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Catch Reports Archive: 2009
December 2009I hope December will not be such a disaster as November. There was a small window in the weather on 5th December so I grabbed the chance and went out for the day. I fished just north of the Nab alongside a couple of local charter boats. It was still bumpy though, and the sea was very coloured. I only fished for a couple of hours and it was non-stop dogfish apart from a 10lb conger and a lonely whiting. Manybe if my stomach was stronger the trip would have been longer.... Highlight was seeing HMS Bulwark (as featured in the second TV series Warship) on her way to take part in the amphibious landings in Stokes Bay - see my blog for details.
More windows in the weather for those lucky enough to get out during the week, Wayne reports from a Wednesday trip: Been a while but managed to get a trip in on 9th December. Big swell but not a bad day to be afloat, although the boat swung about 270 degrees on the anchor rope in the first two hours making the fishing hard going. Couple of Dogs to show before a 10lb Cod came in on slack water. Pout, Whiting & more Dogs hit my squid baits before a decent run made my old Shakespeare outfit bend & zip. It felt a fair old lump & so it was, just over 19lb of fat bellied Cod. The rest of the day was spent with Pout hooking themselves on my 8/0 O' Shaunessey's and then getting themselves smashed by Congers. Five altogether, the first I bought onboard and weighed at 25-30lb, the others were bigger, one at least twice the size of the first and as Ii was on my own Ii decided to T-bar the rest at the side of the boat. Headed in tired, but pretty happy. The Winner bank was an impressive sight as the swell hit it, sending white spray thirty feet in the air. Getting the boat back on the trailer was a serious chore being on my own but got there in the end. Can't wait for the next window.
From Tony and San Miguel: With a small window in the weather I managed to get the boat out on Saturday 12th December - Yippee! It was the first time in about 7 weeks due to the persistent bad weather. The forecast was not brilliant with a 4.2m tide and force 5 to 6 NNE wind but the Solent was reasonably flat. We started off fishing for Cod on a mark off Cowes in about 65 feet of water. I had two rods set up with a Pennell arrangement of two 6/0 hooks and big baits of 3 squid fed up the line and tipped with half a cuttle. I had another two rods set up with smaller 1/0 hooks and squid strips for the whiting. We were straight into the whiting with several cracking specimens coming aboard weighing in at over 2lb 2oz. We had the occasional dog and grand daddy pout showing interest, but the whiting just kept on coming. Not a sniff of the cod though. Around lunchtime the wind really started howling and the swell picked up so I decided to up anchor and head further inshore to get a bit more shelter from the wind. We set off to another cod mark off Elmore and set the hook just up tide of a small wreck. We were immediately into the whiting again until I got the classic double tap cod bite. I gave it some line and then off it went. With the rod bent well over I knew it was something a little better than the whiting we had been hauling in all day. Eventually a nice table sized cod between 5 and 6 lbs came to the surface. After yet more whiting, another dog and some more pout I got into something a little better. This time up came a nice bass of about 3lbs. The wind eased off by mid afternoon but as the light started to fade we decided it was time to head for home. All in all I must have netted about 25 fish during the day, about half went back but I still landed up taking about 20lbs of fish home for the freezer. Sorry no piccies as I forgot to take the camera.
November 2009What happened? Almost non-stop foul weather meant not much happened at all, no trips for me and judging by the complete lack of reports, none for anyone else either. October 2009Cod are starting to show now with reports of ones and twos per boat moving closer inshore. Phil sent me a cod report, OK its from the end of September but as I received it in October here it is. Well done Phil's son Graham:
One of those days where you get up, look at the weather and think "right let’s go." Make half a dozen calls to see who wants to come and a range of excuses from "shopping with the wife", "taking nipper off to uni" to "decorating the out-laws lounge". Anyway at lunchtime eldest son had said he’d come out so off we went (this is a rarety as he’s totally disillusion by the fact that his younger brother is generally the "lucky" one). Flat calm on a neap so I decided to go out to Utopia. We stopped off a couple of times to try for some fresh mackerel, which although not jumping in the boat we soon had a dozen or so for bait to add to the frozen squid and a few crabs.
From George in Ruby Scrumptious: "Went out early Saturday having already decided to grab a few hours trying for some cod out by the Nab, so headed out and put in the anchor. Dogfish only for the first hour or so then three cod in quick succession - 2 at about 8lb and one about 12lb, a small bass, a thornback, black bream and loads more dogfish all during the flood tide. Thoroughly enjoyable mornings fishing, and some nice fillets for supper."
