I’m spin it to win it
A LOT of my trout fishing in recent years has been with little spinning rods and tiny Mepps.
The river closest to me isn’t far off a burn and I keep a multipiece LRF (Light Rock Fishing) rod in the car so I can sneak a cast in.
This season I upgraded from a Tupperware and bought a neat wee fly box that’s perfect for holding size 00/0/1 lures plus some spare hooks and other bits ‘n’ bobs.
My pal clocked the box and the fact I was filling it up with wee spinners, incredulously declaring: “For trout?... that’s cheating.”
It was tongue in cheek but these unwritten hierarchies are all over angling.
I’ve added bombarda fishing into my coastal angling as well. If I can bring myself to put down the metal lures that usually work, it’s a really effective way of fishing light lures or flies at a distance which is very popular in Scandinavian Seatrout fisheries.
I was told that’s just bubble and fly, so it’s cheating.
On some estuary tickets it’s definitely not allowed but there are a lot of miles of coastline where it is.
Sometimes bass or seatrout
are transfixed on feeding on tiny baitfish and they will just not take your standard-size lures.
You can simply connect a bombarda and a small lure or fly, this method will allow you to cast tiny lures at great distances.
Using a bombarda you can effectively fish wind-exposed coastal stretches without compromising casting distance, and in a lot of places you won’t even have to wade in.
This minimises the chance of you spooking fish that are right at the shore, it makes it easier for you to keep warm, and it is safer than venturing into an agitated sea.
Fish them on a spinning rod, the Danes favour 10-12ft specialist rods which allow you to fish a longer leader but as long as you match the casting weight you can swap over on your existing setup and see.
Both methods are definitely
effective and where they’re 100 per cent allowed on my permit I’m happy to fish them, plus I’m not competing against anyone other than myself.
There’s definitely something in me that thinks a fish caught on the fly rod is better somehow but I’ve no idea why.
I don’t value the fish any less on the spinner, in fact the burn where I’m fishing I’d just spend the whole time pulling stray flies out of overhanging trees.
A day at the coast struggling into an headwind will test your patience, trying and failing to catch feeding fish because you either can’t reach them or they aren’t interested in what you can reach them with.
It may be #itonlycountsonfly a lot of the time but I’ll take a good shot at catching something over a frustrating day filled with curse words any time.