Garfish ‘Imsell’ Season here
This year is looking promising as there has already been a few Garfish caught from shore. This could be various reasons for the Garfish starting to be seen close to our shores again. In my opinion there was a lack of Garfish the last few years with fish farms being the contributing factors especially there used to be large numbers around the Tuna pens & seldom seen close to shore. I would say that the main contributing factor of the Garfish seen closer to our shores would be that due to the big fish hunt the smaller fish could be driving them in closer to the shores. In fact even Dorado ‘Lampuki’ which also hunts Garfish has come closer to shore.
To rig up for fishing this species there is not a requirement for alot of tackle, it is a simple rig up. We can either use a fishing Pole if we manage to get it to come in close to the shore or otherwise we can use the Rod & Reel to enable us to cast out a little further.
The most important thing to have is a good ground bait to enable us to lure the Garfish closer to our fishing spot & keep it as close as possible. The mixture I personally use with success are ground bait prepared with the following ingredients a little Sardine Mix, Herring Meal, Sardine that comes in the buckets & sardine oil , obviously I use the Ellevi Brand that always gave me good results.
If using a telescopic pole best to rig up with very light tackle as the Garfish tend to notice alot & will soon scatter away , use a small dia around 0.16 line & hook size between size 14 & size 9 . Length of rod I use is between 6 & 8 Mtrs. I normally use 0.16 Line as the main line around a mtr shorter than the rod & finish off with a leader of 0.12 & tie only 1 hook at the end. For this technique I do not use any lead or floats, although if you are not able to see the bait you can always use a very small float less than 1 gr.
When using the rod & reel combination I like to use the floating Bombarda which we rig up on the mainline we have on the spool & a leader of about 1 ½” mtrs 0.12 line & hook same as above between size 14 & size 9. We can also use a controller float or the fill up type floats but these are not ideal in this day & age.
With regards to bait there is quite a lot of different baits you can use such as Korean Worm, shrimp, Strips of Mackerel or Bullet Tuna also you can use thin strips of Garfish itself.
If you need any more information you can easily find me on Facebook
Tight Lines
Peter Paul Azzopardi
