Brill!

The weatherman forecast a break in the weather, a phone call to Chippy confirmed that Wednesday's planned charter trip aboard Bite Adventure out of Penzance was on. However the wind was due to pick up again and unfortunately with 20mph winds forecast Thursdays planned shark trip was not going to happen.

I was joined on this trip by three members of the Looe Sea Angling Club and a couple of sea angling novices. As the tides were not favourable for drifting the sandbanks the plan was to anchor a reef in search of a couches bream and perhaps do some drifting later in the day when if wind and tide permitted.

The sail along the coastline towards Lands End took us past some of the South-West's most picturesque coastal scenery, not that you would have known as the sky was overcast and sea mist filled the skies threatening rain. Within sight of Lands End Chippy cut the engine and we started to feather up mackerel for bait.

 I fished mini sabikkis just in case any pilchards were swimming with the mackerel. As usual I used a shiny pirk as my weight as I am convinced that the flash attracts baitfish. Within minutes the crew had feathered up enough mackerel for bait, a shoal was located near the surface. It was noticeable that these were small joeys, a sign of commercial overfishing perhaps!

Chippy anchored the boat so that our baits would be fishing down the edge of the reef in 160 foot of water. If truth be told the fishing was slow, but gradually the species tally grew with pouting, pollack, haddock, dogfish, cod, red, grey and tub gurnards. Bob, one of the Looe members lost a decent fish that bit through his hooklength. Chippy and I then landed fish that had fresh wounds, my male cuckoo wrasse had a deep gash in one of its flanks. We speculated whether a tope or even a blue shark might be responsible. One of the anglers put down a mackerel flapper searching for an answer to the mystery, however the resulting conger was a "red herring"!

After lunch we moved off the reef, as the tide was strengthening and started to drift the sand banks. This is interesting fishing, a thin strip of mackerel on a running ledger is dragged along the bottom as the boat drifts. The reel is kept in free spool with a thumb on the spool ready to feed line when a fish takes to enable it to take the bait properly. As the boat drifts the angler can feel every undulation on the sand bank and bites can be difficult to detect but usually consist of a sharp rattle on the rodtip.

I missed my first bite and Bob landed a megrim, a rare flatfish marketed as Cornish Sole by Waitrose. A frustrating few drifts followed where I only managed a grey gurnard, whilst Bob managed a couple more megrim and an angler on the other side of the boat also managed a brace of megrim. A brill to one of the holidaying anglers added insult to injury.

Was today just one of those days?


Next drift the tip rattled and I let off some line before winding into a fish. Chippy stood by with the net as a flatty came into view. Was it a turbot? When Chippy said it was a brill my legs went to jelly. "Please stay on", I thought and it seemed an age before the fish slid over the net. After 30 months I had finally achieved my goal of 100 species from British waters.

But there was more to come. Next drift I landed a megrim, the sixth to the crew and another new species for me. I was now brimming with confidence and half expected a greater weaver, a common catch off Porthcurno but it was not to be. With the fog closing in, Chippy called it a day and we set sail for Penzance.

Thanks Chippy for a brill day about Bite Adventure!

Portland Species Competition!

Today, I was a guest angler amongst the regular Friday Species League crew aboard Colin Penney's Flamer 4. Although I not personally into match fishing of any kind, you can learn a lot from match anglers. The fishing today would be restricted to the areas in and around Portland Harbour, a species hunters paradise.

After a short sail we arrived at Colin's secret muddy mark where the rare red band live. These unusual fish live with their heads sticking out of the mud grabbing shrimps and the like. A set of mini sabikkis were baited with tiny strips of squid ready for the first of several short drifts. By the time we moved we had acounted for more than twenty red band fish between us. They are truly stunning looking fish being a pinky orange colour with electric pinky purple edging the fins. If Barbie was a fish she would be a red band fish. I also managed a goby or two including a Jeffreys Goby (it has an elongated 2nd ray on its first dorsal). Unfortunately I managed to drop it back in before getting the photo.

We spent some time drifting a range of marks including the harbour entrances. The rocky areas were wrasse city and a wide variety of species were caught including ballan, cuckoo, goldsinney and the rare ballions wrasse. Tompot blennies, gobies, mackerel, scad and pollack also showed.

Gurnards manly tubs showed, I only managed to catch reds........again! Several anglers caught dragonets which again evaded my hooks. Andy Selby from Weymouth Angling even managed a couple of red mullet, the first Andy had ever caught. Two trigger fish were also landed.

In retrospect I should have fished short flowing rigs to keep all three baits on the bottom, rather than a paternoster rig. I am back for a two day competition in October which will allow me to test out my hypothesis. Most of the anglers on board had homemade bait containers divided into sections and hung on the boats rails, which immediately means less time is spent baiting up and more time spent with a bait in the water.

The planned drifts over the wreck of the Hood had to be abandoned due to the presence of divers.

Our final mark was at anchor over a muddy patch where I targeted butterfly blennies and dragonets on tiny hooks baited with slivers of ragworm. I became a smoothound pup magnet landing four of them along with some dogfish.

Richard, the angler next to me landed the only butterfly blenny of the day. Again I suffered the indignity of seeing others landing dragonets and tub gurnards.