From Wayne: Fished Halloween on a mark off Selsey which produced Dogfish only. Moved to a rough ground spot nearby which as well as the Dogs also produced two Cod to 6 and 10lb, and a 4lb Spotted Ray. Also had two Cod to 12lb on Tuesday. All fish fell to Black Lug and Squid baits. From Phil, out again (lucky man): The wind was looking to be fishable on Thursday Max informed me at the weekend, as we had both taken the week off for the half term to be with our kids, only to find they’d gone out. On Tuesday he informed me that Wed was also looking good but being half way through a few pints and some wine we decided to stick with Thursday. Heading out from Chichester Harbour the slightly ruffled surface didn’t look too bad although the weather forecast was now looking at a force 5 later on.
As the flood tide reached its peak the fishing died a bit and the light was going. The wind had dropped to almost nothing. Earlier on the sun had come out and I’d even taken my top off for some late season sun bathing it was that warm. (Pictures not attached for health and safety reasons). The setting sun and three large cod in the boat ended a brilliant day as we headed back to the home port. When weighed on land (some 6 hours after the first was caught) they weighed in at 18lb 8oz for me and 20lb 2oz and 17lb 4oz for Max. Internal investigation showed the usual mix of crab and assorted crustaceans with one of them having eaten a cuttlefish as opening the stomach emptied all the ink over the boat!
September 2009I wish I could find a better way to say this, but the combination of windy weekends, disobedient fish and a vast tonnage of floating weed has resulted in some pretty awful fishing. Even Glen Cairns on Valkarie had some poor days, and if he can't find the fish then they ain't there. If the weed would clear, even a fishless day would be bearable. Hopefully as the water cools the problem will go away. Better news soon I hope. A "weed report" from Tony: I managed to get the boat wet on Sunday 13th and fished a freelance competition held by our local fishing club. The weather forecast was pretty dismal giving F4 to F5 NNE wind with F6 later. We would not normally have ventured out is such a poor forecast but due to the very bad July and August weather everyone was desperate to get out fishing. The tides were also not in our favour; high tide was 05.30 which meant that we would be fishing right through the low tide. The only plus was that it was a small tide of 3.9m so we were hoping that the weed situation would not be so bad. We launched from Stokes Bay at around 08.00 and set of for the green channel marker buoy off Browndown. We had reports from several reliable sources that the codling are starting to show from Gilkicker and Browndown beeches up to the 8lb mark, so we thought we would have a try for some early codling. We found the wreck off the buoy and set the anchor to fish directly into the wreck. We had a huge problem with the wind over tide and the boat was constantly swinging from side to side in the wind. The tide was not running hard enough to hold the boat in one position. This meant that the lines were constantly slack as it was dragging the 12oz weights back and forth. The only solution was to hold the rod and bounce the weight along the bottom to maintain contact with it. After about an hour, one bite and one undersized bream later we decided to move. We headed to Hill Head to see if we could pick up a late hound or two. We set the hook in our usual top secret spot which has produced quality hounds every trip since May. The boat continued to snake around in the wind and keeping the lines tight was near impossible. We persevered knowing that if a hound would take the live hardback crab baits then we would soon know about it, tight lines or not. After another hour and not a single take we decided to move yet again. The sea state was not too bad off Hill Head with the stiff NNE breeze blowing straight off the shore, so I decided to head across the pond to Osborne Bay to see if we could pick up a bass or two. I got across the Solent in 10 minutes flat with the following wind and a ride to rival any roller coaster at Alton Towers! My Son James though it was fun anyway. As soon as we stopped the F5 wind and 0.6 metre swell threw us around like a pair of underpants in a washing machine – this was a big mistake! So I headed back to the sheltered water off Gilkicker. We fished here for about another hour and had two dogs to show for it. All of a sudden the weed came through by the truck load! We were pulling in a couple of pounds of weed with every retrieve. We upped anchor again and headed for Sturbridge. The water is around 100 feet here and never suffers from the dreaded red weed. We anchored up and very soon enjoyed a couple of hours of actual fishing! Yippee! We landed several bream which were keepers for tea, a whiting, about half a dozen smuts which were all just undersized and a nice thornback. All in all a pretty poor days fishing but I was glad to get the boat wet! Most of the other boats in the comp had similar experiences apart from one who landed a 27lb conger, several sizeable thornbacks, a sizeable hound and a nice bass. The fish are still out there, if you can put up with the weed and the wind! Roll on the cod season!!! PS - Better news - cod of up to 10lbs are starting to show. I was out on 20th, the weather was perfect but the fishing not quite so. Although the mackerel were throwing themselves into the boat (40), other fish were hard to find. One garfish and a ray were the only variety on the day. The tide was a big one which made fishing difficult, and still plenty of weed about. One of the commercial bass fishermen who uses rod and line only caught a third of his normal catch the other day, and charter boats were obviously scratching for fish judging by the amount of movement I saw. Wayne did a bit better: "Had a run out on Sat 19th in search of an early Cod. Nothing doing on that front although we contacted Dogs, Mackerel & a couple of Small Eyed Rays. Headed inside Langstone Harbour for last half hour of fishing & my mate 'Ginge Mike' pulled in this colourful Tub Gurnard."
