Month: May 2016

Dave and Caroline were out on Monday:

“We ventured out to an area I had great success on last year to see if there were any cod there. We managed 15 Pollack which we kept and 1 Cod. The best Pollack went 14lb and the rest were split about equally between low double figure and single figure. It was a fish a drop and an hour and a half later we were heading back.

On Monday we decided to try searching out new areas after not attending the Brighton Pollack comp as we had intended. We arrived at my chosen area and about 25 minutes later I had found what I thought looked Interesting. First drift and I had a pouting up.. Second drift and Caroline landed an 18lb Cod. We were both ecstatic and I set the drift up again. This time we were both in and Caroline’s surfaced first, it came in a lovely 17lb fish. Mine came in at 13lb. We went on to land some single figure fish as well which were returned. Little over an hour of fishing and the sea state started to look unfavourable so we packed up and headed for home.
Cracking successful day and we will be exploring the area more fully in due course.

You can see by the boat angle it was starting to get lumpy, so Caroline resorted to kneeling to get the photo.”

Phill was out last week – “Fishing at Bullock Patch last week – every cast a dogfish- anybody got any clues how not to catch dogfish would be much appreciated.”

Email your suggestions here! In my experience that is tough one – if you are using any static natural bait you will probably attract a lot of dogfish, particularly if you are using fresh fish. l have switched to whole small pout and caught ray and bass with no dogfish, if that helps!

Gordon and I made the most of some settled weather ( at last!) and had two days fishing on the 26th and 27th May. There was an easterly wind but it was pretty light for most of the time. On day one we turned right out of Chichester Harbour and fished around Sandown Bay where we enjoyed a nice sunny day largely undisturbed by fish apart from the inevitable doggies. Gordon managed a couple of bream but that was all. Some of this lack of success was self inflicted as there was a strong tide run and I persisted with leads that were too light – a lesson learnt

On day two we turned left towards Selsey and had a much more productive day. We fished the tide up and caught a variety of fish – or rather Gordon caught a variety of fish while I kept the dogfish population of the area occupied. (As an aside I am a real convert to barbless circle hooks – it makes the whole unhooking process really easy and I don’t seem to lose fish using the hooks. I use a Dremel to grind down the barbs) Using squid head as bait , Gordon had bream, an undulate and thornback ray, an 8lb smoothound and a 2.5 lb bass ( duly returned). I finally caught a nice thornback and a smoothound to join in the fun. Really nice to get a couple of days out on the water .”

This is the month we usually expect plenty of bream and smoothounds, and the first mackerel. Tope follow soon after. Well that’s the theory. There are bream on the usual marks but smaller than expected and fewer in number. Maybe it was the unseasonably cold April with north westerly winds prevailing.

Where would these pages be without Dave and Caroline’s reports to keep us motivated.

“Well we didn’t anticipate getting out today as forecast was looking changeable, but as we woke early and the weather looked good we shot off for a few hours. 1st drift I had a pollack about 6lb and Caroline had a cod. 2nd drift I had an 18lb cod and was ensuring Caroline was well aware that I actually had the biggest fish..
Oh how I wish I had shut up for the very next drift she had one of 24lb and then went on to land another 24lb fish..
We spent 3 hours fishing, came back with 14 cod and a Gurnard. Had lots of Pollock which went back and also the smaller codling went back. Great to be out.”