Camo Worm bitten off - no fish

[juscress]

I've recently migrated from bass fishing to try rock and surf fishing, I managed to catch a handful of shad on a 7ft spinning setup with fresh water mepps spinners, and a small crank bait.

Since then I upgraded to a 10ft rod, braid etc, got some iron candy spoons, bucktail jigs, chisel nose poppers, the works, caught sweet nothing, no shad, and certainly nothing bigger.

Anyway now Ive tried to mix it up and try soft plastic camo worms and all that I find happening is small fish nibbling the worm away over a few retrieves until I eventually have a bare hook.

how would I limit the chance of this happening? and actually catch some fish?

And any ideas on the spoon/lure side to catch shad/kingfish/Garrick etc?


I am fishing the chakas high rock and next to the chakas rock pools in the rocky structure.

Im not really phased about landing a monster fish, just be able to catch enough to call it fishing.


Thanks!

 

[Spool-Song]

Its fairly normal to have your camo worm munched off the hook. There are a number of culprits for that, including any of your smaller reef fish and probably the #1worm biter is a blaasop.

The small blacktail in that area are plentiful and are probably too small to swallow the worm hooks.

 

[Blikkiesvis]

I agree, those blaasoppies are a real menace sometimes! Not only with camo worm, but also other soft plastics. I've retrieved a couple of 5inch paddletails with those clean cut bite marks in.

With lures persistence pays... just carry on what you are doing and eventually something will pick you up.

I don't know your area at all, but your strike rate will improve with better fishing days. Do some research on this site, maybe there's some info here on what conditions is best.

Cheers

B