Author: Neville Merritt (Page 22 of 43)

I’m not sure where March went but that’s probably just as well. Those of us living a distance from our boats couldn’t travel to the coast so we had to be content reading reports on social media about what local anglers were up to. Not a lot, it would seem.

March is a strange month, because it is too late for the Winter species (cod and even whiting have moved on) and the Spring run of plaice moving inshore to spawn sometimes doesn’t start until the end of March. There will be pollack on offshore wrecks and reefs and you might find some late spurdog, but inshore the only predicable fish are dogfish and rays.

When you look at FaceBook angling groups and see photos of sunsets instead of fish, with comments like “Nice to be out though”, you know you aren’t missing much fishing action. It would have been nice to be out though. The charter boats have been gathering weed on their moorings waiting to be allowed out with clients, although I noticed many of them have had a thorough Spring clean. Let’s hope those shiny decks get dirty soon.

This month our catch report would have been very sparse without two of our regular contributors, Arron Shons and Heber Crawford. Arron headed 40 miles offshore on Time Out to a mark in 200 feet of water. Using a 110g lure he boated some nice pollack, the best weighing 19lb 2oz.

Heber defied my predictions and caught a nice cod early in the month, followed by pollack on an offshore trip. Closer to shore he also caught gurnard and wrasse, before ending the day finding a shoal of herring in the Solent approaches.

Herring are a frustrating species because you often see them on the fishfinder at this time of year, at various depths and spread over a wide area. As dusk gets closer they shoal up and rise to the surface to feed. This is when they are more likely to be caught. Tackle and approach is very specific because they have small, soft mouths. Using a very soft action rod fishing small Sabiki feathers, suspend them  a few feet below the surface and hold very still to simulate the larvae the herring are feeding on.

Early plaice were beginning to show up towards the end of the month. Charles Gattrell shows a better than average plaice of 3lb caught in March. Bait was supplied by the new shop Fishon Bait and Tackle in Cosham, Portsmouth

With lockdown rules gradually allowing a return to whatever normal will be, we will be having our first Southsea Marina Angling Club meeting (outdoors) in May and our “End of year” Awards Night will be in July.

Many charter boats are fully booked for the next couple of months which is good news for skippers and my catch reports, but if you want a space or full boat I’d recommend you book well ahead.

April should bring us plaice, bream and smoothound, heralding the start of the summer species arriving in numbers. It can’t come soon enough. Tight lines all.

Neville Merritt

SMAC

Well goodbye February. According to the few who could go fishing, those who couldn’t travel to their boats weren’t missing much. A late cod or two and a run of spurdogs were the highlights. The whiting worth catching have moved off leaving a horde of bait-robbing pin whiting in their place. There are still a few roaming conger on open ground but as March opens they will go back to the rocks and wrecks, and we will see the first of the plaice as they come inshore to spawn. They will be in better condition in a few weeks’ time after they recover.

March also heralds the opening up of the bass restrictions. The previous EU rules were rolled forward into 2021 which means recreational anglers can keep up to two bass per day from March to November inclusive, minimum size 42cm. This may change so watch out for further announcements. The first mullet have arrived back in the marina which seems early, but the sea temperature is trending upwards so perhaps this is normal now.

Many charter boats are taken out of the water for maintenance during the fishing lull in February, but with the much-anticipated easing of lockdown restrictions many are taking bookings already. The first few months on the new charter season promise to be very busy as anglers make up for lost time.

This month we usually report on the Southsea Marina Angling Club Presentation Night, but with no actual presentation night yet, we will celebrate the successes here.

Club Champion is Kevin Johnson (11 Points). Kevin also takes the Bream Cup (3lb 13oz); Bass Cup (11lb 10oz); Pollack Cup (12lb 14oz); Best Specimen (Bass) and Pairs Cup with John Jones. He however did leave some other cups on the table, and John Evans won the Plaice Cup (2lb 2oz); Bill Arnold won Species Hunt day competition; Peter Churchill won the annual Species Cup (33); Neil Glazier won the Cod Cup and Cod Pool (22lb); Jim Collett won the Catch & Release Cup with a Spurdog (22lb 8oz).  Junior Species Cup went to Jake Kelly (13); Ladies Cup to Aedy Merritt for her bream (1lb 4oz) and Ladies Species Cup was won by Haley Ellis (10). Congratulations to all the runners up as well! Out of respect for the Lockdown restrictions, some of our competitions could not be run this year so those cups will not be awarded this time.

I’m hoping for good weather as soon as we are allowed to travel again. I think there will be a lot of boats on the water that day!

The Southsea Marina Sea Angling Club year runs from February to January, so 31^st January marked the end of the 2020 Season and competitions. The final couple of months are usually quite exciting with last-minute changes in the club competition standings and winter competitions to look forward to as well. Well as we all know, this year has been like no other year and with the second major lockdown restricting travel and competitions, the club activities drifted gently to a halt. Our winter cod competitions were cancelled and with only a few local anglers being able to use their boats, there weren’t many fish caught of note.

Kev Johnson was the overall Club Champion and managed to bag a few more trophies as well, including the Bass Cup for this 11lb 10oz beauty pictured! Next month we will be announcing all the winners of the SMAC competitions and hopefully we’ll also know more about when we can all fish together again.

SMAC is independent from Premier Marinas Southsea although we are based in the marina, and we are very grateful for their support. Premier have kindly given up a page on their website if you would like to find out more about the club and activities, please visit www.premiermarinas.com and look at “About Southsea Marina”.

Well this has been a tough month. We’ve had several waves of stormy conditions passing over the area putting a stop to boat fishing most weekends, and only those lucky enough to be able to go out midweek were able to fish at all. Then, just to put a final nail in it the local area is designated Tier 4 so anyone living outside Portsmouth can’t travel to their boats even if the weather improves. Oh well, I suppose there’s always next year!

We do have some fishing news from those that managed to get out however. After a slow start to the winter season we saw more cod coming out, some over 20lb. Neil Glazier now leads the Southsea Marina Angling Club Cod Pool with this nice fish of 22lb.

There are a lot of whiting inshore. Strangely, they seem to be either very large and few in number of very small and in large, ravenous shoals. The larger fish such as the 4lb specimen shown by Nick Reeves are very welcome. The smaller whiting strip large baits or give themselves up within minutes on smaller baits, making fishing very difficult.

I found that putting a dead whiting on a large hook and sending it down again kept their brethren away and gave other fish a chance to find the bait. Using this method you can expect to hook up with rays, congers or even cod if you are lucky. Mark Jackson shows the largest of three good undulate rays caught that day, topped by his crew mate Richie Shippen with an undulate a pound heavier at 15lb.

The SMAC Open Cod Competition was postponed from early November because of lockdown restrictions, then when restrictions were eased we had to postpone due to adverse weather conditions. With the new, tighter restrictions in force we have no revised date to publicise. We will have to wait and see what s possible.

Let’s hope that with renewed efforts to combat the virus and the roll-out of vaccinations we’ll be able to get back to some form of normality in 2021, and we can all go out fishing again as we used to.