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I seem to miss a lot of whiting bites, is there any way I can improve my catch ratio?

WSF 05 August, 2008 09:56:00

QUESTION
My mates and I fish several beaches in mid and North Wales in the winter for whiting, but we seem to miss a lot of bites. Is there any way we can improve our catch ratio?

ANSWER
Knowing which beaches you fish would have helped, but I think I might understand your problem.

Say on the flood tide with a little lateral tide run, which is typical on most mid and north Wales beaches, the whiting will come uptide and grab the bait, then turn back in to the tide and be swept away downtide. The push of the tide adds weight to the fish resulting in self hooking and a pretty good overall hook up ratio. This would be typical with a standard 9-inch to 12-inch hook length on a two or three-hook rig means that the whiting.

Problems occur when the tide run eases to next to nothing. The whiting still approaches the bait from the downtide side following the scent trail, but when it takes the bait, without the force of the tide, there is not enough impetus in the whiting to fully set the hook. You get the bites but often miss the fish.

To minimise this problem you need to lengthen your hook traces to 15 to 18inches long. This extra hook length means the whiting when it takes the bait and turns in to the tide has some free line available enabling it to build up a little swimming speed. This compensates for the lack of tide and again maintains a high hook up ratio.

Also check your hooks. Ultra sharp Kamasan B940 Aberdeen’s in size 2 are my whiting choice and will penetrate deep enough with minimal pressure to gain a good hook hold.

Also make sure that you’re not using too big a bait that over faces the fish and masks the hook point. This is a simple but often overlooked point and will see the whiting attack the bait but drop it as it cannot gulp the bait straight in.

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