Chonage for beginners — reading the sand twenty metres out

Chonage — literally a short cast — means lobbing a light two-hook rig on a wire boom twenty or thirty metres out and dragging it slowly back along the bottom. You do not need the hundred-metre casts of proper surf fishing. The fish are closer than people assume: a few tens of metres off a sandy beach, or on the drop-off along a boat channel inside a fishing port. A shop-bought rig set and a 2.4 m compact rod cover it, which also makes this the easiest method to carry on a train.

Look behind you before every cast

The one clear danger here is the cast itself. The sinker weighs 40 to 55 grams and will seriously injure anyone it hits. Turn and look before you swing. Where people are close, or on a narrow breakwater, use an underhand lob that never goes over anyone's head. If a child is casting, stand beside them and clear the space yourself first.

Bait and the retrieve

Bait is jarime or aoisome — the marine worms sold in every Japanese tackle shop, kept in a small tray of damp sand. Thread the worm onto the hook and leave one or two centimetres trailing. More tail brings more bites and more stolen bait. After the cast, tighten the line, move the rod tip slowly to drag the rig about half a metre, then stop for five to ten seconds. Drag, stop, drag, stop: the pause is what triggers the bite, so watch the tip closely while it is still.

Where to aim

A beach looks uniform until you watch the surf for a few minutes; then you start seeing the lanes where waves roll through without breaking, which are the deeper gutters. Fish travel along them. In a port, the equivalent is the edge of the boat channel and any change in the bottom near the head of the breakwater. You are hunting for a step in otherwise flat sand, and fan your casts across an arc rather than repeating the same line, which finds that step much faster.

The season decides who answers

• Sandy beaches, summer to autumn: shirogisu (Japanese whiting). Caught in numbers, and superb as tempura.
• River mouths in autumn: mahaze (yellowfin goby), often right at your feet — the best choice with children.
• Breakwaters, winter to spring: makogarei (marbled flounder), which is a put-it-down-and-wait fishery.
• Along the rocks and rubble of a pier: kasago (rockfish), which will take the rig simply tapped along the bottom.

Getting unsnagged

Dragging the bottom means snagging it. First change the angle rather than the force: walk left or right and pull from a different direction. If it will not come, point the rod straight down the line, wrap a towel around your hand, and pull until it breaks. Never lever a snag out with the rod — that is how rods break. Sometimes a rig has to be left in the sea, but recover every centimetre of line you can and take the cut pieces home. Loose monofilament in the water is what kills seabirds.

Expect by-catch. Gonzui carries venomous spines and pufferfish cut leaders with their teeth; do not grab either with a bare hand. When a fish is awkward to unhook, cutting the dropper and tying on a fresh hook is faster and safer than fighting it.