George did better than most: "Decided to fish on Saturday, hoping the huge tide would produce some good bass on the drift, so headed to the overfalls with my brother Mark. 8 drifts and nothing doing, so plopped the anchor in with the tide running at its max and just settled for big weights. 2 conger both ~20lb, 2 blonde rays both 15-0, 1 bull huss at 9-7 and a single dogfish. Just as the tide was about as slack as it was going to get Mark caught this beauty which we weighed at 12-7. All fish fell to single squid baits."
Steve from "Seamouse" sent the final one for September: Couldn't resist the weather on saturday, so we launched SeaMouse and Waimaria from Eastney about 9am in perfect conditions. First stop was at a trigger fish mark we'd been given. It produced several fish the day before but for us, it wasn't so kind. Half a dozen drifts without bites and left Waimaria there and headed for Dean Tail wreck for mackerel. We bombed out - even the German Tug only yielded a single pout. Tried again at Nab, where Waimaria caught up with us. They were looking smug, the birds had led them to a shoal feeding on the way out and they had themselves a bucketful.
August 2009First report from Tony: A new record! (ish) We ventured out on Sunday 2nd August for a Species race. This was the sixth competition of the year from our local fishing club and involves catching as many species as possible in the allotted time. This competition had been a long time in the making as it had been blown off about 4 times. The weather was looking very poor with the forecast showing a 3 to 4 WNW and very overcast. We stood on the beach at Stokes Bay eyeing up the stiff breeze and the rollers pounding on the shingle. The breeze was certainly blowing a good 4 and the direction was definitely a Sou’ Westerly. The weather vane at the club was also showing a Sou’ Westerly. We phoned the coast guard for the second time to get an up to the minute weather forecast, and as before the coastguard gave the same forecast of 3 to 4 WNW. Still not convinced I logged onto Bramblemet from my phone to get a real time weather forecast from bramble bank which backed up what we could actually see and gave a 4 SW. just goes to show that the coastguard is not always right! We decided to launch anyway as we had not fished for about 5 weeks due to the lovely summer weather and some of us were starting to get withdrawal symptoms! Due to the nature of the competition – hunting different species - means that you have to move around quite a bit to target specific species on different ground. We set off to Hill Head to pick up a smooth hound as the first of our species. We arrived at our top secret spot just as the tide turned toward the Westerly run and I baited up with a lively hard back crab. No sooner had I sat down when my rod keeled over with the first take of the day. Blimey I thought – the crab had only been in the water for 2 minutes! I lifted into the fish which immediately felt a very good one. After a great fight I landed the first smoothie which came in just under 14lbs – not a bad start to the day. Literally 30 seconds later James’s rod keeled over too. This fish was a little smaller but not to worry – both fish were sizeable. We had only been anchored for 10 minutes and had two nice smuts on 2 crabs. The rest of the bucket of crabs got tossed over the side – free lunch! I would not be needing those today. After our good start we headed over to Peel Bank to try for a dog or a ray. We negotiated about 250 sailing boats taking part in the round the island race and dropped the hook into a nice bank. The weather was really getting unkind. The wind was whipping up a god swell as we now had wind over tide and the ride was becoming a little uncomfortable. Not much action either apart from huge amounts of weed being pulled up every 5 minutes. We decided to up anchor and headed for Osbourne Bay for some shelter out of the wind and the sailing boats! Very soon we hooked into some lovely bream to increase our species count further. When the weather had calmed down we headed off for Sturbridge to try and pick up some more species. We anchored off Sturbridge buoy and threw some feathers out to try for some Mackie. Instantly we had two full strings of Mackie which would suffice for the afternoon. Nothing else showing at the buoy so we moved yet again to the West end of Sturbridge in a desperate attempt to bag some more species. Unbelievable really – sometimes you go out and all you can catch is dogfish and pout, but when you really want to catch one they don’t show up! Eventually I bagged a nice thornback to increase my species count. Back at the weigh-in it seemed everyone else had a hard days fishing too. Not many species caught at all – not one dog and not one pout! Mostly smutts and bream, but Paul had an interesting catch of a Herring on baited feathers which weighed in at an almighty 1lb 2oz. we thought nothing more of this until one of the guys asked what the club record was for Herring. When we looked it up we found that the British record was only 1lb 1oz and we had a potential new British record! We weighed it again to get an accurate weight but by now it had lost some weight and came in just under 1lb 1oz. Close but no Cigar! A new club record anyway. August is often a poor month for fishing for some reason, and this August is following the usual pattern (for me anyway). One trip with daughter Aedy made it feel worthwhile though - we fished a Warner Shoal mark which was reasonably sheltered for her, and she managed to catch a mackeral or two and two nice bream, so supper was sorted anyway. I caught a few small smoothound on prawn baits, and she was amazed by the strength in their little bodies - impossible for a 12 year-old to hold straight! The following weekend I didn't even bother to fish, I cruised down to have a look at the sea defences being repaired off Haslar. The system works just like road-building, but on a huge scale. The smaller vessel below (in front on the mother ship) is actually the equivalent of a dumper-truck. More interesting than the fishing, anyway.
