Inshore Day Game – Yokohama Bay

2008/09/062020/11/25

I got really sick of the past 2 weeks full of hard work and social bullocks, so I called Pallas' Shikanai-san for the trip to the dream world and fled to the dock at warp speed.

Sinking Streamer Game

Boat left the dock at 4:30 with the tide still too low for surface game, so the captain took me out to NK Platform, well known spot full of good size sea perches. Captain instructed me to cast the line all the way beneath the platform by the pillars. Tactics for presentation was to sink the line into designated depth and drift it to where sea perches were roaming. It was quite difficult to read how current flows 60 feet under water, so I wasn't expecting to catch anything there.

At about 3rd cast and retrieve, I felt a heavy bite on my EP minnow fly. The fish was pulling hard into the depth where it came from, and it surely felt 5 times more powerful than the same specie I caught in the night game. After 5 minutes of fighting, fish surfaced and it was 56cm (private record breaker) long skinny sea perch. 2 fish caught in this game method.

Surface Game with Iwai Minnow

Capt. Shikanai took me through how to effectively present floating minnow to fish tightly hiding by the wall. In this game, you are asked to cast fly line parallel to the wall and present your fly within 15cm from it. It took me 15 casts to get an idea of what I had to do achive that precision, then when I managed to mimic captain's art, I got school of sea perches chasing my floating minnow. On the first run, 3 fishes were attacking my fly simultaneously, and the last one took it. Water surface exploded and fish ate my fly and run like Forest Gump.

Once getting hang of it, I got about 40 boils on my fly, but it was difficult to keep the fish interested in it unless fly stays withn 15 cm from wall. I couldn't give satisfying presentation on my leftside which probably lost me lords of opportunities. 4 fish caught in this method.

If you ever have choice between sinking game and floating game, I would strongly recommend to go with floating game which is pure adlenalin experience.

Meeting a Pair of Dolphins

While moving to next point, I found a large creature diving nose down. At first, I thought I saw a shark, but soon discovered that there were a pair of dolphins. Dolphins in Tokyo Bay!? Yes, it was my first time to meet them here, but this bay does welcome many aquatic animals including great white shark, so this is inevitable. They were grooving around for about 15 minutes and disappeared into the deep water.

Results

Sea perches x 6
20 -56 cm

Battle Scur

Gosh! My muscle ache from casting with 10wt floating and sinking tackle. Also, SA SharkSkin worn off my stripping hand badly that I had to call a day before catching second digit. My back hurts from exhaution from the week's work and day's game.

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