That horrible feeling when you hook a fish but you can feel your line rubbing against the rough stuff

I wanted to get out fishing yesterday but I was up against it with the sort of stuff which gets in the way of fishing, so I only managed a short sharp session - and came back broken! After finding so much weed on my local open coast the other day I chose to head for an estuary mark and some current I knew would be running well into the ebb tide. I have had some good bass from this particular spot in the past but I don’t fish it much these days for various reasons…………..

Please note that the me into a fish photos here are from a session on this mark when things did go my way

And you have probably had something like this happen to you a good few times before. I rock up, there’s nobody around, I set myself up with a lure and jighead combination which has worked for me before on this spot, and I get to it (Seadra 2/0 7g weedless jig head and the Savage Gear Ned Dragontail Slug). First cast is a bit of a sighter if you like. How fast is the current actually running, how is the wind which is nearly in my face affecting how I can help the lure to bump along the bottom, how much of an angle do I need to give the cast to let me place the lure where I want to with the wind and so on. Second cast and I feel like I’m fishing now.

Third cast and as the lure starts to trundle towards where I know there is some particularly rough ground, I get that unmistakable tap, tap. My heart misses a couple of beats and I go with the lure as the tap suddenly goes bang and I set the hook. My rod tip slams over hard and I feel that gorgeous thump which all anglers live for - the tug is the drug and all that. I can tell straight away that this is a decent bass by how hard my rod is banging over and the weight I can feel at the end of it. When I say decent though, all I really know is that what I’ve hooked isn’t a baby bass! As the bass tries to get its head down again a second time, I suddenly feel that horrible feeling you don’t want to feel when you’re hooked up to a fish………..

I know where the roughest ground is on this mark and it’s where I have had some good bass from. The fish I hooked yesterday came from where I believe this roughest ground to be. It has happened to me before on this mark and I have no doubt it will happen again - that horrible “rubbing” feeling you sometimes get when your leader or mainline happens to be rubbing up against something rough when you’ve got a fish on. Sometimes you get away with it and sometimes you don. Yesterday I didn’t get away with it. Thump, thump, Henry grinning like a loon, snap, gutted!

I was fishing with a roughly 3’ long 15lb fluorocarbon leader and when I wound in it was badly frayed about twelve inches above where the lure clip to jig head was a moment before. I was gutted to lose the fish but obviously pleased to have hooked up so early in the brief session. There were fish around, or at least there had been because I didn’t get another hit and I was left cursing what had happened. You all have a good weekend and may your leader or mainline not rub up against anything rough if you hook a few fish…………

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