Finessing the bejaysus out of some fine Irish pollack

If I hadn’t got covid I’d have come out to Ireland a bit earlier to fish with the lads who are staying with John, but as it is I got the one day on Saturday with them and we had such fun chasing around the Kerry coastline on the hunt for a few fish. It was my first time fishing since I had to isolate and damn did it feel good to put a lure rod together again and actually be able to cast something out in a meaningful way. We didn’t spend much time chasing bass on the small tides and iffy conditions, but because John knows this coastline like the back of his hand, he suggested a pollack mark which tends to work well on the ebb - and as always it seems to be out here, I would hazard a pretty good guess that the last time anybody fished this spot was when John and I last took clients there a fair few years ago now. I know I bang on about it, but there is just SO much ground out here that never ever sees an angler, and if there is one thing that pollack like, it’s a lack of recreational and commercial fishing pressure……………

So we all start fishing and because the ground is as rough as you like I clip on one of the 13cm/31g Savage Gear Sandeel V2 Weedless lures. You might choose a different lure of course, but I was heavily involved in these new lures and I trust them completely for a situation like this when I need my lure to spend as much time close to the bottom as possible but of course I want to try and avoid snagging up all the time with a more regular J-hook rigged soft plastic. Why do you think I pushed so hard for a really good weedless version of the Savage Gear Sandeel almost from day one of working with them? I wanted what a lure like this can do, but I needed more options from it.

Anyway, so I start fishing the lure for pollack like I typically would. Cast out, let the lure drop in a fairly controlled manner in case anything hits me on the way down, feel for the bottom as much as I can in the side wind, and then either fish the Sandeel V2 Weedless with a medium straight-retrieve or with a fairly aggressive sink and draw - making sure that I am also somewhere near the bottom for that final bit of the retrieve up and the side of the rocks we are standing on. How many times does a decent pollack hit you right at the last moment and then do that glorious crash dive?

Nothing’s happening though but it feels like it should be. John and I have spoken a few times this year about a particular French client he had back in the summer. John got this lad out on the boat and apparently he outfished everybody in a major way on the pollack. John said he had never really seen anybody fish so deliberately finesse like for pollack, and what he really noticed was how slowly and deliberately this French lad fished his lures so close to the bottom so much of the time. We might crank or sink and draw and so on, but this French lad was fishing for pollack more like you or I might bump soft plastics for wrasse or even bass over a shallowish reef - and it worked. It takes a good angler to not spend his or her time endlessly snagging lures up as a boat moves over a reef on the drift, and this lad apparently was seriously good at it.

So I’m fishing my more usual way for pollack from these easy to get to and fish from set of rocks, and because it’s the way my brain is wired I obviously keep an eye on how the other lads are fishing. I notice John fishing in a far slower and more deliberate way than the rest of us are, indeed it looks almost like he’s fishing for wrasse in the way he is almost shaking and twitching and slowly lifting his lure up and down whilst keeping very close to/actually on the bottom all the way in. As I’m watching John fishing like this he suddenly gets absolutely nailed, and I mean nailed. He knows exactly what he’s doing with fishing like this, but even so this obviously rather good Irish pollack does him good and proper as the fish does one of those typical “crash dive behind and underneath the nearest ledge” sort of thing where the angle of the line is taken right over the edge of the rocks and it’s goodbye fish. But John has hooked a fish and he’s fishing very differently to me. Buzz, tick, whirr, I bet you could have almost heard the cogs in my brain churning away.

So I did what any other angler with a pair of eyes and half a brain cell would do - I changed my approach. I copied how John was fishing - slowly and twitchy and controlled, very close to or actually along the bottom all the time - and bang, I hooked and landed a pollack my very first cast fishing far more deliberately like this. I obviously made sure to explain to Angus next to me how the pollack seemed to want the lures today, and sure enough he was into fish as well. What a buzz. I know bass are our king of saltwater fish, but I can and do go bass fishing all the time when I’m not having to bloody isolate with covid. Really good pollack fishing from some rocks which basically never see other anglers though? I don’t do it nearly enough and I absolutely love it.

This particular spot usually has a fair bit of current moving through on the ebb tide, but there wasn’t much movement with the small tide. The fish were still there though but it seemed like they were very reluctant to move away from the bottom to feed like they might when there’s more current and I guess baitfish moving around for them to hunt. I did see one pollack hit and miss my Sandeel V2 Weedless right beneath my feet up the side of the rocks, but otherwise all the pollack I caught or saw caught came from literally finessing the lures far more than we usually would for these fine fish. I know it’s a bit of a cliche that we always learn something new literally every time we go fishing, but wow was that the case on Saturday afternoon. I don’t know how many pollack I caught, I guess the biggest was around 6lbs, and I loved every single one of them - and especially with how the different tactics produced the fish. Would I have caught any pollack if I had persisted with my more regular pollack tactics? Perhaps, but the finesse approach was what they were switching on to, and even over some truly rough ground and fishing my Sandeel V2 Weedless so slowly and deliberately over and along the bottom so many times, I didn’t lose a single lure. Talk about storing a load more information away in my already overloaded fishing brain! By the time you kind people read this blog post we will be out and about with our group of clients and I will do what I can to keep you posted. For sure we are on the hunt for bass, but if we do end up taking them out for a bit of pollack fishing I can assure you I will be urging them to fish with a far greater degree of control and finesse if things aren’t happening……………..

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