The goby challenge

With an early finish in the shop today Judith and me decided to have a couple of hours down in Portishead marina for a competitive mini species hunt, always a bit of fun and definitely a bit of needle about it lol, so armed with a few ragworm we got there at about 6.30 , and was soon set up with a simple one hook paternoster rig,
It was a bit slow to begin with but we were soon getting rattles from some common gobies, I took a three fish lead early on, but as I've found out to my cost Judith does have a competitive edge and really tries ,  but these small fish are extremely sneaky just nipping and bumping the bait without taking the hook, we don't fish to small on the hook size as although smaller books may produce more fish we don't want to run the risk of these mini,s swallowing the hook, also we crush the bards on the books to make things easier, as I said I drew first blood with a small brown goby, they certainly seem to have a bit of attitude about them.

It didn't take Judith long to get into the score card with a goby of her own,

Then it started to go horribly wrong with Judith overhauling me and sneaking into the lead, but then I had a nice little flounder, always good fun on these ultra light rods.

Note the envious look in the background, I think the fish felt sorry for her as it wasn't long before Judith got in on the flattie  score with one of her own, and I do think it was slightly bigger than mine, interestingly while hers was coming to the surface another was following it,

We had a few more gobies  but it was starting to go a bit quiet, then I had two small schoolie bass , certainly not keepers lol.

Then Judith got in on the act with a small whiting ,

a first for her , so to go with her first flounder she now has two new species  to go on our species hunt, keeping her firmly in the lead, also she beat me ten fish to eight on the night, and a quick stop in maccy d,s.for tea it was a most enjoyable evening, good fun fishing which doesn't need expensive or special equipment, a small small  feeder or float for will suffice, or pop into veals and we have some excellent LRF rods from as little as thirty quid, and with a few bits of terminal tackle and a few ragworm it's a good way of  whiling away a few hours in the fresh air.