If only.....

[fishing_in_israel]

This morning's early morning fishing trip could be summed up by 'If only'.
We got up real early04:15, had a quick breakfast, got to the breakwater at about 05:30 whilst it was still dark (starts getting light about 05:50).

So far so good. Then; a couple of guys that were there already told us to be careful as there had been a [small] fishing boat putting out his net all along the length of the breakwater. We got down to the water's edge and started throwing lures close to the rocks. No takes. By this time it started to get light and we could make out the main marker buoy at the start of the net and the smaller floats of the net itself:


Fishing Net

You can just make out the floats (I added 3 red arrows to show where the are). They are less than 10 meters from the rocks!
Good job we didn't try casting out to sea!

We waited for about an hour for the boat to show up and start getting the net in and I took some photos just to see what they had caught.
First up were some small sea bream and then this nice barracuda:


Barracuda

Then after some more small sea bream they pulled up this one which I can't identify but it is a nice sized fish anyway:


Nice Fish

You can't see much of it but with the head and the rest of its body it certainly was a good sized fish.

So why the 'If only'? Well, if only those so and so fishermen had gone and laid their nets some place else we could have started fishing earlier, which is the best time to fish and if only those so and so fishermen had not laid their nets in front of us we could have had a chance of catching those two nice fish and others as well! We wasted the best time of the morning because of them and missed the opportunity of catching anything.

However it was a good experience and because of them we got to see that there are some good fish to be had close to the rocks.

All in all a good learning experience

Forgot to add that those FXR 12's (Australian floating X-Raps) cast a treat - must be a least 40 meters and getting them close to the rocks, just a shortish pause and they float right back up to the surface again and over those snags

About colors - fish see things differently but when it's darkish and you're fishing over rocks - choose one with a bright colored back - so that *you* can see it!

[fishfingers007]

Nigel you must have been gutted, i guess at least you seen a few fish, hope you get better luck next time

[fishing_in_israel]

Apr 10, 2010 12:00:24 GMT -4 fishfingers007 said:

Nigel you must have been gutted, i guess at least you seen a few fish, hope you get better luck next time

Not too bad. It was kind of encouraging to see that there are good fish out there though -- sometimes I wonder if there are any fish in the Med! I know that there are - we just don't catch many of them. I suppose it makes the ones that we do catch more worthwhile. I mean, if there are tons of fish out there and they're real easy to catch - where's the sense of achievement? But if there are only a few and you do manage to catch one -- well that's something to treasure for a long time.......

[fishing_in_israel]

I had a look in my fishes book and the fish in the photo below looks like a bluefish:

Bluefish ??

What do you think?.....

[walter]

nigel, now that you know where there are those fishes, you can go and catch them!!! i hope you're more lucky the next time

[bluefishbuster]

That's not a bluefish. I've caught plenty of them to know what they look like.

[fishing_in_israel]

Apr 22, 2010 0:46:10 GMT -4 bluefishbuster said:

That's not a bluefish. I've caught plenty of them to know what they look like.

I was going by the secondary dorsal fin (near the tail). In the book of [Mediterranean] fishes that I have the only fish that has that kind of body shape and a fin like that near the tail is the bluefish. Perhaps it's a bit different in the Med.
Any idea as to what it might be? I'm open to suggestions...