A report from Jim - still currently exiled on the south coast

Well a remarkable thing happened down here for a weekend in October,

I had organised crew for both days and the weather was fantastic. It was a big spring tide and given the time of year the plan was a day coding and then a day trying out for a late season bass or two.

The Saturday was the day for cod and my crew was big John one of the research scientists at work. The last time John and I went fishing in May resulted in the steering cable parting when I was going full tilt and John catching me before I got spat over the side. Anyway off we went out of Langstone harbour with the sea like a sheet of glass. First stop was just north of the Nab tower where I got a 17 lb cod last November alas nothing doing and as the tide slackened off our big squid baits attracted loads of dogfish. Switching to smaller squid baits resulted in lots of pout some quite large touching 2 lbs.

Anyway as the target was Mr Cod we moved further out to south of the nab where there was more tide. Alas just more dogfish. Got back in feeling a bit disappointed as one boat had a couple of 5 lb cod. What made us really sick was another boat had found a shoal of large bass and had taken about 30 between 4 and 8 lbs before chuckling loads more back.

Day two was to be off shore bass fishing on a sandbank known as the French bank. This came as a recommendation from one of the club members who used to be a commercial rod and line bass angler. Crew for the Sunday was the maintenance manager from work also called Jim, the plan was to drift over the sandbank using artificial lures or head hooked rags.

I typed the co ordinates into the GPS and did a double check on the distance 30 miles. I went back into the club and asked the club member if that was the right distance or had I been suffering from finger trouble. Nope it was 30 miles. Did a double check on fuel and reckoned I had enough with the spare stuff I had in the car.

Off we went glorious steam out completely flat calm in unbelievably warm weather for October – I was in waders and a tee shirt. I’ve been on charter trips down here where we have been steaming this distancehowever this was a first for me as the Isle of White sung below the horizon.

 

 Anyway as we approached the destination we could see it was popular with seven other boats drifting over the bank. Tackled up and started drifting over the bank, as there was no wind the drift was all down to the tide at 3.3 knots so pretty quick the bottom of the bank was 110 feet and the top 70 feet with the rise happening over about 200 feet. It was extremely frustrating at first as we saw other boats catch the occasional fish then suddenly I had a belter of a bit. Shame I was watching another boat and hand my thumb on the spool. The 20lb fluorocarbon parted and I had a hissy fit at myself.

After that the tide eased and the drift slowed so we thought we would anchor and have our lunch. This was actually very good loads of small stuff and I had a nice thornback of about 7 lbs and Jim had a belter of a bite which turned out to be the blonde ray attached of about 17 lbs. The tide picked up again and so we started drifting the bank again. Most of the other boats had given up but the ebb tide seemed to do the trick I lost another belter of a fish whilst Jim landed two nice table sized bass of 4 lbs. Interestingly the take area was surprisingly small with all bites and fish coming from one small area.

 

Packed up and motored the 30 miles back in about 90 minutes. Great day out and for once we had by far the best catch in the compound. Jim took pity on me and gave me one of his bass which was jolly nice cooked as below

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/3366/sea-bass-with-sizzled-ginger-chilli-and-spring-oni

Autumn sunshine

Stewart and Martin had a trip down to Loch Ken at the weekend.

 

Stewart had most of the action AM with a few attacks on his old faithful copper spoon

 

 

 Martin had to wait till a 20 minute spell in late afternoon put a bend in his rod with a couple of Pike and a small but nicely marked Perch

Open Shore Sweepstake 26th October

A PB Bass for Martin

Torn boots, broken rods, lost reel handles, big fuel bills whilst wandering along beaches at night in the rain....

A couple of knee replacements might be needed in the near future but after a handful of decent fish in the last month he eventually got there - 71cm.

Two species desperados do whatever it takes

Daz and I headed down to Cairnryan with his 8ft inflatable yesterday and fished inside the old coal pier. I knew there were a few species here, but we weren't expecting to end up with seventeen different ones in five hours, and not a single LSD.

Baits were wee bits of ragworm or fresh mussel on size 4 sabikis fished on light spinning rods with a 1oz weight. Ferries passed us in and out four times with nothing other than a very light swell for a couple of minutes each time. As we fished either side of HW, the pier probably absorbed most of the wash.

Species caught;
1 Rock goby
2 Ballan Wrasse
3 Corkwing wrasse
4 Goldsinny wrasse
5 Rock Cook wrasse
6 Cod
7 Haddock
8 Pollack
9 Coalfish
10 Mackerel
11 Herring
12 LSSS
13 SSSS
14 Dab
15 Pouting
16 Poor Cod
17 Whiting

Daz was only short of a cuckoo for the wrasse grand slam, but 5hrs is a long time without stretching your legs Later in the afternoon, the water was thick with tiny herring and small sandeels. These were being chased by palm sized coalies and mackerel. The mackerel we filletted were stuffed with herring.

Port Logan for Stu and Gordon

With the Arbroath charter being cancelled, I was at a loose end when Stuart called on Friday night to see if I had any alternative arrangements?

Our cunning plan was to visit Port Logan where Stu's target species would be a plaice for the 2013 species hunt. The forecast had been very changeable with three forecasters providing three different wind directions and speeds. We arrived at logan to find Team Robertson already there with At Last and Cassandra getting ready to launch.

With a fair size of swell in the morning, we were pretty much coast hugging up and down to a few different marks. Stuart got not one plaice but two. My hunt for a red gurnard proved less fruitful and it's still on my target list.

Without really trying - we ended up with twelve species on the day; Cod, Whiting, Pollack, Haddock, LSD, SS Sea Scorpion, Ballan Wrasse, Tub Gurnard, Grey Gurnard, Mackerel, Dab and Plaice.

 

A striped bruser

Stewart put a couple of slow Loch Ken trips behind him and had some great sport with Pike and Perch.

This is a Crayfish crunching fatty!