hi guys...if possible i would like to know how Xilep could be caught?!??!
don't know maybe spinners or whatever.....
could someone please help...
You don't catch Xilep on spinners.They are a type of bream (cow bream) and they mostly eat underwater vegetation.you can easily catch them on farka or magun but the best bait for them is sellieh (a type of seaweed).
Xilep are quite hard to catch. If you're not a pro, I suggest you look at something different. They are caught as Martin said with Sellieh either very early in the morning or at sunset. I have personally experienced many times a shoal of xilep practically trying to climb on land to scrape sellieh (A green type of sea vegetation). Another way to catch xilep is with a small net which you use when they are trying to scrape sellieh from the shore line. This technique is very traditional and is mostly used in the Sliema and Qawra area.
Well as ciappinu said they are quite difficult to catch (or more like to land espicially the bigger ones) as they are very hard fighting fish and you can easily end up breaking a fishing pole with them if you dont know what youre doing...
until you try, you can't tell. If you want to catch xilep easily, go to kemuna they bite like vopi :D :D :D :D :D :D
Or else wait for a good weather cause until you find a good weather for it it won't bite.
very cunning fish and getting smarter as time passes!!! Might catch it on bread but sellieh is better, depends.
Once one of them did bite on gambli which was particularly strange. i used to catch a lot from sant iermu area and they can grow!!! not quite edible though that's why i don't go for it often
ohh verry thanks to ciappinu MartinB and Granitu... so the sellieh, you just put it in the hook... as normal?? couldn't find what cow bream (Xilep) eats on the net.
if someone maybe has a picture of sellieh... much appreciated.
so xilep are not good to eat.!?
by the way ciappinu... the net you mentioned...
what kind of next you were talking about?? the Cast net (terrieha)?
I think thats the net ciappinu was mentioning but that really does take a big ammount of skill & patience to use effectively!!
I coudn't find a picture of sellieh but you can easily find it around the shore line especially in shallow water where it will be growing on rocks or submerged objects..
As regarding eating xilep some people do eat them however you need to clean their stomach cavity extremely well...personally i find them sour tasting & i don't really like them,but i know some people who say its one of the best fish & wouldn't eat anything else...However there may be a reason for this!! :- check out this article from a popular uk aquarium magazine :) :D :D
http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/pfk/pages/item.php?news=911
ohh thnks about that article martin, but eating xilep was surely not in my ideas!
cooking them for a dog may be an option.
will try later next month, i think it's better to have thin lines for xilep?
.20 would we good for a 30 cm xilpa? or lesS?
If its a 30cm one your talking 1kg+ easy and when they grow to that size they fight hard! line size depends on where you are fishing i sometimes used .18 in some places or in clear conditions but where the big ones lurk i used to use .25
Its not that .20 can't cope with the weight its just the sheer power of these fish..if you catch a big one you will know what im talking about.
The best time for them is early morning especially exactly after a storm or rough sea when the water will still be murky.Groundbait well & fish pretty close to the bottom (with sellieh or even farka) you will know when you hook one cos they don't bob the float like mullet they just take it straight down (like a big sargu) and they bust up light wieght fishing poles like you wouldn't beleive! i actually posted a thread about xilep before
http://maltafishingforum.com/talk/index.php?topic=63.msg3186#msg3186
Those were the days, back in the eighties when I was still living in Xaghajra ta Zabbar, fishing for xilip. As posted earlier, best time for the is early morning, especially after either high winds, or a storm. You need to find a place where you can scrape the seaweed, this is used as ground bait. The ideal spot, known in Maltese as (il-lokk) would be in turbulant waters with enough surf produced to hide the line. The leader would be .18mm and main line .26mm. As bait you use sellieha....the greener and longer the better. You use a special technique to turn the sellieha around the hook and line. Hook size is normally 8 or 9 tal qazba twila!.
They are great fighters, and what you normally do on hook up is that you use the surf coming in to help you maneuver the fish onto the rocks.
