The increasingly cold temperatures and the arrival of low pressure that brings rain and rough sea, are the best times to return to the cliff to fish in search of some nice fish.
Let's leave the maggot at home for once and devote ourselves to shrimp fishing in this environment as fascinating as it is difficult and bizarre. The shrimp is an often deadly bait that can make a real difference in some situations because it is part of the diet of fish that gravitate around the cliff in search of food.
Fishing with natural baits will always make the difference on fish of a good size, the most suspicious of all!
Fishing moments
First of all, we have to decide the "time" of the day, when we want to go fishing, we can, in fact, decide to do it, day or night. Depending on the choice we make, the conditions we need to look for to maximise the chance of catching some nice fish will also vary.
During the day, in fact, the best conditions to achieve some good catch are those in which we have rough sea or rising sea. The first situation occurs when after a storm, the sea decreases its wave movement, gradually going to fade, but leaving in suspension a whole series of debris containing microorganisms, annelids, crabs, but also shrimps and small fish transported at the mercy of currents.
The second situation, on the other hand, occurs when we go to the cliff before the storm begins. Most of the time, the hours that can be fished on the rising sea are not many, two or three, at best four or five, depending on the intensity of the storm, but they are sufficient, in most cases, to give us noteworthy catches.
Obviously, before you venture onto a cliff, always assess the situation very well.
With the favor of the dark...
Under stable conditions, in planning our fishing trips there is an essential element, which we must always know: "the tide". In these situations, bites are more frequent in the two or three hours before the high tide, and in the two or three hours after it.
So if during the day with rising sea the tide can play a "marginal" role, because the sustained movement of the backwash can keep the fish active throughout the day, at night, in stable conditions, the fish follow much more strict rules and food schedules, and therefore, go fishing at the wrong time, can lead us to make failure and we can assure you that you can do a lot while trying to respect and take care of every little detail, and trying to "read the sea" in the best way possible.
The sense of fish
Once we have chosen the "moment" in which to go fishing, we will go to the cliff chosen for our fishing trip, natural or artificial, and we will have to try to understand where and how to put our trap.
We will have to try to prefer those points, where our line, by the action of the backwash, moves back and forth, always stationed in a more or less restricted area, of the order of a few meters. The point where two currents cross, or the current turns interrupted by the presence of large rocks, are the best spots to try to undermine some beautiful sea bass or some beautiful sargo, it is here in fact that the fish find most of their food at the mercy of the currents that always accumulate it in specific points.
Fishing with a live shrimp, there is no type of baiting, except for the "natural" one of the sea, and therefore we must be very good at understanding the right points, such as those indicated above, where to dip the baits.
The fish have to eat during the day, it is all about understanding when and in which areas of the reef to fish, and even without pasturage, and simply exploiting the currents of the sea, you can get results worthy of note.
Transparent deceptions
The shrimp is a small crustacean that is located near the cliffs, transparent to reddish in color, may also have darker streaks throughout the body, its food activity manifests itself mostly at night, but you can also find it during the day, in the small holes between the rocks.
Among the undoubted advantages of shrimp fishing there is its great economy, as we can find it on site in the recesses of the cliff in a completely independent way, and therefore at no cost.
In late autumn, compared to the other seasons, shrimps become more sparse, and they are scarce in the surface layers, due to the colder water. If in the summer we can find a good quantity of them, in the winter this does not happen. Then we will be forced to leave the small cylindrical keepnet, with a good opening on one of the two lateral ends a little more time in water.
Inside the latter, we will put two or three sardines, cut into three or four chunks, and, with the help of a stone, we will crush them a little, in order to better release the oils of the sardine itself, in order to spread in the water a scented trail able to recall in an irresistible way the shrimp, making them enter into the keepnet itself. The latter will be tied to a cord, with which we will lift it at regular intervals of ten, fifteen minutes.
The shrimps recalled by the scented wake will be intent on eating the pieces of sardine, and when we lift the keepnet they will not have time to escape from the hole of entry. In the search for shrimps, we can alternate different positions on different cliffs, in order to make a case study, and choose accordingly the most profitable points.
I would also like to point out that a dozen shrimps will suffice to carry out a catch of a few hours, given the low frequency of bites that we will find in the period in question, so it is useless to try to catch dozens and dozens of shrimps losing hours and hours, taking time away from the fishing action.
While fishing...
Now let's analyze the fishing equipment, also taking care of no less important aspect, concerning the correct trigger of the shrimp. First of all, let's talk about the rod, we will use a medium - rigid bolo one, since we will use rigs that will never go below 0.16mm.
We always recommend using a seven-meter, as we believe it is the right compromise between length and manoeuvrability; moreover, given that we often fish in fairly important backwash conditions, using a seven-meter, in spite of the five or six, we manage to keep the line banned at a proper distance from the outcropping rocks. In case of catch, then, we can better manage the leaks of the fish, if it decides to aim threateningly at entangling in the ports of the submarine, managing to move it away, precisely by levering on the length of the rod itself.
The reel will be of size 2500/3000, loaded with a good silicone nylon of 0.22, in order to better resist both abrasion and salt. On the main line, we can use a float of variable weight between three and five grams, spherical in shape, such as leaded balls, or the classic float rod, with starlight holder.
Since we fish with a live bait, which moves in itself, regardless of the softness of the rig, we recommend, for the realization of the latter, to use an excellent fluorocarbon of 0.20, also very resistant to abrasion. It could happen, in fact, that the presence of insidious rocks on the submerged seabed object of our fishing trip, as well as the numerous mussels that live attached to them, went, during the fight with the fish, to affect our rig, with the risk of tearing, thus frustrating all our efforts.
The final, about one meter long, will be free to follow the movements of the shrimp within the current flow, and will be connected to the main line with a junction knot, or, with a simple swivel. At the lower end, there will be a hook of sizes ranging from number six to number ten.
Fishing action
Well, now that everything is ready, we just have to carefully extract a nice live shrimp from our bucket, we will trigger it from the second ring, counting from the lower end, or that of the tail, taking care to do so with a firm movement, neither too superficial, nor too deep, but about half the thickness of the body of the small crustacean.
We will then adjust the bottom, from the hook to the float, detaching us of about fifty, seventy centimeters from the bottom, in order to avoid that the shrimp can stick to the bottom, and to allow it to show all its catching potential in the deeper layers of the water, where the fish, in this period, is more active.