July 2009The weather has been so bad all month that I have not received one catch report! However I did manage to get out on Saturday 25th and left Langstone on a nice, settled sea.By the time I reached No Mans Land Fort it was getting quite breezy. With half a bucket of mackerel on board I headed to Warner Shoal, as that was probably the only fishable area. There were a couple or charters already sheltering there so I dropped the hook. With a beam sea I then fished in a rocking corkscrew for a couple of hours, catching bream and smoothound before deciding enough was enough. Just as well, the entrance to Langstone Harbour was dramatic, a huge tide emptying into a F4-5 south westerly created some interesting conditions. Not good for small boats!
There was a window in this dreadful weather on Friday, so I booked a day off and went down the marina for 7am. The wind was light but the forecast predicted stronger winds in the afternoon, so I opted to keep inshore. A mark in Bracklesham Bay holds good tope and I have been bitten off by some monsters there, so I decided to run down there. I feathered up some mackerel on the way, and kept a few small ones in the live well. It proved very difficult to hold position on the mark because the tide was so small and there was no current to speak of. However, I dropped a mackerel down with a strong 6/0 (been straightened before) and a wire trace (been bitten off before) so this should fix 'em. Within only a few minutes I had a classic tope run, only for the line to go slack. I reeled in to find the line had been bitten through above the wire trace. How big was that mouth? I rigged up again this time with two feet of wire and the next tope run started a good fight that had my arms aching. After a struggle I lifted it aboard and managed one photo before I realized one person, one angry tope and one delicate camera was a bad combination.
Nothing much happened after that so I decided to run further out as the weather seemed kind enough, however all I caught were pack tope after pack tope. I did receive a couple of interesting visits from above but you'll have to read my Blog for that story...
June 2009Not much fishing for me in the last couple of months: a family bereavement and a troublesome engine meant opportunities were limited. However, the engine is now fixed so Salar will be back out there again soon. Ian sent me his report: "Just a little report -went out 7th June from 6pm till 9pm as the weather was not good during the day. We had to use the crabs up somehow! Me and Andy had 2 hounds one 12lbs and this one 15lbs plus."
One from me! Now that is a change. Salar's engine is now humming nicely so it was time for a test run then a serious day's fishing. I started on Saturday simply feathering for mackerel by The Forts. There was the usual fleet of small boats drifting the race around No Mans Land Fort, and I quickly had a bucketful. I noticed not everyone was having the same degree of success, and I strongly suspect it was because I was using a white coated lead weight. I had a quick chat with Arron on the phone and he suggested fixing a treble to the weight which I did. Next few drops produced mackerel on that treble as well! On Sunday, equipped with a tank of sand eels supplied by Arron we headed out to the bass marks. We started at 6.30 am because of the cill times at Southsea, and headed straight into a bank of fog a few hundred yards offshore. We pressed on at slow speed, me watching the plotter for course and AIS data, and Arron watching out for pots and small craft. We reached the first mark an hour later without incident, and within minutes the weather cleared. Relief! We could concentrate on fishing. The first few drifts produced only one or two small fish so we headed out further to the Overfalls. We arrived just at the tide dropped away to nothing, and although we lined up for a drift, the plotter showed 0.0 knots. Still, there was no point being there and not fishing, so the eels went down. What a surprise - Bang! Bang! Two good fish hit immediately - slack tide and not even on a mark. The next ten minutes were manic as fish after fish came up, mostly good fish too. As the tide started to run the fish were more elusive and we had to hunt around for them, but there were there for most drifts. We ended up heading back at 3pm with a tally of 35 bass and two large mackerel - not up to the commercial fishers numbers but still twice as good as my best bassing day to date. Moral of the story - fish don't read the rule books! May 2009The bream are here, big tope are here, mackerel are here...time to go fishing! The first report of May was from Steve: My first report of the new season, on Saturday I went out to a mark on the Utopia armed with a bucketful of crabs I had caught in the pots the night before and a bag of squid, we left at high water at about 06.00 and although there was little wind there was still a bit of a swell which prevented me from hammering to out to mark, but once there I anchored bang on the mark. On went the crabs and within minutes one of my uptiders screamed off and I was into my first Smoothy of the season, unfortunately it was short live as it managed to throw the hook, which is very unusual, but no sooner had I lost my fish than my mate was into another, which was safely gathered in the net