5th All England Squid Championships
Location: Brighton | Species Caught: Scorpion fish, 5 bearded rockling, pollack and corkwing wrasse
Brighton this weekend to catch up with some good friends, Mike and Georgina Drew.
Having never attempted to catch a squid before, Saturday was spent learning the fine art of eging, a name given to a squid jigging method. Learning this new water craft was proving difficult. Strong winds, poor water clarity and ‘learning the ropes’, made for a non eventful day. With conditions set to be the same for Sunday, the match wasn’t looking like it was going to produce anything.
Tiny squid wins the match
A tough 5 hour match with just one squid being caught amongst 50 anglers. Me and Mike had a good time and even though conditions for the squid were not favorable, we still caught small pollack, rockling, scorpion fish and corkwing wrasse. Good to meet Fishyrob once again who helped organize the competition.
Location: Black Rock, Clevedon | Species Caught: Cod
Few hours fishing at Black Rock, Clevedon this afternoon.
Location: Croyde | Species Caught: Schoolies
Fished Croyde for the first time tonight. Caught 2 school bass, both returned. A great venue and hope to try for bigger bass there later in the year.
Easter Cod
Location: Black Rock, Clevedon | Species Caught: Cod
Fished Black Rock this afternoon. A local low water mark just down the road from me. Landed a 4lb 1oz codling. Tea time :-)
Filleting skills need more work!
Bar of silver
Location: Chesil beach | Species Caught: Bass, dab, whiting
Just got home after a weekend trip to chesil. We arrived late on saturday night, fishing for a few hours, catching dog fish and whiting. Tired, we pitched tents around mid night, setting the alarms for sunrise to chase those chesil plaice.
We woke to a stunning sunrise, but not so promising conditions for the plaice. 4-6 foot swell had been building over night, colouring the water. Not to be defeated, we fished the day hoping for dabs and the odd bass, with the possibility of a few plaice if the water clarity improved.
Scores on the doors… a small dab and bonus bass for me. With the water being heavily coloured in close, the decision to fish a big rag worm bait in close paid off. A plumb 2lb 5oz bass. The swell flattened towards the end of the day but no plaice showed. As always, conditions for the following day looked to be promising. Still, an enjoyable warm end to a stunning march weekend.
Spring has sprung
Location: West Bexington, Chesil beach | Species Caught: Pollack and Plaice
Reports had been filtering through the forums that the odd spottie was turning up on Dorset’s chesil beach. The lure of Chesil had got me once again and I was soon in the car heading south to see if the first signs of spring were really here.
Yep, true indeed. I manged two, nothing huge but a pleasant surprise non the less for this time of the year. Both were well under size so they were returned. A few more weeks and hopefully some bigger fish will start to show.
Very cold but sunny day.
Frozen Abbots Pool
Location: Abbots pool, Bristol & Jacklands | Species Caught: Rainbow trout
We had to find an alternative venue! Ended up fishing Jakelands fishing lakes at Tickenham. Paul Martin caught a rainbow trout, fishing maggot on the waggler. I blanked.
Fortune favours the brave
Location: Ladye Bay, Clevedon | Species Caught: Codling
-5 degrees this evening, brrrrrrrrr. Fully wrapped up in multiple layers, I headed to the local for a few hours after work in hope of a codling or two.
First cast I managed a new PB 4lb 3oz codling! An hour later another cracking pull down on the rod which resulted in a smaller but keeper 2lb 11oz codling. Not bad for a few hours fishing. Ever getting closer to catching my first proper cod, it’s just a matter of time that a plump 5lber will take the bait.
Flounder on the quiver tip
Location: Burnham-on-Sea | Species Caught: Flounder
The main aim for this weekend was to try for some flounder at Burnham. Found my old quiver tip from my coarse fishing days and off I went with some nice small dug rag.
Manged to land 3 in total, the biggest about a pound which I had 2nd cast. Donked the biggest one on the head, left it by the side of my box for about 2 hours then decided to take a photo of it along side the second one that came in. I went to wash the mud off of it and the bloody thing shot out my hands and made a dash for it, so no pic of that one and off swam my tea! Amazed it was still alive, I have heard of people taking flatties home to find them still alive swimming around the sink!
Great little fighters on light tackle and nice to target something other than Cod for a change.
Cod in the surf at Brean beach
Location: Brean, Somerset | Species Caught: Codling & Whiting
A new PB at Brean beach this weekend, it was caught on Saturday, weighting in bang on 4lb. Chuffed with this catch, I headed back to the same spot on Sunday and managed another 2 keeper codling, biggest was 3lb 6oz. The fridge is full of cod for a change :-)
Perfect Penn’s
Fixed spool or multiplier? The new range of Penn reels not only look the part, but perform perfectly. Discover why I have both in my tackle box this year.
