After a couple of years visiting Cornwall for our family summer holidays – and having a wash out with some really bad weather last year we decided to hit some guaranteed sun this summer, and washed up in Issos Beach, Corfu.
Mrs Fishing Fiend chose the location, and I was happy to fit in (pay) as a quick search online promised some decent fishing. A nice sandy beach and a rock encrusted shallow harbour must hold a fish or two for me. A search on Youtube soon found a chap reeling them in on a regular basis, so I carefully chose a minimal amount of kit that I could squeeze into my tiny rationed suitcase space.
Before I left a quick trip to the tackle shop I got myself a new 2000 sized Daiwa reel to replace my old and now nearly worn out Okuma Red reel, and some posh new 8 strand 6lb braid as an upgrade from the cheaper 4 strand stuff that I’ve been using for the past few years (is using 8 strand really worth it, in comparison to the much cheaper 4 strand ? I couldn’t notice any difference)
As space for tackle was limited, I stuck to a lure/drop shot kit… some 10g metals, some small 1 and 2 inch lures, and some split shot and Gulp worm with 4lb flouro ….. how could I fail to catch !!
So a couple of days into the holiday (and a few less beers the night before) I managed to sneak out of the Hotel just before dawn to see what I could catch.
I started off by flinging out some small 10g metals in silver blue, and then silver yellow without much joy… but I did enjoy the walk along the deserted beach, and saw a decent sized Mahi Mahi (or Dolphinfish) clear the water while chasing bait fish about 500m off the beach… after an hour of no action I swapped over to using some 2inch shads with a 2g jig head… This generated a few bites and lots of frustration as I started to have the tails bitten off lots of my soft lures, but couldn’t connect with any fish. Then, as the sun rose, the beach started to get busier and I dissapeared back to the hotel with tail between my legs for a few breakfast beers (and why not ? )
Next session was a couple of days later – another dawn start, but this time I tackled up using a split shot rig, 2SSG, a size 14 hook, and a third of a piece of medium gulp sandworm…. a rig that never fails over sandy ground !!
And I am glad/relieved to say that it didn’t let me down this time either.
I walked up the beach, past the public car park and first cast hit into my first ever Gilthead Bream (despite spending a few sessions chasing them in Cornwall on previous holidays).
The Gilthead came first cast on the Gulp Sandworm, only about 20 ft from the shore
I was delighted to break my duck with a new species,, and it was shortly followed by another couple of fish including yet another new species… A Steenbras
The fish weren’t big, and looking at the size of their mouths, its easy to see why I wasn’t catching on my previous session. Here a pic below of the business end of my tackle that finally saw me catching, and even then at least 50% of the time the fish were biting off the end of the sandworm without the hook (and my eyes are getting old and I couldn’t thread the sandworm up all the way to leave the hook trailing at the end ).
Using this much more lightweight rig, I caught a succession of small fish from the sandy beach including a few small striped Sea Bream also known as Sargo…. again look at the size of their mouths… small baits are really the way forwards in these hard fished places.
By 9am the beach started to get busy so I retired a happy man back to the hotel for a nice glass of Rose with my breakfast..
My final session of the holiday saw my try out the harbour area which was located 500m south of the hotel.
Again I tried the paddle tail lures without getting any success – despite plenty of follows from some very small Garfish. But as soon as I swapped over to the split shot rig, with the scented Gulp Sandworm the fish all of a sudden became very interested.
First up was an Ornate Wrasse – I’ve caught loads of these before all over the Med, and from the Canary Islands.
And this was followed by a few of these little beauties – again a brand new species for me Rainbow Wrasse — they have a cracking set of teeth, which sadly I didn’t manage to capture on camera.
And as the sun came up, that was that… the next four days were spent nursing kids with upset stomachs and then it was time to come back home.
A thoroughly enjoyable holiday.
Here’s a link below to the video I found of the guy who was smashing them out a few years ago… I wasn’t quite up to his standards… but once I found a method that worked I had my fair share,,, and a short 2 hour session in the morning before breakfast didn’t really upset the dynamics of a family holiday.
And here is a google map showing the local area where I was fishing. Sand dunes in the North, and harbour in the South.
Anyway — thats all folks until next time..
I will do a short write up on my summers match fishing on the Old River Irwell in Irlam, and talk about a new book that is being written about fishing on Greater Manchesters Rivers… which yours truly has his fingers in the pie.