and weighed about 8-9lbs and as the tide started to ease so the runs became more frequent, I then heard the sounder going mad as a shoal of fish passed through and I quickly dropped down a set of feathers and was immediately into a full string of Mackerel, what a bonus and between us in about 20 mins we had about 50 mackerel, more than enough for bait and for the crab pots. I was hopeful that with the steady stream of mackerel still showing on the sounder that the Tope wouldn't be far behind them and at this time of the year any Tope caught would be larger Female fish, so with half a side of fresh Mackerel I cast out and waited and after only 10 minutes or so my line screamed out at a fair rate of knots, I picked up my rod and lent back and just held on as line was being ripped of the spool and there was nothing I could do but watch, this was undoubtedly one of those females I was hoping for and after almost 20 minutes of some arm wrenching moments she eventually came along side the boat and between the two of us we tailed it aboard, she was some 4ft long and very broad across the head, we quickly got her on the scales which registered almost 40lbs dead, what a start to the season, we both switched al our rods to large Mackerel baits and enjoyed a hectic two hour or so catching 14 more Tope everyone weighing between 20lbs and 30lbs and I had cramp in both arms from playing them, I have never such an amazing Tope session, after it gone quiet I put a crab back on and was soon into a Smoothy, but the wind had also got up and one by one all the charter boys started to leave and we followed them. We headed for my mark on the Medmery, but when we got there the SW F5 was pushing quite large rollers towards our beam so decided against anchoring and headed towards Bracklesham Bay where we found half the fleet already anchored, so we anchored up with them and tried for some Bream, but we caught nothing and was really only using it as a safe haven until we had enough water to moor up. This was a pretty amazing trip having caught 11 Smoothy’s, 15 good sized Tope, 1 Thornback Ray and plenty of Mackerel, which all bodes well for the new season and I have included a couple of pics of the larger Tope.
Next up was Ian, brief and to the point but a cracking fish, especially for the Solent: "3rd may went out in the Solent weather not so good had a nice hound 17lbs plus 5 more from 5 to 8 pounds. Not a bad day."
Tony had a bit of a journey before meeting up with Ian (above), here is his story. "We were in two minds whether to go out on sunday as the weather was not great. The forecast was force 3 to 4 WNW winds with a 3.9m tide. We waited for about an hour before we decided to go for it. We launched at stokes bay and headed for Boulder for some bream action. The going was rather slow as we had wind over tide which made the sea very snotty indeed.
Andy was in next with a nice smutt of 11lbs. Still no action for me though. James continued to catch and so did Andy. I eventually hit home with a nice smutt of 9lbs. Soon Ian called on the radio to gloat about his superb smoothie of 17lbs. We continued to catch smutts for the rest of the afternoon. The total tally was about 16 smoothies between both boats.
Tony was out again last week: I managed to get out on Sunday albeit very briefly, we only fished for an hour and a half. It was a spur of the moment thing; John phoned to say that he was taking his son out and asked if I wanted to buddy up with him. Time and tide was very tight but we put our wellies on and walked down to the shore and managed to gather 20 or so crabs in a few minutes. I launched in Portsmouth harbour about an hour before high tide and steamed round to hill head at 27 knots which was fun with a not so flat sea. John was already there at our top secret spot and had already landed a couple of nice smoothies. We baited up with live hard back crab and within 10 minutes one of the rods keeled over. James picked it up and did his best to hold on to it. The smooth hound took off like a train ripping line off the reel. James was trying to retrieve it but made no headway as the smoothie was still running and the clutch was still slipping. I just had to laugh and said to James – there is nothing you can do mate – just hold on, sit back and watch.
After the fish had stripped probably 60 metres of line from the spool it stopped. I said to James now you can start to retrieve your line. He struggled to pull the fish in against the strong tide so daddy had to help a bit. Eventually we landed the fish which weighed in just shy of 11lbs. The fish was a female so she was released. We had several other smoothies over the next hour or so including the “one that got away”
James was hooked into a monster definitely one of double figures but after playing it for about 10 minutes the braid snapped clean in half. Time to replace it I think. We had to leave soon after this as we needed to get back to the slipway before the water disappeared. We decided to call it a day and pulled in the hook and headed for home. A short fishing trip but we had some good sport which had satisfied our fishing bug for another week. John had several hounds and a thornback but was out-fished by his son Daniel who landed a nice hound of 12lbs and a thornback of 10.5lbs. Great fishing in just 12 feet of water!