Sea fishermen tend to favor fixed or multiplier reels. Rarely would somebody mix the two when it comes to beach casting, you either love the multi, or you love the fixed spool. How ever, for somebody like me who is currently making the transition from fixed spool to multiplier, there is reason to bring both to the beach.
Getting to grips with a multi.
The Penn 525 Mag 2, a strong multiplier perfect for the Bristol Channel, is full of guts and has excellent cranking power. Ideal for those moments when you might snag up on reefs, or hook passing logs! It seems to handle most challenges the Bristol Channel can chuck at you!
Mastering the multiplier is proving a tough new challenge with numerous over runs and frustrating bird nests each session. Perseverance will pay off and I’m sure my casting will improve greatly over time.
The old faithful fixed spool.
As a backup (comfort blanket if you like) I still use a fixed spool on my second rod. Impressed with the 525, I stuck with Penn and purchased their new fixed spool reel, the Penn Surfblaster 8000. Sounding like something out of Harry Potter, this reel really does works it’s magic, featuring an extra long braid spool for increased distance casting and new slow oscillation for super smooth line lay.
These reels might just be the slickest tools in my fishing arsenal this year.
My local fishing mark Ladye bay, Clevedon one early morning a few weeks back. Nice.
In search of predators
Roaming the banks of the River Kenn (Blind Yeo) with Paul Martin in search of pike and perch.
As much as I love sea fishing, I’m sometimes drawn back to my roots of coarse fishing to hunt down a pike, big perch or a nice roach. I have recently moved to Clevedon which is home to a superb fresh water fishery, the River Kenn. It holds huge shoals of Bream to 7lb, Carp to 20lb+, Tench to 7lb, Roach to 2lb, Pike to 15lb, Skimmers, Perch, Rudd and Eels. I can’t resist a dangle for a pike in the winter months so I bought a day ticket and off I went with Paul to see what was lurking in the gin clear waters of the Kenn.
7.30 am, we started fishing at the sluice gate, just where the River Kenn is dammed before entering the Bristol Channel. We fished this area for about an hour with nothing hitting the spinners so we moved up stream a little. We had the pleasure of meeting our work colleague and good friend Nathaniel Warren, his daughter Maisey and woofer dog Arnie. Arnie got over excited at one point, I know dogs like to chase things but pike plugs was just crazy! Arnie leaped into the river after the plug, retrieving it in his mouth, thankfully missing the hook! He soon dropped it and all was fine. Phew.
Anyway back to the fishing. It was slow, nothing happening really until around mid day when a change to a much smaller spinner found me a small jack pike. Happy with that, not a monster but great sport. A few pics then it went back safely. You will see from the pictures that pike have a large mouth, full of teeth which face backwoods, designed to impale and hold the prey. You don’t want a pike nipping at your finger tips so handle these fish with respect, use a long pair of forceps, lock it onto the hook and a quick tug outwards should release the hook.
Next up it was Pauls turn and he landed the smallest jack pike I have ever seen. A nice looking fish though, Paul was happy as it was a personal best and a new species to go on his list. It was probably around the 1lb mark.
We started to walk back on our selves as the higher reaches of the Kenn towards the motorway was featureless unlike the swims where we had just caught fish. Pike love to ambush their pray from within reeds, rushes and general weed cover. Try to cast alongside features such as these to tempt out a fish, the two fish we had caught were actually right under our feet.
It was getting towards the end of the day but before we headed home, Paul had found a great swim which had plenty of fish activity on the surface. Small roach were jumping which is usually an indication that pike are hunting a shoal. The pike were obviously feeding mid to high water so I put a floating plug on and slowly teased it across the waters surface. A few casts later, Boom! A pike hit my plug, it was on for all of 2 seconds then it spat the plug. Damn it, an explosive take on the surface always get the heart pumping. A lucky pike to escape 3 treble hooks!
Paul next had some action on a spoon spinner, he had a decent pike on but it unfortunately headed straight for the reeds. The fish was long gone. Seconds later Paul was in again and the lucky git landed the biggest on the day, just slightly bigger than mine. He also finished off with a nice perch.
No monsters today but a great day on the Kenn.
Decided it was time to buy a new reel. After years of using fixed spools, it was about time to learn something new… the fine art of casting with a multi. After a bit of research, I went for the Penn 525 Mag 2, a good all round multiplier reel which would do me fine over the rough ground of the Bristol Channel. Me and Chris headed to Brean beach to try it out.
Codling wins the Codzilla Cup
Location: Watchet | Species Caught: Codling, Thornback Ray, Whiting and Dogfish
It was tough fishing for all of us with just the occasional dog fish, whiting, conger and skate coming aboard. It was Mark who managed to catch a nice 4lb codling right at the end of the day to take the 2011 Codzilla Cup.
