EVER HEARD OF A PILK?
Few boat anglers have heard of pilks or  pilking, but it’s a style of fishing common in Scandinavian countries and in New Zealand  that is starting to gain popularity with UK and Irish anglers.

Normal pirks are usually plain round chrome  tubing filled with lead with a hook hanging on one end and simply worked up and  down tight to the seabed. Pilks though, are weighted metal pirks shaped like  fish.

Some pilks are just a straight fish shape  weighted towards the nose and slim at the tail. These can be used either for  straight up and down fishing jigged over a rough ground seabed or wreck as you  would a normal pirk, but are actually excellent for casting away from the boat,  allowing them to sink deep, then working them back sink and draw like a slow  spinner. Also try adding a slice of mackerel to the hook to give some scent.

This pilk casting technique is highly  effective for pollack, coalfish, cod and often ling. You can add movement to  these straight pilks by sliding a muppet either over the nose and allowing the  rubbers legs to dance over the body, or add a muppet or a small Mr Twister type  eel to either a single or treble hook. Experienced pilk anglers tend to use  only a single hook when casting these lures and hide the hook point in the  rubber eel to minimise snagging over the rough ground when the lure bumps  bottom.

Some pilk patterns have fins and tails  shaped in to them. These are best for simple up and down jigging either on the  drift or occasionally when at anchor. The fins and tails are designed to give  the pilk angled movement as it drops back down in the water, the pilk shooting  off sideways to simulate a small fish diving down. On the upward lift the fins  can induce a wobble to the lure which can be felt through the rod and line.  Again it makes the lure look more alive in the water.

Smaller pilks of just a few ounces are also  available and you can work these from the shore in clear water for pollack,  coalfish and cod, but I also know some lads down in Cornwall this past summer who did very nicely  thank you on bass off the shore. Their technique was to locate the mackerel  shoals working off the rock ledges, use the weighty pilks to get down quickly  through the mackerel and if the pilk wasn’t taken on the drop down by a bass,  which it often was, then they would work it back up below the shoals to where  the bigger bass were hunting.

In deep water a pilk is best worked on  braided line to minimise tidal effect and to allow better bite detection, but  use a short 20-foot length of 40lb mono to give a little stretch and to avoid  ripping the hooks out of a big fish during the fight. For casting though, most  anglers stick to mono lines.

BAIT BOX
Razorfish is the number one winter flounder  bait given that most anglers can’t get fresh peeler crab this time of year.

To get good presentation use a long shank  Aberdeen hook like a Mustad Aberdeen Match or Kamasan B940 and start by  threading the razorfish by the top end of the long foot over the point of the  hook, up the shank and a little way past the eye of the hook on to the hook  trace. Thread the razorfish far enough to get the fleshy foot area  in to the bend of the hook. Now secure this  with a few light turns of bait elastic to form a really juicy sausage shape.

This catches flounder very well on its own,  but it fishes even better if you add a small sliver of frozen mackerel about  one inch by a half inch once over the hook point to sit half over the razorfish  in the hook bend, but leaving the rest of the mackerel strip hanging loose  beyond the hook. Secure the mackerel in place with a few turns of elastic  thread.

BOAT DAB TACTICS
Dabs like areas of shallower sandbanks  where they can switch sides to get out of the main force of tide. You find them  on top of the bank during slack water, but they will move to the downtide side  of the bank when the tide is flowing.

On the sandbanks, most boats anchor over  the leading edge of the bank and drop baits back on top of the bank, or trot  them down using light leads so that the bait falls naturally down the lee bank.  Some banks are better fished by anchoring to the side, casting baits uptide on  to the bank and letting the tide wash your baits across the bank and down the  lee side bank at an angle. Experiment with leads to get the bait to drift  across slowly. Dabs will chase baits, but soon loose patience.

A good rig is a two-hook flowing trace  below a boom. Make the trace a good three feet long with a short 6-inch dropper  for the second hook. Hooks sizes should be size 2, but go smaller if the fish  are shy biting. Good baits are small strips of mackerel belly, lugworm, rag  with the tail left to wriggle, and strips of squid.

Drift fishing off the beaches can produce  some really good bags too. Water depth needs to be over 20-feet deep during the  day for consistent fishing and carrying some colour, though they can be much  closer in during overcast cloud conditions.

When drift fishing let plenty of line out  so that the lead is constantly dragging across the bottom. Hold the rod and  feel for the tell tale light taps as the dab chases and attacks the passing  bait. When you feel the bites, release a little more line to let the dab have  time to get the bait fully in. After a few seconds let the line come tight and  feel the weight of the fish letting the hook pull home by natural rod pressure.