April 2009The plaice are not around in such numbers off The Blocks, although that could be because fewer people are fishing there. Smoothounds are around from Nab and Utopia marks. Good catches of ray are reported from Overfalls marks, and the first few bream have turned up, but only in ones and twos. In a couple more weeks we should see them arrive in good numbers, with garfish and mackerel soon after. Tony sent in this report after his plaice match: "We fished the blocks of Southsea on Sunday 12th April which was comp 2 of our fishing club annual competitions. There were about 30 boats on the mark so space was not so much of an issue as in recent weeks where we have seen upwards of 90 boats trying to get a slice of the action. The weather was perfect for the plaice with a 2 knot wind and a reasonably large tide of 4.6m and an overcast day. We started fishing about 08.00hrs with an easterly tidal run. The going was quite slow for the first hour or so until the bites started to show. We were using very light gear so that we could enjoy some of the action when we hooked into the plaice. Just before the last of the flood the bites were coming quite regularly but I seemed not to be hooking the fish. I think I missed about 8 or 9 good rattles until we landed the first couple of Plaice to 2lbs. very soon the tide slackened off and so did the bites. Whilst we waited for the boat to turn I tried a few different techniques for an early bass but this did not turn up anything either. Once the tide started the westerly run the bites came back, again with me missing several beauties until we eventually landed another couple of plaice. One of the boats had some larger plaice to 3.5lbs but these were caught much further inshore. The plaice are still at the blocks but I think that the numbers have dwindled over the last month. Time to move on to the hounds and then the bream! Another boat went out to a mark just off Princessa Shoal on the same day and had a 7.5lbs Bull Huss, numerous hounds to 12lbs, a cracking bream of 3.5lbs, a small codling at 3.5lbs and several thornbacks, dogs and pouting." And from Ian and Paul: "Went out sunday 12th April to a mark south of the Nab: 12 smooth hounds, bull huss, 1 bass, a cod and a nice black bream of 3 and a half pounds. Weather was perfect - what can I say, they are out there. "
From Wayne: "Headed out to Selsey both days Easter weekend resulting in Bream to 2lb, Pout, Thornback, Smoothounds to 8b, tiny Tope & as many Dogfish as you could wish for, not that you would. The Bream were not about in numbers but still nice to see they are in. Sat 18th saw me at the slipway at first light, a good Force 4 Northerly the for a single handed launch to the Blocks for what I was hoping would be a Plaice trip. It was not to be & 7hrs of hard fishing produced 2 bites the entire day. Both came in the first hours fishing, a Bream of a pound & a half, & a new species for me, A Red Mullet weighing in at 1lb. The Mullet turned a pretty dull session into a decent result. Always nice to add to the species list."
From Tony and Son Ltd.: "I had seen reports of smuts being caught out off the nab area so decided to give my favourite spot off Hill Head a go at the weekend, not knowing if the smoothies had made their way in this far yet. My son James and I went down to our normal crabbing spot to gather some live hard back crabs for bait. The crabs were very few and far between and we only managed to get about 10 hard backs and half a dozen peelers. Not to worry this would still be enough for a couple of smoothies.
We launched in Portsmouth harbour and set off to our top secret spot at Hill Head. There was a stiff South Easterly breeze blowing and the sea was quite snotty as we had wind over tide but we had made the effort thus far so carried on in our search for the smoothies. We got to our spot just as the tide turned and the westerly run started. The sea calmed down a bit now the tide had turned so we started to fish the last hour of the flood. We were only in 12 feet of water so casted the live hard back crabs down tide away from the boat. Within 15 minutes James had an excellent take and the reel screamed as the line departed at a rate of knots. James lifted onto the fish and started to retrieve the line. He was struggling to hold the fish against the 4.6m tide but persisted and soon landed a lovely 7lbs smoothie. A new pb for James.
from Tony Hamlett and his new boat "GIMLI" : "I left the marina 10 am with friend today - high tide 3pm - so we opted for the Outer Nab Rock to meet incoming tide which turned out to be a good choice - bream, pout, dogfish and one starry smoothound. The bream were mostly good size - we kept 4 of 1.5lb to 2lb all males for the pan, the rest were returned. Great fun, great weather if a little breezy and moderate waves. I just hope this is the start of a good summer"
Steve and SeaMouse sent in this report: After my painfully poor run in January, it was nice to finally get the boat back out again. I was late at the slip (again) to find Waimaria and 'I'm In' already there and ready to go. Threw everything together and launched in double quick time into a flat calm Langstone Harbour. Out at sea, we'd just a light swell all day and never got above a force 2, just enough to keep us cool in the sunshine. Fabulous weather for April!
March 2009The cod have just about gone, the whiting are dwindling in size and many (myself included) have been building Brownie Points at home rather than fishing. However, March has arrived and as we suspected, plaice are here already. The first few were thin but they are fattening up already. The first weekend saw a small fleet off The Blocks, the large tides making the Selsey marks difficult. Here is Tony's report from Sunday. "Due to bad weather, some more bad weather and yes you guessed it, even more bad weather, I have only ventured out fishing just once this year, so it was nice to make the most of a break in the weather and fish the blocks of Southsea today. The forecast was a 2 knot NNW wind and a 4.3m tide with 100% cloud cover which was just about perfect conditions.
