Jelly Lures

[fester]

Hi all,

Used a red jelly lure deep off an East Anglesey rock mark today.

And to my surprise not even a follow, or a mackerel! there was however a Seal knocking about all day, I would have moved but this spot has produced in the past!

Whilst observing the surface, there was a lot of activity, and I noticed many small fish jumping, I think they were s p r a t s as they were wide and silver, bigger than whitebait, and an eruption would happen every few minutes. Mackerel usually boil on the surface but this wasn't happening, which leads me to believe an individual fish was chasing the bait, either a Bass or a big Pollack! So I tried a surface lure to no avail. This is the popper I was using



I think it's a Rainbow Trout fry imitation, but the best 'Match the Hatch' I had with me!

There was a lot of silk weed about, and millions of jellyfish too!

Never seen so many at that mark before, would that make a difference??

[garethp]

Depends on what fish have evolved so that they don't get stung...

Some have, some haven't sory I can't be more help

[menaiman]

I fished the straits near Penmon last night and not a touch. I stuck with a Yo Zuri Mag Popper to give it a fair go but not a movement anywhere close in.
The sea was absolutely flat and so quiet I could hear regular mackerel flurries out in the middle and occasionally a big splash as a Bass or a Sea Trout jumped.
The water close in was very cloudy and scummy yet there were syou........s & small sandeels everywhere, literally at my feet, feeding on mysids.
Mysids are a small, 1", prawn like creature which are sometimes described as the inshore equivalent to krill. They are an important food for growing fish of all species and its possible that the fish were targeting them much like trout target mayflies and ignore everything else.
The fact that they were there in such numbers bodes well.

[kastonfly]

Fester

When bait fish (sound like Herring by the way) are bursting on the surface it is almost certainly because they are being attached from below as you assumed. If you watch predators attacking a shoal of bait fish they do not just go and try an swallow as many as the can but normal try and stun the fish and then pick off the slow or stationary stunned fish. When these conditions occur a slow moving fly can be devastating as it looks like exactly what the predator is expecting.

If you were a big predator why chase fast moving bait when there are lots of slow moving fish in the water. The other alternative for those with a plastic fetish is fish a diving jointed plug very very slowly beneath the shoal

[fester]

I guess you are right about bigger fish picking off the weak and injured, that is what the popper does, But again I guess you are right about the fly, very interesting that! You see, when you spend time at the water edge blanking! All these things go through your head, so you change lures/methods and in the end you begin to understand what is going on below the surface!

Cheers for that Kastonfly, very interesting and good for the novices too