starting fishing in abu dhabi

[slimtrader10]

hello all

i am looking to start fishing in abu dhabi and looking for any local info i.e places to fish ,baits,best method etc

thanks

[Sunny]

Hi Slim' I don't know Abu Dhabi at all, but the style of fishing will be no different to that in Dubai; same fish etc.

The best method seems to be livebaiting with a small fish called Ballyhoo (international name is Halfbeak), a picture below:



You catch them with tiny pieces of float fished fish flesh or bread. keep the hooks very small, best size 12 or smaller. Fish about 6-12 inches deep, on a light waggler float (or similar) close to the margins.

The Ballyhoo can be fished as livebait, but will also work okay as a deadbait. Best ledgered in a reasonable depth of water, so finding a suitable land mark that allows you access to cast in to deeper water is a must. Takes are fast and violent, so set your drag or use a baitrunner reel.

Learn from my mistakes use a wire trace - like those used for pike in the UK - and then a 5 foot plus rubbing trace of at least 50Lb nylon.

Another mistake I made was to use a small 2500 size shimano reel with 20Lb braid. I practically got 'spooled' by a big King....only the failed snap swivel brought the run to a conclusion !
So you will need a reasonable sized fixed spool reel (shimano 4000 or bigger) and loaded with something like 20lb braid. Some of the guys use nylon mainline and I guess it comes down to spool capacity.....so the larger the reel the easier it will be to go to nylon. But whichever you chose be prepared for runs over 100 metres.

The other option is spinning. I'm no lure expert, so hopfully the other guys will chip in here. I've managed plenty of small Queen fish on toby lures, which are very cheap and sold in packs of 4 in LuLu supermarkets....cheap as chips.
But the real fish are taken on soft plastics or rapala lures.... but I'm new to these so cannot really advise. I think the red & white rapalas work best.....but will be happy to be corrected