I managed to get out for my first plaice trip on the15th, and what a glorious day! I took Salar out of the marina the evening before so I could start early next day, and kipped in the cabin until Arron phoned me at 0630hrs to say he was on the way with bait. Although that was earlier than planned, it was a calm clear day so I followed him back down the channel and brewed a cuppa on the way. We anchored up near the Blocks, and by 0730 there were already 15 boats there - which rose to over 80 by the afternoon. First drop produced a nice pan-sized plaice, second drop another, then a short wait and a third came up. I needed a fourth to feed a family of four but I had to wait until nearly 3pm for the next one, bigger at 2lb 12 oz and then the last cast with the last worm brought a 3lb 9oz spotty, my PB. Arron next to me had seven to my five, but I don't think six was an average for the other 80 boats judging by the radio chat. I think you have to be on the right spot, which can be very localised. Plaice feed by crushing shellfish so any shellfish bed will hold them, you just have to find the beds! Unfortunately all my photos disappeared along with by briefcase and laptop in a smash a grab raid on my car by a hoodie in Salford, so you will just have to imagine what 80 boats arranged like a "car park" looks like. Wayne sent in this very interesting and philosophical report, I wish I had a tame flounder to play with! "Plaice fishing isn’t exactly what you could call a 'forte' of mine, in fact I’ve caught one, and that was foul hooked on mackerel feathers. At first I thought it had taken the feathers legitimately, but it was foul hooked through the head, which I’m guessing showed it was attracted to them & would explain the Christmas decorations on most Plaice rigs. Sceptics could question whether beads and sequins really do work; I think they do for sure. I’ have a small freshwater Flounder in my tropical fish tank at home which will only feed on live food. If I drop an earthworm in the tank it will eventually find it, but if I place it with a white tipped pair of forceps it will head directly towards them. It will also follow the tip of the forceps around the tank even if there is nothing in them which shows how much it relies on sight to investigate likely food stuff. Anyhow it was enough to get me tying a few spoons & beads to some rigs in ready for a Plaice trip.
A nice little Dab meant Mike got into things & not long after another Plaice came to one of my rods. It was turning into a good morning when Mike bought in another fish of around the same stamp. The tide & wind swung us round into the welcome warmth of the sun although this ended the action for the next few hours. Around 2 in the afternoon the best bite by far pulled Mike's light spinning rod into a good bend. A great fight for a fish of 2 & half pounds proved to be the last of what had turned out to be a very pleasing day afloat. Four fish kept, we would have put more back had they not swallowed the hooks so deeply, but they will provide a nice supper. Hopefully enough will evade the fleet of anglers to fatten up nicely in the following few months."
(Latest Report:) Arron's final report from March, and an end of an era for "Aquaholic":
February 2009The fishing (and the weather) has been very poor, and the first report of February didn't come through until halfway through the month. Here is a report from Kevin, aboard Mark's boat "Reel Affair". Here is a picture of Mark Saunders, with a Plaice of 1lb 10oz, caught off the blocks today, aboard his boat Reel Affair. This was the bigger of two that he caught, the smaller being put back to grow a bit bigger.
It was a cold breezy day, with a watery sun, and when we got out to the blocks, there were about fifteen other boats there, but the radios were quiet, so we don't know if others had caught or not. it was also very quiet on the fishing front until the tide turned and a bit of flow started, then Mark had the smaller fish from a rod fished close to the boat, this was unhooked and released. Mark then rebaited with Rag (we got some nice size Ragworm from Allen's Marine) and dropped it back off the boat, and then his other rod rattled with interest, and he again boated a Plaice, this time it was bigger at 1lb 10oz. after this fish, we carried on fishing until dusk, but nothing else showed.
