After switching from bass to salt water fishing, due to moving near to the ocean in Japan, every fishing outing proved to be a new adventure. The first fish to grace my hook was a sillago, which was quite a lucky catch with a rather large hook at the end of my line. The only reason I caught the fish was because I used the right bait for it, which was a lugworm. The fish was quite large, measuring over a foot in length, so the hook was able to lodge itself into its mouth. Sadly, my target fish was horse mackerel which go after tiny shrimp bait. I continued fishing at the same spot, which was Numazu Port, and following my wife's advice, switched to proper bait and hooks. This allowed us to catch a bounty of horse mackerel, sardines and large gizzard shad, which somehow seemed to prefer my hook. No one else had the gizzard shad coming for a bite regularly.
A couple of pleasant months of weekend fishing passed by quickly. Then late one afternoon a young fellow asked my wife how I was able to hook the shad fish so often. If he asked me, I would have told him that I put some rhythm and action into releasing the bait, which led to a reaction on the hook setup, much in the same way as when I used rubbery worms when luring black bass. They kept talking for nearly an hour, and my wife told me that the young man talked a lot about a great fishing spot where anglers were casting bait from bait baskets and using a single shrimp baited hook to catch flounder, sea bass, striped beak perch, and red snapper. I wasn't sure what these fishes looked like, but curiosity was starting to rumble through my mind.
We were using fairly short fishing rods to toss out or short cast tiny shrimp bait which flowed out of nylon or loosely knit metal mesh fabric bait holders. They were about three-fourths of an inch in diameter, two inches long, and resembled a cone at the bottom end. Below this and separated by a swivel were a series of six to ten hooks resembling branches tied off the trunk of the main hook line with a small sinker at the bottom. Bait was not put on the hooks, which had shiny vinyl slivers attached to them resembling bait or fish skin. When the targeted fish mistakenly bit them while going after the shrimp bait, they were ours for the taking. It was not often that only one fish would get hooked with this setup. It was difficult for me to imagine using only one hook with shrimp bait on it to catch fish. I imagined that only a very few fish, if any, could be caught this way in a day of fishing.
We did not see the young fellow at Numazu Port again, and decided to take a look at the area he talked out, which was about three miles away along the coast line. When we saw the fishing site for the first time a week later, the view was breathtaking. The area is called Shizuura Port, and it has smaller facilities for commercial fishing boats unloading their catch than Numazu Port. What made this place outstanding is that fronting the port and facing Suruga Gulf of the Pacific Ocean is a high and wide seawall which is well over half a mile long and about 13 feet wide. A drop of 18 feet was startling when looking down into the ocean, compared to about five feet at Numazu Port. On the back end of the seawall surrounding the port is a marina for yachts and fishing boats.
There were a few people catching horse mackerel with a bait holder and a multi-hook setup similar to what we were using. They were fishing at the marina where the water as only two or three feet below the surface. They also had dandy looking fishing floaters which shot into the water when the fish were on the line. That looked like the kind of action which could keep my interest.
But the main attraction was facing the ocean up above on the seawall. It was an hour before sunset, and since we had our fishing gear and bait handy, we put them to use. Before the sun started setting, we had a portable ice chest half-filled with horse mackerel, plus a half-dozen striped beak perch which were about eight inches long, and a couple of blue-green girella about the same size. What unbelievable action in such a short time! This was definitely to be our fishing zone from this moment on.
We were overcome with quite a shock when we returned the next morning. The place was packed from end to the other. Almost everyone had fishing rods which were much longer than ours, fishing floaters congested the ocean, single hooks were cast with sturdy bait carrying baskets, and long telescopic nets were being used to scoop up and land the fish. I also got a glimpse of a beautiful red fish with a radiant blue trim around its eyes as it was pulled out of the water with a baitcast reel and gathered that it was a red snapper.
We spent quite a bit of time watching and taking note of the make and models of fishing rods and reels being used, as well as the fishing setup, which was nothing like our own. It was time to regroup, re-equip, and learn how to make Shizuura our fishing zone.
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