Sabiki fishing for beginners — where almost everyone catches their first fish

Sabiki fishing uses a rig of five or six small feathered hooks fished alongside a cage packed with tiny krill. The krill drifts out, small fish move in to feed, and in that cloud they mistake the flashing hooks for food. There is no cast to learn and no strike to time: you stand on the pier, drop it at your feet, and catch horse mackerel, sardines, mackerel and sardinella. As a way of not going home empty-handed on your first day, nothing beats it — which is why it is the entry point in every Japanese fishing port.

What you need

A 3.6 m isozao (a soft telescopic shore rod) rated around size 3, a 2500-size spinning reel, and nylon main line of size 3. That combination handles everything from small horse mackerel to mackerel. Match the hook size on the rig (roughly size 3 to 6) to the fish that are running; when unsure, go smaller. Bait is a frozen block of amiebi krill or the tube type that keeps your hands clean. Add a bucket on a rope, a cool box, and a life jacket — most breakwaters have no railing, and that item is not optional.

The whole method, in three steps

• Pack the cage with krill. Do not cram it; loosely full is better.
• Drop it straight down at your feet. Let it reach the bottom, then wind up one or two metres.
• Shake the rod up and down two or three times to release the krill, then wait about ten seconds. Repeat.

A bite shows as a fine trembling in the rod tip. Do not snatch it up: wait a few seconds and fish will often take the neighbouring hooks too. When you do lift, wind at a steady speed and never stop — pausing is what loses them.

When nothing is happening

Change depth before you change anything else: try the bottom, mid-water and just under the surface, two metres at a time. These are schooling fish, so timing matters as much as depth — dawn, dusk, and the hours when the tide is actually moving. If there is still nothing, look at the rig of whoever nearby is catching and match your hook size to theirs. In a busy port, copying the person who is catching is the fastest form of research.

After you land one

Horse mackerel have soft mouths, so unhook them quickly and put them straight into seawater with ice in it. That single habit changes how they taste. Mackerel and sardines spoil fast; if you intend to eat them raw, be serious about chilling them. Do not grip fish bare-handed — use a fish grip or a towel. Gonzui, a venomous catfish, turns up on the same rigs, so if you cannot identify a fish, do not hold it.

Before you leave, draw a bucket of seawater and wash down the ground where you stood. Sabiki attracts fish and it also makes the biggest mess of any shore method; the ports where people rinse the concrete are the ports that stay open. And if you keep a few small horse mackerel alive, you have live bait for nomase fishing — the natural next step on the same breakwater.