Canal capers

Not much sea fishing going on in Martin's world at the moment so he had another crack at the canal predators in the midlands while visiting his friends

His mate dropped by with the kids for a look at what they have in the canal

They arrived about an hour after he extracted this from the canal. Martin's first Carp, what a kipper( the carp that is)

An easy 20 pounds it took him a merry dance and was a surprise bonus fish

Etive matches boat and shore

Jason Nicol won the last boat match of the season to be crowned club boat champ, well done Jason! Steven Toner and Darren Sloan were second and third.

Some pictures of Spurs  from the last shore match up there a couple of weeks ago.

Jamie putting up with Spurs as without easterlies he's nothing to chap on the heed in December.

Nico with really dark fish.

Shane having a wrestle with one.

One shore match left to be fished on the 14th of December venue TBC

Boat and shore calender round up

One match left in the shore calender with a couple of possibilities for a winner.

	50% +1 Totals
Stephen Kirk	120
Jamie Soons	107
Nico Wilson	106
John Wilson	103
Will Millar	91

The last boat match will be this weekend. It's a two horse race in what has been a difficult year with so many matches cancelled.

		Best 3	Total
1	Jason Nicol	85	108
2	Darren Sloan	83	83
3	Steven Toner	60	60
4	Les McBride	54	54
5	Gordon Goldie	53	53

Etive

Stu and Gordon made a trip up the well worn road for this time of year to Loch Etive.

A 10 pound 12 oz thornie for Stu was the pick of the bunch

Worth noting is this fish above previously caught by Dale Robertson in Nov 2011 at 5.3 it had moved up a couple of divisions to 7.6

Gordon giving a 6-12 Penn Waveblaster  a work out on a nice thornie. The best of the spurs went to about 4 pounds

Zander & Perch

Martin and his mate Scott made the trip south again to the Midlands for some canal action

Drop shot rigs and 3-4 inch soft plastics resulted in some  decent action

A view on current Bass stocks.....

A summer schoolie ready to go back. Some reading here

While it’s true some points could be debated it might make some interesting reading for anyone that would like to catch Bass in the years ahead.

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!

Smooth seas and smooth fishing

Stewart and Eddie made good use of the recent calm spell launching Stewarts boat down the SW.

Stewart might have been under his chair on his last BA flight for that lifejacket but at least it matches the boat.

The guys had  15 Smoothies to 7 pounds in two hours, nice fishing....

Mullet man with another clonker

Stewart has pushed up his PB again with this Mullet of 5.8

Tubs of fun

As told by Scott

Me and Kyle went out from Whithorn on Tuesday as there was a small weather window. 

After the usual struggle for mackieswe anchored up in Wigtown bay. 

We had a couple of nice Tubs with the best falling to Kyle at 3.8 lbs only just short of the club record. 

He also had Huss to 15 which again fell to Kyle. 

Tope were in abundance with Kyle getting the most !! The were all small pack Tope but good fun. 

Guest for the day was Tom (toon fireman) who has assured me he has now sharpened his hooks!!

All in a good day which if it had been a match Kyle would have whipped us :-)

The BP sponsored Reel Deal takes to the high seas

Stuart and Willie took advantage of the summer weather making an exploratory trip on Reel Deal.

A Sunfish also enjoying the weather as well.

A  Turbot for WK

Stu no doubt reaching for a filleting knife shortly aftet the grip & grin shot

 WK hand tagging a Sunfish for the N.A.S.O.S.O ( North Atlantic Save our Sunfish Organisation)

A Blue Shark for Willie, nice one. You would think it was a cluggie, cheer up Willie worry about the diesel bill the mora! The lads also had a 3 pound Pollack chopped in half on a short line at the back of the boat eithier another Blue or maybe a Porgie.

Tope were  plentiful if that's what you were after.

All in a great trip, superb weather and some knowledge gained.
 

 

Return of Del Monte man

Stewart's been at it again as you can see here.

A cracking Mullet , well done.....

Jason gets his first Bass

Jamie took Paul and Jason out at the weekend with Jason getting his first Bass and a nice enough one at that. Taking it off the surface, even better.

 

Great weather in Kintyre

Gordon was over in Kintyre recently catching a few species from the beach and from a borrowed RIB.

Despite decades of trying to catch a Bass and being in a prime location at an excellent time of year over great tides they seem to avoid him like the plague. Apparently one fell off ( oh dear never mind Gordon) Martin could of course help him with this but after being subjected to some un-warranted abuse  in relation to this matter a wee while ago he has more chance of winning the Nobel Peace Prize

Nice colours

We would also point out the club has no idea if correct permission was sought and indeed given for the fish above. As you can see it was unlikely it was returned….

Club outing Portppatrick

Left Port Patrick at 9.00am and headed to our mark but was met by a fog bank which dictated how the fishing would be for the rest of the day. We had planned to anchor up and fish for some tope. The skipper had a couple of drifts and we had some nice whiting and haddock on board.

The next drift produced Gurnards, Plaice, and the odd dogfish. We had a shot at anchoring and the Bull Huss made an appearance and the hope of a tope might be around. The skipper made the call to up anchor as visibility was poor as the fog was all around us as you will notice in the pictures.

 

Went on the drift again and was into some nice Bull Huss, Whiting and more dogfish. Mat had the best haddock which made it escape to freedom as I was taking his picture. Darren and Malky best Bull Huss at 9lbs 4os for Malky Darren`s around the 10lb mark. Shane the mackerel king and Victoria had a nice launce and Mat had a nice plaice. Everyone had a good time and plenty of fish caught well done guys.