INDIANANGLER

Hi All
Does any one know of an effective working lure to catch
salt water Garfish (needle fish), (Kolan in Malayalam)?
Seen a lot swimming around near sea shore, where I fish.
Saw some videos on rope lures being effective. I made some as instructed
but never caught any, could be that I am doing some wrong technique,
Anyone a specialist on garfish? then please lend some tips.
thank you
Cheers.

Hi HC,

This is the easiest thing to do. Use 10lb line , use a ball float no lead weight. keep the float not more than 12" from the hook. use the smallest hook possible. Get either mackerel or sardine , fillet them , salt them and keep rolled in a news paper. use the fillet the next day cut into small cubes less than 1/2 inch squares. Cast the set up where you see the fish and give a couple of twiches to the terminal set up in order to create some commotion and attract the fish. wait for a couple of minitues if nothing happens repeat the twich again.Once the fish takes the bait and the float starts moving wait to a count of 30 and strike gently. If you strike hard the gars teeth will cut your line. You can also catch ballyhoo the same way .

Jeen

This technique works on mullets too .. only the guys here at nariman point are more innovative .. they take two corn ( butta) where the corn has already been eaten .. tie a bit of mono between the 2 pieces and tie approx 10 small hooks baited with regular pau or bread ( only the inside soft part ) and cast the rig out near the mullets and wait for the mullets to come to where the rig is as the schools of mullets keep circling around in the same place . Once near the rig the twitching starts very very slightly all the time slowly pulling the bait towards the breakwater .. when one mullet takes the bait and gets hooked the slight commotion gets the other mullets to the rig like moths to a flame nad right through this the twitching goes on ,, By the time the rig reaches the breakwater there are a minimum of 3 mullets still hooked .... simple , innovative ,,, and no fancy gear and it works everytime ...

last week we caught more than 25 of them (ballyhoo) using cuttle fish as bait.....
best way to attract them is to attract smaller school of bait fish.....
we used bread and crushed khaboos to attract bait fish and gar fish
then used exactly the same setup and technique suggested by Jeen....
and landed 25 of them in 1 hour....
its difficult to remove hook when they are gut hooked and thats the case when you wait for long after they have taken the bait
also we used 5lb line and hook no 14 and twisted it a little bit....
size of bait was very very small.... it was just to cover the hook with bait and not the size suggested by jeen(that is too big)

Thank you Jean and Fred
will try both the techniques.
and have some bbq butta too
HC

Hi ,

Hoze is right. The size of the bait sugested by me was too big. Got my measurements mixed up. The cubes can just enough to cover the hook.

Jeen

Gar should take spinners as well. I have had a few chasing them and even strike, but never caught any...was targeting something else.

I use blinks (metal spoons) long thin and shiny is teh best, the only thing i change is yhe number off split rings between the hook and lure i put 4 instead off the sandard one, these are my favorits
http://www.fiskegrej.dk/Varedetaljer.as ... Category=3

Hi everyone
I made a rope lure like the one in this video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_eIIH1X27k

and tried for almost a hour, saw some foot long gars chasing behind, but no strikes.
so gave up, think i will try the long spoons.
Cheers

Garfish & ballyhoo are quite easy to catch.

Garfish: Float fishing with small hooks & tiny pieces of bait. As Jeen said....cast & wait for a min & then retreive slowly. Or, 5 - 10lb line, light rod & sabiki rig with a very small piece of lead.....cast @ 40 - 50mtrs & reel in with a steady reterive & slight twitching. Desmond has even got them on small poppers.

Ballyhoo: float fishing - sometimes on Bread & sometimes on really tiny pieces of shrimp. They can be caught at will, but sometimes are veg & at times non-veg. Sorry guys I have no clue why, but at times I have caught them on shrimp & the following week, they refuse shrimp & can be caught on bread. Does anyone have any clue why ?

Maybe they are health conscious like us

I got them all on the same rig with float and small size hooks and the bait use was tiny pieces if shrimp. They dont strike the bait once they come close to the rocks. It is very important that you keep the bait floating upto 1 feet. I used to use a empty ball point pen in the rig to keep it floating. Never got them on popper but yes those crazy fish were 2 to 3 feeters in Ajman and in Dubai marina.

mepps; silver, numbers 3, 4 and 5.