Xilip have a reputation as not being that good to eat.
use braids else they will get away because they bite the line. make sure you use extra long hooks than normal and using sellieh there is a way how to tie it on the hook. else you won't figure it out!!!
I used to fish for xilep in Bugibba, just below the bocci club when I was about 10 years old. The smaller ones called "Gerwiel" are very easy to catch and I used to catch between 20 and 30 on a good day with bread and a stinky mash provided from an eighty year old fisherman who didnt fish anymore. The bigger ones where more difficult to catch and you had to find the perfect day for them. Since I was so young I wasn't able to tell that a day after a stormy day was good. A good day was just a good day since I went everyday!
NICE ARTICLE, WE CAN SELL THEM NEAR THE DETOX CENTRE MELA THESE FISH LOL. i rekon once i caught a big xilpa from sant iermu and it was full of human hair and pieces of basal, wonder how this has a hallegoneicv tendency, with all that eats.
just a small question... what are braids? (a kind of line i imagine) but what's the difference?
(i'm kwazi still new to fishing) lol
thanks all for the help
Braid's or Spectra are part of what's known as superfilaments, basically very thin very strong line. You can use a very small diameter line but with high strength, letting you pack more on a reel etc. But Braids do not have stretch in them like mono so you have to bear that in mind.
thnks skip.... so braid does not stretch, therefore it is snaps faster than the mono.
so is it recommended to use for xilep??
It means that 20lbs braid will break at around 20lbs whereas most 20lbs mono will break at say 30lbs as the have some stetch before it breaks.
i use braids for a simple reason with xilep, cause i use the technique called "pesca a tocco".
I don't want stretch and just wan t pull the fish out of the water immediately. Else you will only catch one out of a shoal of maybe 100!! Also braids can go lower in diameters and superlines even more. a superline normally has a 0.057 diameter with breaking strain of 7kgs.
It is the basic technique used for kahli and as known, it may be used for xilep too. you might get lucky and catch kahli with xilep if you fish with bread. But xilep tends to prefer sellieha at times but in good weather anything is good to eat for them
Just to clarify for all Braid/Superline/Superfilament/Spectra are all the same thing! by manufacturers such as Spiderwire, Berkley, Power pro, Spiderwire Fusion, Berkley Whiplash etc
essentiallly yes but they are quite different in detail. superlines tend to have coated fibre on them that hides the braid. spectra on the other hand is more the braid type. Majorl i use spider wire, it is good enough but the old fireline (the smokey) gave me some really good results
As the above ppl have already said, best bait is sellieha. Also at least from Mscala I used to catch it with hniex tal-korea during nights and using a very thin line (0.12 / 0.14mm). The most important thing in my opinion for them is to have a lot of patience ghax ikollok hafna qtuh. Goodluck man.
i used to go there. tafu lil dak ta xaghru bajda jistad ghal mulett u ghax xilep??? ok hafna qisu gesu ;D ;D ;D
Quotei use braids for a simple reason with xilep, cause i use the technique called "pesca a tocco".
I don't want stretch and just wan t pull the fish out of the water immediately.
.
That's basically how i always fished for them,what i used to do was take the first 2 sections out of an old 9m rod and tie off on the end so as to eliminate all the stretch out of the rod and just yank them straight out of the water,only difference was i used to use mono as oppose to braid i don't know whether there would be too much of a difference...put it this way it used to work very well. ;)
Also no offence intended,but there is no need to use a very thin line such as 0.12mm/0.14mm especially at night for xilep or mullett.
I used to fish for them with 0.25mm float rig (Main & hook line all .25mm) at night & caught some BIG ones at tax-xbiex (mullett) also used to go for KAHLI there at night with same size line on a surface rig using a peice of floating bread (rod & reel) cast out into the middle (approx) of tax-xbiex harbour..and caught more than my fair share.
