pOPpeR AcTiOn

Matchfishing Session

We thought, we will never make it this year.
All busy with fresh and saltwater fly fishing. And saltwater plugging taking into account that I just got my new Tenryu rod from Japan...

But, anyway, somehow we decided to go.

A long drive at night, a little walk with seat box, holdall, groundbait bowl (full), and a small bag all on your back. Making groundbait at first... Ve-ery strong coffee with cardamon out of small glasses, just like it supposed to be here in the middle east.

And to the business...

First it is a real hell to setup your seatbox on those huge stones, but we're quite used to it.

Choose a rig, and you can roll your pole forth to plumb the depth.
Wow this year it's nearly three meters, good news!

Last year it was hardly over 2.5m.

I've decided to fish the 11.5m and a 5m kit on a very light float (0.4gr).
The depth at 5 meters is somewere at 5meters. 6 balls going on a long line and

only loose feed to the short one.

The short line started with sweet corn and works immidiately, bringing 3 small crucians.

The long line started working first for Steve with half a decent carp n corn as well.

I have swiched to carp as well.

Chopped worm did not work, I forgot my bread at home (as usual). And I did not realy have motivation to prepare paste or the meat. So we stayed with corn.

All of them were like brothers about 700grams each. We have not seen any grass carp or bigger carp this time.

Any way we had a great start this year, and I hope we will still have the power to make it a number of times this season and even maybe will take a part in matchfishing competition at the end of july.

Memories of South Africa

It's been a long time since my last visit to South Africa. It is probably the most beautifull place I have visited untill today.
My last visit was two years ago and I've been there for so many times and it is still always number one on my list and I can't wait to get there.
Another thing is looking at my last time visit photographs and I see all different ones from those I chose two years ago.
Looking at old raw images is like visiting the place for another time.
I hope South Africa does well in the future and i will visit it for another endless times.

Saltwater bream fishing.

Somehow only the float fisherman used to fish for bream, we sometimes heart that someone took it on lure, but it was concidered accidental. It was like that until Igi this guy from Haifa appeared somewere about two and a half years ago, an he wanted to explore the saltwater UL fishing. He had some success on spinners first, and then he tried small minnows, it worked even better and then he found an excellent Australian site: http://www.breammaster.com/
It was a breakthrough, following that summer he summarized all his knowledge in small article, in Russian of course... If someone interested it is still the best source for bream fishing.
I was busy then setting up my fly fishing, but then I was invited to visit the best bream spot near Rosh Hanikra with someone who knew what to do. My goal that day was to catch a bream on fly. I tried Crazy Charlies, Clousers and a special weapon Green Polarflash Clouser and the fish has just ignored it. In that time Andrey was taking fish after fish showing me the spots were the fish is staying. I decided to switch to spinning and feel and find the fish myself. I chose Duel Hardcoe SH50 (my favourite now) , but that day I have seen no fish at all.
Some time later I went to different place alone, it is somewhere near Netaniya. Someone told me it was a realy interesting spot.
As i approached the nearest rocks on my third cast I had a bite and my very first sea bream was trying to eat my Hardcore.
Untill now thi place is one of my favourite in my bream fishing, though this fish has it's own moods and is never easy, yet I have never cought one on fly.
I have noticed that my best lures for bream are all vibrating and tried to tie something like a fly with a lip, and I even made a couple, but none of them would work like they supposed to.

Freshwater Lure Fishing Competition

This year I said that I'll take on myself the arrengement of the competition, the rules stayed the same, we found a long piece of coast with huge rocks all over the place, should be the best place for tilapia.
about 3 or 4 meters from the shore the bottom drops to about 3 meters.
We went to check if there's fish some two weeks before the competition. Some good barbel was taking big gold Kastmasters 7 and 10 grams. Tilapia was actively taking the topwater Towadi.
On the competition day we were already there and the people started to arrive at about 5:00 in the morning. After registration and small briefing everyone spread all along the coastline.
The referees were lucky not to break thier legs trying to run all along the coastline, watching that everything goes right.
The left side was working well and people were taking fish after fish, but in the middle and left guys stuggled for every single tail.
In the middle the leaders were already far enough to compete between themselves, not caring about the oters left behind.
Finally the last ring and everyone meets the referees at the center, final weighting the fish and it took some half an hour to count all the results.
Finaly the first place took over 50 tails.
This was uor second time and it went pretty well, will everyone enjoyed.
Will try and make it even better next year.

First Cast

This years freshwater season started a bit late, somewhere in the middle of April.
The winter was warm but ended late, as usual Kinneret warm up first so we decided to give it a try.
Tilapia was a bit slow to wake up and we already thought that we would need to wait a week or two but then there were a first one on goldhead and we had some more on spinning using Smith Towadi. Only towards 10-11 in the morning the started to take the goldheads pretty confident.