Month: June 2016

I managed to get out today on Spoonbill for a few hour in the afternoon – after a 3.5hr journey down to the marina 🙁 I anchored in Bracklesham Bay and caught half a dozen Black Bream and about a dozen Pouting – no dogfish! All on squid. It was nice to be out on the water, but there were some torrential downpours (no lightning luckily) and it got pretty dark in the afternoon, so not many other boats about. Got back to the pontoon at low tide at 7:30pm – but managed to get home to vote – just. Here’s me with one of the bream wearing my high summer gear… (excuse the weird wide angle – this is a single frame capture form a GoPro stuck to the cabin window) “

We are heading into the last week of June and bream are still around in reasonable numbers, although a lot are on the small side with a few larger ones among them. Mackerel are well scattered, I have caught a reasonable number but in ones and twos, not stringfuls.

On Father’s day I went out with my daughter Aedy. It started with a promise of good weather, but that deteriorated through the morning, and with only dogfish and a ray to show for our efforts by lunchtime we decided to feather up a few mackerel and head into the marina for lunch.

While I was preparing our modest cook-up, Aedy amused herself by rigging up a makeshift crab line from an old trace, and impaled a large lump of frozen mackerel on the end. She was happily filing a bucket of crabs off the back of the boat when suddenly, a 4lb 7oz bass grabbed it – under the boat, in the marina and in about five feet of water and plenty of commotion around. Not what you would expect! Anyway, a combination of marina rules, bass nursery and EU ban meant there was no chance of bass fillets for supper so back he went. I thought Aedy had taken a photo but no, being 19 she uses Snapchat so here is a still from her video but it hardly does it justice. It did look big on the pontoon!

Tried night fishing for the first time between Boulder and Medmery on the Friday night. Only doggies all through the night. However when the sun came up we had a few bream on baited feathers as they were robbing all the bait on our bigger hooks for rays etc. We then headed to a mark south of Pullar trying for tope. No luck However I did have an 11lb conger and my dad had another bream as the tide slackend. We then came in and tried another mark on Medmery throwing up no fish before coming in. Excuse the bad photo of the eel!

The sixth month of the year already. The first June weekend had great weather. I was out on Sunday in Bracklesham Bay after my first bream of the year. First cast a bass. Why does that always happen when there is a ban? Then a right old mixture of a small tope, 12lb undulate, smoothhound, mackerel (yes – 4) and finally a bream, albeit a small one. And about 50 dogfish of course. word on the pontoon was the flood is fishing a lot better than the ebb. Good to know. By the way this is the bass, I prefer to unhook fish I am not keeping while still in the water, it causes a lot less damage and stress.