting for.

Primary bite detection factors

Species – The type of fish you are targeting will play a massive part in your bite detection technique. Getting the right balance of tackle, to species, to conditions is the aim. Sole and Mullet are known for very gentle almost un-detected takes. Bass and Eel can pull your rod out of the rest. Wrasse can be felt by sharp tugs, flounder and plaice vibrate a rod tip.

Tackle – Balancing your tackle to the species and the conditions / environment is very important to accurately detect bites. Light gear in heavy seas, or trying to hold bottom in a fast current full of weed will over stretch the light gear causing the rod to lock up, not showing by rod tip movement the action your terminal tackle is getting. The type of fishing line is also important, braid has very little stretch offering great detection qualities, mono has a lot of stretch, softening bites indications.

Tide action – As the flood starts to speed up the resistance of your line to the current will lower bite detection at the rod tip. The positive side is a fish will generally swim down tide after taking your bait and the tide will help to magnify this.

Wind conditions – The wind will have a massive effect on your bite detection ability. It can cause your line to belly creating a large amount of slack in the line, reducing the effect of a taking fish on the rod tip. Guests can cause a fake bite, tugging the line causing a false detection.

Sea state – this can have a negative impact in larger seas. Huge surges and swells can lift your tackle and move it yards across the sea bed. Calm days allow for better contact with your end gear.

Secondary bite detection Factors

Sea weed – High build levels will give you false bites and reduced sensitivity in most types of fishing applications.

Skill – When you have been fishing for a while you will start to recognise the species mouthing your bait. This ability will come in time and increase your catch rate as you can tune your fishing to match interested species.

Sea bed – The types of sea bed offer a subtle contrast to each other. Sand softens takes where pebbles give a lot of false bites.

Bait – A bass hitting a live sand eel is normally a very sudden thing, best described as an explosion. However, when they take a dead bait thy can give a very gentle slack line bite, very hard to detect.

Available light – Even with tip lights night fishing takes on a new challenge. Subtle bites go missed, heavy bites seem like your eyes are playing tricks on you. In the dark fishing takes on a whole new aspect.

Your mind set – There you are freezing your nuts off. No bites, can’t be bothered anymore, and wallop you get, and miss your first and only take of the fishing session. Stay focused and positive all the time. When your eye is off the ball the action will happen.

Golden Grey Mullet can be caught on our coasts from may really through to september, but it depends on the mark your fishing ie the east facing beaches are normally more productive earlier on than the south facing if you get my drift. Fish over the flooding tide, normally hot days and flat sea is good.

The Golden Grey Mullet actually prefer hot days because they will lay their eggs in the warm sand as the tide floods. Thats how close they are in on the shore line!. Waders are a good choice as it gets you closer to the fish. Take a good pair of polarized sun glasses and look closely at the sea for a good half hour before fishing for them if they are there you will spot them. But you only really notice them there if you are actually looking for them, makes me laugh when people are swimming near them and don’t notice them, its a good site to see when you spot them especially when they are in in their numbers. You will no what i mean when you do spot them.

I will not give away the marks where they are, you will have to work them out for yourself. I think i have given you enough info for you to work them out. The beauty is you can spin, ledger or float for them using mulleting gear. If you do follow it up and catch one over 2lb then i will eat my smelly fishing rag as i have been close but yet to no avail!!.

All the best out on the seas. Hope you catch a lunker!!!!.

I made up a huge bucket of ground bait, by mixing bread and minced mackerel. I used this mixture as the tide went out to create a scent trail for the Mullet to follow and to encourage the Mullet to start feeding on bread and mackerel particles.

This approach worked well, but the size of the Mullet was small. I had a large shoal forming and feeding well on the ground bait. As the tide turned and the flood started I noticed the average size of the Mullet was much larger. I wanted to catch the Mullet on a surface fly (I need to see the take in order to hook them) so I introduced floating bread crusts into the slick of ground bait. This worked and the Mullet started sipping the floating crusts.

Once the fish were feeding confidently from the surface I started to fish for them, staying in the deepest water I could manage, walking backwards slowly in order to prevent being marooned.

I used a deer hair fly on a size 10 short shank. The Deer hair was scorched on on side to represent the darker crust. A deer hair fly stays very bouyant compared to hackle flies. I cast across and behind the Mullet so the flow of the tide carried the floating fly line and fly over the feeding fish. Keeping tension on the fly line was hard, but necessary so a take could be converted easily into hooking a fish.

I managed to get 4 fish to take the fly, hooking one for about 40 seconds before it un-hooked its self. The fight was imense for a fish I would estimate to be around 3/4 of a pound. Sadly I never managed to land a Mullet on this session, but there is always next time.

Almost any sea species will take a baited spinner including Pollock, Mackerel, Bass, Flounder, Wrasse, Gurnard and thin lipped Mullet.

Some species mentioned here like Bass and Mackerel would take the spinner baited or not, the Mullet will only take a baited spinner and generally earlier in the season.

I guess the spinner attracts fish and the bait gives it the edge of “tasting” nice as well as looking the part. Baited spinners are well worth trying and can produce fish when other methods are lacking.

If you have had success with a baited spinner then please leave a comment.

I had a 10 foot spinning rod set up with a small bubble float, 8 foot of 5lb leader and size 6 hook. I was using a small bit of Mackerel flesh and bread on the hook. As the Mullet began to feed well I added my line into the melting pot.

The first cast spooked the fish, it was clumsy and had not taken any care at all. The next cast was much better, over the area I wanted to be in then I retrieved the float so the bait was were the fish were. As usual I missed many gentle takes as the fish slurped the bait spitting it out straight away.

Towards the end of the session I managed one small Grey Mullet returning it to its family after a very powerful fight.

I have sat back and thought about the whole Mullet fishing game and I have decided to use some of the Carp anglers methods by making some hair rigs. I feel that this might improve the bait presentation enough to catch more fish.

I will explain how I will do this for you soon, unless you have tried it already where you would like to share your findings here.