Author: Neville Merritt (Page 30 of 44)

Our first trip on Osprey and success for co-owner Matt Morgan!

We headed out into Bracklesham Bay (not too far from the harbour entrance on the first trip!) and fished the ebb tide initially near the wrecks but moved further east until getting toward the broken ground near The Hounds, all in about 10-12m of water. This mark fished nicely with catches of Wrasse, small Pouting and Pollack and also the ubiquitous Doggy. Looking forward to hitting more marks, and catching more fish – the holy grails for us both are a double figure bass for Matt and a Turbot for me! Maybe one day…

Will Denby

Caught by Essex angler Dave Jordison, this tope weighed 40lb

Those who are prepared to experiment often find the new killer method (although there are plenty of experiments that don’t work!) The latest “discovery” is to use wafter baits for bream. These are buoyant artificial baits developed for carp fishing, which balance the weight of the hook and bait making it wave enticingly. They usually come in colours designed to attract in murky water, and a scent as well. Combined with a squid or cuttlefish strip  for bream they can be deadly. Last weekend, all the bream I caught were on 8mm pink tuna flavoured wafters, none took the plain baits. You need to use fine hooks – short shank Aberdeens are ideal, and thread the wafter up the shank. Nick a strip of squid or cuttle (I was using cuttle as you can see from the black stains) to the hook and hang on to the rod ready for that classic beam bite that drags your arm off!

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From Steve Holt:

I was going to go out on Saturday, but the forecast changed so went out today instead and what a superb day it was, almost tropical.

I decided to head for a mark I liked the look of on the Utopia but I first stopped off at Deans Tail to try for some Mackerel and was lucky enough to find 4 on my first drop, so I didn’t hang around for long before heading out to the Utopia where I dropped anchor into about 86ft of water, it was about a couple of hours after low water and the tide was already pushing through resulting in needing 1lb of lead.

The lead has barely hit the bottom when the clutch on one of my lever drags screamed away and I was in to my first Tope of the season, not a big one but still around the 20lb mark, then two minutes later the other lever drag screamed off and this felt like a decent fish and at times it was taking more line than I could wind in aided by the strong tide, after 15 minutes I eventually had it alongside the boat and realised I would have to net it tail first and let it drift in to the net  and upon lifting it in to the boat I could feel it was quite heavy, so I got it into the weigh sling as quickly as possible and it tipped the scales at just over 35lb, so well chuffed.

I had a couple more smaller Tope of around 15lbs. But that was pretty much it with the tide now screaming past the boat to the point that the anchor was dragging, the Utopia curse had struck again as with my last boat I could never get a Bruce anchor to hold on the Utopia until a local skipper suggested I try a traditional Fishermans Anchor which solved the problem, so tomorrow I will be out to buy a 10kg anchor.

I tries a few places on the way back for Mackerel, but nothing doing, probably because the tide was too strong, but next weekend the small tides are perfect for my new mark, let’s hope the weather plays ball.

Leigh Coward caught this 46lb tope from Peter Churchill’s “Moonshine”

From Josh this weekend, it went 34lb!

Without doubt, early May is a watershed for fish species in the Eastern Solent. Those pesky little whiting have gone, although the pesky dogfish (aka Solent Salmon) will be here forever. Plaice are fattening up after spawning, and the summer species of bream, smoothhound and tope arrive to give great sport.

If you don’t want to go too far, wrasse can give a good account of themselves on rocky marks or by the many concrete structures around the area. Small hardback crabs and soft lures find the better fish.

Bream are becoming more plentiful as the month progresses. They rarely appear in great numbers but when you find and can hold on to a shoal they give an amazing fight for their size. There is no mistaking a bream bite on light tackle! Kev Johnson and John Jones had an exceptional catch of 40 bream, all were returned and the two best were kept in the fish-well initially for a photo-opportunity – see picture.

Garfish arrive shortly before the mackerel, and often follow baits right to the surface. They can surprise you with a last-minute grab of small bream baits. They make a bit of a tangle out of your carefully constructed bream rigs though.

We have seen some very good smoothhounds caught. The 19lb 10oz specimen boated by Adam Houghton currently leads the Catch and Release Cup for Southsea Marina Angling Club.

In the last week, tope have put in an appearance resulting in some cracking days out for those crews fishing the tope marks. Other good fish reported this month were Bill Arnold, smoothhound 18lb; Neil Glazier, smoothhound 16lb and Steve Kelly, undulate ray 14lb 4oz, all catch and release.

Further offshore, pollack and cod are being caught over the Channel wrecks and catches are well worth the trip to get out there.

We were very pleased to host the RNLI at the SMAC May meeting, where volunteer speaker Brian Masters gave an excellent talk on small boat safety for anglers. Even though many of use were experienced, we all learned something new. Brian Hill ran a Lifejacket Clinic at the event, and found some important safety defects in some of the lifejackets he inspected. This reminded us all to check our lifejackets carefully. We raised £94 for the RNLI from donated prizes and a collection at the meeting.

SMAC is keen to involve more juniors and ladies in the sport. To this end Adam Houghton has been organising some Ladies Trips, which seemed to enjoyed by all (eventually) – see the photos!

The juniors seem to be rather good at out-fishing their dads sometimes, so maybe we have some club champions of the future among the junior membership.

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