Thursday, March 16, 2006 

Serence is nice to get feeds

Still have to make a report about the float fishing nationals I have been past Sunday, meanwhile I have been busy making some klips for my Portuguese portal www.planetapesca.com to use on Serence software. Serence is basically a RSS feed reader, but capable of many configurations and perfect to follow many websites and blogs at same time.

I made one to get latest news of Planeta Pesca and one to follow latest posts and replies of the same site forum, last but not least you can easily configure any blog that has RSS to be pushed to Serence and that is awesome.

3:11 PM | |

Monday, March 06, 2006 

COMPETITION REPORT: 2nd. Regional Division - Tournament II

And I thought the worst already passed after last weekend, things were even looking better on the usual forecast for March 5. Competition was about to take place in Supertubos beach (Peniche), a known international surf spot, when heavy rain and strong wind from the north showed up. Once again I was going to compete up hill, against cold water, wind, rain and of course fiercely competitive fishermen. Ack!!! I used to enjoy this...



Things went almost lidentical to last week, just one small weaverfish was caught after being drawn a fishing place on a similar sand bank and 7th place in my section was a killer prize.

This time I didn't take my car to Peniche. I went with the guys in the team van so the camaraderie was very nice after the beating on the way back and two of my mates did catch a nice sea bass, exactly on the opposite side of the beach from me that was on the sheltered side... This happens often when there is stormy waters and some of the fish take cover in the protected places thus providing good fishing spots.

I need to start exercising during the weekdays to build up my endurance. Casting for four hours every ten minutes or so plus walking and stressing on the beach at the same time is hard work. I'm 37 years old and I was exhausted in the end. I cursed my week job as an internet system engineer that puts me in a chair for most part of the day and this gets me out of shape.

11:01 PM | |

Saturday, March 04, 2006 

Why and how to do a tercina

Ok, here's a good rig detail a lot of people don't know about, it's called "Tercina". It's a very simple thing to do but also very important if we plan to use powercasting or rig with very delicate nylon.














Basically its a line twist and a knot on the top of the rig that will attach to the clip of the spool line and why we do this? Because the twist acts as a shock absorber for impact when we cast. It has many advantages from the line not breaking to preserving bait on the cast.

It's so common to see surfcasters using strong shockleaders and then forgetting to make a "tercina" on the rig... then letting the whole thing break where the weakest link lies, the rig.

4:03 AM | |

Wednesday, March 01, 2006 

COMPETITION REPORT: 2nd. Regional Division - Tournament I


After some training and serious rigging I believed I was prepared for the first real challenge of the season. Looking to weather predictions on Windguru and Portuguese Meteo Institute for Feb. 26, things didn´t look good at all, heavy rain and wind would hit the Consolação (Peniche, Portugal) beach exactly when fishing would take place. Wind would come N-NE and waves would grow from 1m to 3,2m during the tournament. I prepared hard cover and strong rigs for the day.


Arriving there I saw how dificcult things would really be. Cold water and harsh conditions would make everything a gamble where resilience will also play an important role. In the end I was heavily rained upon during 3 of the 4 hours of the competition and wind raging from 10km/h to 45km/h which is very hard when you are also trying to have some fun.

The competition itself didn't go as well as I expected. I was assigned the most horrible spot on the beach, really! My side partner amd I were shaking our heads in disgust from the start. We got a big sand bank in front of us, preventing us from getting a reasonable water level in the first hour of fishing and making both of us to power cast right from scratch which is not always successful. I ended up getting a small Spotted Bass on my second cast, by then still believing things would flow nicely. Unfortunately good fish wasn't supposed to come for me that day. Things went exactly the opposite from training day.

I was very disappointed since the Weaver fish and Turbot I was ready to catch weren't there. I was exhausted in the end, and came in 8th place which was worse news. Better days will come, hopefully this following Sunday.

4:29 PM | |