Hide & seek

Why your LRF skills require some undercover experience

Expert ways to improve your LRF skills.

The sun shone, illuminating the crystal-clear water as shoals of coalfish moved through the weed patrolling the walls of the harbour entrance. As I teased these fish with various lures, I saw a large shape move off the bottom and settle again.

My eyes bulged, it was one of the biggest flounders I had seen. With shaking hands, I rigged a 2.5g No. 6 jighead with a medium pink Isome and cast beyond the fish, and I slowly began to hop the lure along the seabed towards the waiting flounder.

A personal-best flounder was only inches away from capture, but it completely ignored my lure.

I repeated the performance, only to have the flounder move a few feet further into the harbour. This happened repeatedly. I followed the fish as it went past the prime, clean ground into the small commercial mooring area of the harbour. This tiny area was the dirtiest, muddiest part, where the seabed was littered with debris, although the water was clear enough for me to see the flounder settle down in the silty seabed, still resolutely ignoring my lures.

It was then that a creel boat came in to moor up, and as it passed into the small inner harbour it stirred the bottom and I lost sight of the fish in a cloud of silt. With visibility gone, so had my hope of a new PB.

I flicked the lure out again, more out of habit than hope, and got my aim a bit wrong. The lure landed alongside the fishing boat. Rather than letting the lure fall to the bottom, which was my standard flattie tactic, I reeled in with the aim of recasting to where I last saw the fish.

I had got a few turns of the handle when the rod lunged over as the big flattie seized the lure. I soon had my new pb flounder of 3lb 2oz in the net.

This capture taught me a valuable lesson; only when the fish had found cover from the boats did it feel confident enough to feed, and that was its downfall.

This capture was by no means an isolated one. Features such as pontoons, harbours, boatyards, docks and industrial areas can be overlooked as fishing marks, but they often throw up surprises. Species such as pollack, coalfish, wrasse, bass, mullet and flatfish can all be found in these areas.