Quotei used to go there. tafu lil dak ta xaghru bajda jistad ghal mulett u ghax xilep??? ok hafna qisu gesu
I think i know this guy too he also used to fish at tax-xbiex alot his name is censu if its the same guy....
QuoteNICE ARTICLE, WE CAN SELL THEM NEAR THE DETOX CENTRE MELA THESE FISH LOL. i rekon once i caught a big xilpa from sant iermu and it was full of human hair and pieces of basal, wonder how this has a hallegoneicv tendency, with all that eats.
It just goes to show how even a reputable magazine can blow things all out of proportion! LOL!
even though it does say in the article that not everyone "suffers" these effects (alla hares!) and that xilpa is "a popular food fish" ::) ???
Curiously there is an old guy from bahrija in his 70's i know who is practically a cat and will eat ANY fish but never ate xilep cos he says the few occasions he ate them it gave him "heddiela" very vivid nightmares which you cannot wake up from with profous sweating etc
ohh martin, so you used to use the thick sections of the 9m rod?
so that the xilep will not be on a flexible rod end?; and on a stiff line (to reduce the plastic elongation)!
Yes as the way i used to fish for them was after a storm when the water will be murky (not clear) and like the gaffer said first you groundbait the "lokk" up well and i used the stiff rod sections to make it easier to pull the fish (bodily) straight out and reduce the chance of too many escaping anf 'ruining' the spot.
what is the "lokk" guys? a place?
>>)))))">
"il lokk" is just an expression..a place where certain types of fish are rumoured ,or more often than not known to gather.. e.g :"hemm ghandi lokk tajjeb ghall kahli..."
ok then...for xilep, how could i ground bait the lokk? :)
bread crumbs are good? or should i use some other type of bait??
You can use bread crumbs for groundbait or maybe if you have some a bit of 'gobon tas sajd' (a concotion of cheese left to ferment for a long time in a glass jar..stinks something awful but it can be very good) or even like the gaffer said for xilep scraping a bit of seaweed of the rocks can work well too.
something about the concotion of cheese.. maybe someday i try to prepare it..
is the cheese sliced to pieces/ cut cubes / or left as a whole, inside the glass jar?
after how many days would it be ready?!
gobon tas sajd sa fejn naf jien taghmlu billi gobon ma ilma bahar minced itfa ftit aringi u hallih jiddikomponi irid jigi qisu paste.
iktar ma thallih iktar ahjar imma nahseb jekk tixtih ahjar ghax jinten ta veru. tinduna li lest meta hu jigi kanella. jekk ha taghmlu ssigilah sewwa ghax barra traqqdek ommok!!! :-X gratli li nfaqa wiehed u riha ma tlehhija b xejn!!!!!
uuuuuuuuuhhuuuuhhhuuu.....looolll.. hazin jekk jinfaqa...ax mandix fejn norqod aktar **** :) lol..
aringi xinhu granitu????
dwar il kulur u riha....li rajt jien tank daqs tal gass mil kbar (imma tal plasitc), mimli bil gobon tas sajd!
dik riha imma.
essaggerat!
thnks man
ahjar tixtih imma.
aringi hi tip ta huta uzata hafna ghal l ghalf li meta tiffermenta thalli hafna riha.
l hut jiggenen ghalija. prova ddoba minn x imkien jew saqsi l mr fish. pero l angler centre ghandu zgur
fimtek fimtek....thnks man.
kif issib tixtrih dak? vasetti kif?? t
ajjeb ghal prezzu?
ssaqsi ghaih jew kaxxa zhira jew vasett ikollok..... ghal prezzu mux hazin imma hawn xi haga ahjar ddur mas saqajn. t trab lest hu iktar effetiv minnhu sa certu punt ghax din riceta ta zmien alla u llum qedin fit 2008. pero jkollok ma jaghmilx hazin
fava....braid is locally known as fireline (it was the first braided line introduced in malta)
use 0.12mm braid for xilep and fish in mossy waters. Use a hard tip rod so that once the fish is on immediately pulled out of the water (daqqa u fuq)