What an enjoyable day in good company. I added three species to my challenge total and missed out on five others (butterfly blenny, dragonet, red mullet, trigger fish and tub gurnard). In excess of tweny species were landed by the crew and I ended the day with 14 species, in fact too many to record as labels on this blog item (blogger has a limit of 200 characters)!

Right time, wrong Plaice!

Although I failed to catch my target brill or tub gurnard, I have just enjoyed a couple of enjoyable days fishing onboard Colin Penney's Flamer 4. Two days were spent drifting the mussel beds and the Shambles Bank out of Weymouth with a short spell at anchor.

Weymouth is is the place to catch specimen plaice and Colin Penney is the man to put you onto them. Don't expect to catch numbers of fish but where else do you have a realistic chance of a specimen place of over 5lb. Whether you can catch them is another matter!

Although I improved my personal best with the 3lb 12oz plaice pictured, this was believe it or not only an average fish amongst those landed. Whilst I was there fish of 7lb and 6lb 14oz were landed along with a few fives.

You are the Weakest Link!

I don't normally fish competitions, however the opportunity to fish the Flamer Annual Two Day Species Competition was too good to miss. I knew that it would be an opportunity to fish a variety of marks, learn from some good match anglers and hopefully add to my species list for the year. Ten points were awarded for a species on the list and up to ten fish of each species would gain extra points. On landing a fish the captor calls out their name and species to Colin the skipper. I wasn't bothered about competing and decided to concentrate on tactics which might add a new species to the challenge.

The forecast for Saturday was poor and we set sail later than planned to miss the worst of the weather. As a consequence the water had coloured up and we could only fish inshore marks. 

At anchor we fished three hook flowing traces and caught dogfish, red gurnards, starry smoothhounds, scad and for James a dragonet.

In between the sessions at anchor we fished several areas around Portland drifting for wrasse. Due to the colour in the water the wrassing was poor, although we all managed to catch some ballan and corking wrasse along with pollack and pout. Just off the end of Portland Breakwater I had battle royal with a specimen ballan weighing 5lb 4oz.

Robin suggested that we ended the day fishing for mini species in Weymouth Harbour itself! Imagine the scene, a charter boat moored up to a pontoon by the bridge with five grown men fishing off the stern of the boat, catching tiny wrasse, blennies and gobies shouting out their name and species to the scorer, with an audience on the quayside! Anyway I did catch my first black goby. Robin caught a light coloured goby, probably a sand goby. At the end of day one I was in third position.

One of the anglers, Gareth (who was the army champion) could not fish on Sunday. His place was taken by Andy's partner, Glenys. Sunday was an early start and it was still dark as we sailed out of Weymouth Harbour.

We started the day in Portland Harbour on the drift where we caught mackerel, pollack, pout and wrasse including a goldsinney to me and two cuckoo wrasse to Glenys.

A drift over the wreck of the Hood didn't produce the targeted red band fish so we went east off the Purbeck cliffs. The area just off Durdle Door is a top spot for cuckoo wrasse. Although the wrasse were not playing ball, Robin caught a rare baillons wrasse, which looks like a corkwing but with red fins.

A few drifts over a wrecked landing craft produced loads of pouting and some black bream. The day ended at anchor where once again the dogfish showed along with thornback rays, garfish and a tub gurnard.              

Over the two days I caught thirteen species including one new to the challenge and saw my first baillons wrasse, cuckoo wrasse, dragonet and tub gurnard. I learned that when species hunting, a sensitive boat quivertip style rod helps to convert more bites, especially on the drift for wrasse and that at anchor it pays to use attractor beads.

Although I came fourth, I was awarded the "weakest link" trophy as the lowest scoring angler who fished both days. The trophy currently adorns our downstairs loo.

Next year I will compete!

My Way

My Way skippered by Gethyn Owen is one of the top charter boats in Wales. Unfortunately the planned trip to the Holyhead Deeps in search of tope,spurdog and bulhuss was cancelled due to the strong winds. Instead we would be fishing various inshore marks moving between them as the weather and tide eased.

Taking Gethyn's advice I rigged up with two up, one down rigs with size 2 hooks and baited up each hook with different baits, mackerel strip, squid strip and ragworm. Within minutes of lowering the bait I had a bite which resulted in a red gurnard. Apart from a small plaice and huss we were all plagued by lesser spotted dogfish. A move to Church Bay resulted in yet more dogfish.

Mid afternoon we moved again to fish for wrasse on the drift near South Stack. A three hook flowing trace baited with ragworm section is fished on the bottom, every few seconds the lead is lifted a few inches and replaced on the bottom to avoid snagging as the boat drifted. Geth advised fishing mackerel strip on at least one hook as this would maximise the chance of a cuckoo wrasse. Unfortunately on this occasion only ballan wrasse and pollack responded.

The day ended as it began anchored in Holyhead Bay, As well as the inevitable dogfish we all caught whiting. Despite the fact that the water had coloured up with the wind providing far from ideal conditions an enjoyable day was had by all. I certainly intend to return to Anglesey next summer to target the wide variety of species available from both boat and shore.