Sharing a beauty of a session Wednesday night chasing the calamari at St Leonards Pier, ended up bagging out on mixed sizes within an hour.
Details below.
Conditions:
Fished 5.30 - 6.30pm, last light to first dark.
Light E winds
Crystal clear water, light current running out.
Overcast, with moderate cloud cover.
Full moon visible by 6.30pm.
Dark blue rainbow foil, darker profile.
First photo of the conditions, this was prime calamari conditions and with the regrowth of eel grass by the pier they've been more active.
This marked quite a few calamari, smaller models pre-dusk and the larger models dusk till visible moon collecting over the nearby weed beds 10-15 meters out from the pier.
Four of the ten were either sight casted or hooked by setting the hook once I noticed they has physically grabbed the squid jig. The reasoning for this is because they're smaller in size and more hesitant, often releasing the jig without hooking up. This was key for hooking them.
The darker profile squid jig did the damage, the blue spine and rainbow is one of my favorites over autumn / winter and the rainbow foil of the Yamashita Sutte-R always works well in overcast conditions.
The major difference between bagging out and the three blokes next to me with two squid each was technique. As strange as it sounds because people often discredit and say how easy it is to catch squid, sometimes sure, but when they're picky knowing the right moves makes a differences.
I knew the calamari were collecting over the weed beds so this was my action:
1. Casted past the weed beds onto the deeper sandy drop off, let the jig sink 3/4 of the depth.
2. Four sharp over hand whips which raised the jig higher in the water column and pulled it over the weed bed.
3. Let it sink 3/4 of the way and four more whips, repeated 2-3 times before into the pier.
4. No squid? Cast 2m either side and widened that search pattern for them.
Those four whips, rather than my usual three gave the squid extra time to strike on the sink and allowed me to cover the ground as the squid moved across the beds. Ended up with ten, mix of sizes, biggest went 37cm. Pulled nice string. Kept two nice sized for food, rest went to friends for the holidays. Photo has 7 squid, couldn't be assed taking more photos. x)