January 2009
From Arron: "3 reports in one:
Arron was not alone, it was rubbish elswhere too. This is an exciting moment aboard Steve's "SeaMouse":
Having not managed to get a suitable weather window since October, Saturday seemed the last chance of a south coast cod before the current weather system closed in and terminated the season. I struggled for crew but I did finally get a friend of my wife's to volunteer. I also found crew for my buddy boat, Waimaira, but the guy cancelled on me last thing Friday night. That's five times in a row he's let me down - he's toast! Saturday dawned colder than forecast. Shaun turned up on time and we hitched in the first light with the trailer cover frozen solid and headed south. The screen wash worked for the first twenty miles or so but then we passed through a patch of freezing fog at -5C and that was that, the wash nozzles froze solid and we spent the rest of the journey peering through salt. At the slip, Martin arrived just as we did and I handed over the bait I'd picked up, and generously donated him my crewman as well. Got ready in leisurely fashion, as I was wearing so many clothes it was hard to move and I was starting to cook. Had to wash down the boat screens to get the road salt off, then scrape the water off when it froze. Launching went easily with Shaun holding SeaMouse for me while I parked the car. I then had a good ten minutes to get the e-tec warmed up while they launched Waimaria. Tried some baited feathers in the channel - nothing doing. Martin had a bit of a panic over the lack of water from his Honda's tell-tale but it started up after a few minutes, presumably when a stat opened? Conditions were perfect, a very light northerly and gentle overcast. Later in the day, we even got as far as sunshine and a mirror flat sea for a while. You could not have asked for more. Belted out to the Dean Tail wreck first to see if the pollack were at home. It was barren. The German Tug was little better, with just a few fish showing tight to the wreckage and no takes. We then headed over to Medmery Bank where the gathering ebb was really pushing through hard. Took me a while to anchor as the anchor and warp were frozen into a solid mass and had to be thawed with buckets of seawater and some brute force. After an hour of motionless rod tips, and needing now over 1lb lead to hold bottom, we called it off and went inshore to the mudhole. Complete opposites here, the tide wouldn't bother a 4oz lead. Again, we sat biteless. A twitch or two on baited feathers gave me a very small whiting in the end, but that was it. A move to a nearby mark was the same, a long wait then a small whiting. As the tide was now past the worst of the ebb, we headed out deep to the Nab. More depth, more tide, no fish. By now it was getting late. The sun was visibly dropping, along with the temperature and the tide push, but the day was still very calm. We had the options of going back inshore or further out and opted for going deep. We went deep(ish), to the Tabletops. Tide push there had eased nicely and as the sun set, the whiting were at least starting to move. I boated two more and had a few extra twitches and knocks as well before I had to call a halt. Ran back on a flat sea with the light going fast. I'd really enjoyed my day 'fishing' solo but felt bad about my crewman over on Waimaria. He'd blanked, Martin had managed just two pin whiting. Met a couple of charter skippers on the slip and they'd done no better, which was some consolation. Recovery was tricky, a big tide at low water meant we had the rear wheels off the slip and the trailer at a steep angle. Winching on the last few feet all but killed me. The Subaru came out with just a bit of wheelspin but poor Martin in the X-trail really struggled for grip. So that was it, the worst day's fishing I've had for a lot of years but still a pleasure to be out on such a nice day. Relaxing to be alone aboard in some ways, but with so many moves the anchor work about did for me :-) From Pete: "Fished with my mate Mitch on Sat 24th Jan. We stayed in the Solent as the forecast was not great. Fishing was slow to say the least, we tried 3 different marks and only had one bite all day resulting in a 3lb codling for Mitch. All I managed to catch was a plastic bag! The forecasters were wrong and the day was lovely with little wind and bright sunshine in the afternoon and we wished we were more adventurous in search of fish." -If it is any consolation Pete, I had a verbal report from Arron that he had spent the same day on the other side of the Island with only three dogfish to show for it.
Earlier reports have been moved to the 2008 Archive page. |
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Grinning from ear to ear I sent the bait back down. Max was next to get a decent bite. Luckily he’d put the ratchet on his real as line streamed out from his uptider. A few minutes later a tope came up, taking a single squid, around the 8lb-10lb mark which was quickly returned! October, Tope, what’s happening?
As the tide died so did the action. Even the dogs got bored so at slack tide we headed off further south to a wreck some 4 miles away that has previously given me good catches of conger. 
About 20 mins later the same rod bent over with another good take. James was straight into this one which by the bend in the rod looked a better fish. James had now perfected the pump and reel technique which he had just leant bringing the last fish in. the fish gave a good scrap and soon came to the surface and we were both surprised to find it was not a smoothie but a lovely thornback of 9lbs. Yet another pb for James. I then landed another small smoothie before we decided to call it a day. The strong tide was doing a good job of pushing all the weed along and we were soon bringing in 2lbs of weed every 5 minutes. We had only fished for about an hour, landed three fish and James had two new pb’s in one day, a good afternoon out. We now had to punch back through wind and tide on our way home."
Saturday 21st, I was crewing for my mate on the charter boat Buccaneer out of Langstone as he had a few 'rod hires' on board. We headed out a fair way to some tide and to a bank where we'd had some cracking blondes, today day was no different with a few extra's.
First fish was a 4lb Cod, then the usual doggie's and pout. Slack water came and the blondes started to feed along with a stray 7lb smoothhound. We ended up with 8 blondes, the smallest being 14lb and the best of the day went 26lb, another 4 were well in the 20's.
The bonus fish of the day was a 4lb brill in prime condition which took a huge sandeel on a single 6/0 hook 
