After a month of breezy weekends we finally had a day where the weather and a weekend coincided. Sunday 13th August dawned clear and calm, and after over-nighting on board I was in a great position for an early start. At 06:30 I was heading south from Langstone Harbour, and first stop was a bank a couple of miles out which usually has a good stock of mackerel hanging about. This morning the sea was alive with splashing baitfish, mackerel and seabirds. Within a few minutes I had plenty of mackerel and some scad for good measure. I find smaller fish skin feathers size 6 tied to 20lb mono to be consistently effective, especially if used with a 25 gm or heavier lure as a weight to give a flash and a flutter.

I spent the morning at New Grounds, and although I caught a couple of very nice ray, I was plagued by dogfish and small tope. Tope are annoying because you either accept the many bite-offs or scale up to wire or very heavy mono and cut down your chances of catching anything more finicky. I decided to move instead, and headed to Sandown Bay.

I ended up slightly off the mark I was aiming for, but nevertheless still had plenty of action with strap conger, small bream, more ray and scad. No tope or dogfish thank goodness.

Home via the bank again, in the hope that bass may show but I was too early, the bass tend to feed on the banks either at dawn or dusk. Never mind, I have plenty of winter bait in the freezer now the mackerel are plentiful.

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