A go-kart sea trout trip

Hazy morning

Martin Joergensen

This is an 11 year old report that I dusted off and translated. The trip accounted for took place on October the 1st 2006, which was the day that Formula 1 was run in China that year. My plan was to fish early and be back in time to watch the rerun of the race in TV. It all worked out as planned and even turned out to be an excellent fishing trip.

So it was planned

as a Formula 1 trip, but although there was a single good fish caught, the rest were more in the go-kart league. On the bright side though, there were many of them. I think I released 12-15 fish between 35 and 40 cm or some 14-16 inches, while the single one, which was bigger, was taken for the pot.

I needed to leave

home early to be able to be back to watch the race, and managed pretty well. The first fish was registered on camera at 5:47 after only a few casts. This was more than an hour before the sun rose. Even at that time it was quite light, but nevertheless I had a very good feeling of early morning when I stepped into the virgin water at my first selected spot. I had been driving in fog the last bit of the way there, and the haze still hung heavily over the water when I started fishing. It staid there well into the day.

Morning ambiance

Martin Joergensen

To my great surprise

I was the only one there, and I actually had it all to myself for more than two hours before a spin fisherman very resolutely stepped into the water a bit away. I had been fishing where he entered, and there were no fish there. However, the little spot that I had chosen, closer to the parking lot, gave me seven small fish before I pulled the plug, went on shore and moved to another spot. I had several more after the fly, saw many fish in the surface plus a couple which jumped out of the water. However, they were all small, and none of them probably more than 40 centimeters or about 15-16 inches.

Packing lightly

Martin Joergensen

On my new spot

there were people fishing already. A pair of spin fishermen stood very firmly planted right by the small attractive point found to the left at this location. The small, tempting stone reef to the right was also occupied – in this case by a fly fisher. I went a little further to the left and fished the very deep through behind the sand bars without any results other than lots of weed on the leader and fly.

So I picked up

my backpack and walked a bit. A little further ahead you reach a house located right on the beach. In front of it, there's a large, flat stone reef which I had fished many times before. Conditions were good, and I put down my pack and jumped in while casting over the shallow water.

Plenty small fish

Martin Joergensen

And lo and behold!

There were a lot of fish here too! I did not see any of them before they took the fly, but there were many contacts, a couple that were hooked and long distance released themselves. But six fish did come to hand and were released again, while one bigger fish earned a whack over the neck and was brought home to eat.

The sun eventually

broke through the fog and revealed lots of people on the beach. I wasn't bothered because there was plenty of space in the water. I could now see two fishermen further to my left, and even more than before at my previous spot, now visible in the distance to the right. At least 2-3 anglers had chosen the already crowded location as their spot of the day.

However, I had

an appointment with Schumi and Alonso and all the other boys in the Formula 1 field, so I left and drove home a little before noon. I was watching the race on rerun as I wrote the last words of the original report on our internal report web site. There were seven laps left of the race when I posted it, and the race was as close as it could be. Alonso and Schumacher were basically neck to neck both in the race and in the world championship, and there were just two races left in addition to the remaining seven laps here.

Other people

Martin Joergensen

This morning Shumacher won

what would be the 91st and last Formula 1 victory in his long and outstanding career. He returned to racing in 2010 driving for Mercedes, but didn't manage any wins. Alonso won the 2006 overall championship, Schumi finishing second.

Food

Martin Joergensen