Fishing for Blotched Picarel
This time of year there is quite a few species of fish that you can fish for but one of the nicest species that we can find this time of year is the Blotched Picarel . It is a good eating fish & they can give a good fight especially when using light tackle.
There is quite a few techniques that you can use when fishing for this fish but most important would be a good ground bait as usual. There is 2 different ground baits that you can use for the Blotched Picarel of the best in the water ground-bait brand Ellevi you can have one that consists of sardine mix or another one that can be used special bouge. You can also add some sardine oil with the sardine mix as it does help to attract this species of fish.
When fishing for the Blotched Picarel you never know where you can find this type of fish but I always prefer to fish for it in open waters, when you manage to attract this fish into your fishing spot normally you would find that they swim in large quantities. If we do manage to keep it in our fishing grounds you can catch quite allot.
When using a fishing pole it is key to ground bait as close as possible to the spot you are intending to fish and start fishing out with the area of the ground-bait & eventually star coming in closer. Use the lightest tackle you are used to using for the line, hooks between size 9 to 12 & float one from 1.5 gr. to 3 gr. When setting up for this spiecies the float is to be set from around 1 mtr to 3 mtrs deep all depending where the fish are at the time. When placing the lead shots to the line ensure that there is at 30 cm to 50cm away from least the last one to the hook.
If it is noticeable that Picarel does not want to bite closer to shore then it would be best to use a rod and reel rigged with a running float to enable us to cast further. With regards to the tackle to use and rig up all the above mentioned for when using just the pole still stands when fishing this technique.
Picarel can also be fished off the cliffs but in this instance you would not use the float but use a different set up with the lead weight at the bottom of the rig. It is a matter of just letting out the line just under your fishing spot & try different depths until you find at what stage the Picarel are biting.
There is quite alot of bait that you can use for catching Picarel but the simplest & effective bait you can use are 'Korean' worm & frozen shrimps.
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Tight Lines
Peter Paul Azzopardi
