Author: Neville Merritt (Page 36 of 44)

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.

With a great forecast for a change I decided to head down east to try drifting for plaice. I went via Pullar to pick up a few mackerel so I would have some for bait, as I had heard of a few turbot being landed there. Unfortunately I only found two mackerel despite plenty appearing on the fish-finder. On to Swashway where I drifted with a plaice rig on one side and mackerel feathers on the other. This time the mackerel were more obliging and I soon had a bucketful. Although I did pick up one plaice, the ground was claiming too much tackle and anyway I was feeling like a lazy afternoon at anchor. I headed back through Looe Gate this time, to anchor in the Medmery channel. This was once a mark I had to myself but word must have got out, there were 12 boats already there! Nevertheless I found a spot away from the crowd and anchored up.

Action was steady for the next few hours – small conger, dogfish, bream and scad. There was almost no tide and a bit of a breeze which made the boat swing annoyingly. As the mackerel seemed to have arrived in numbers I decided to head towards a bank off the main shipping channel which has been producing fish. This time it was full house almost every drop and I soon had 60 mackerel in the cooler, plenty to freeze for winter bait. I then drifted a bit more for bass using a Fiish minnow on the bottom, but only caught two guarnard. Back to the marina for fuel up, clean down and a date with the food supplies officer who arrived down with some goodies. We headed back out into the harbour for a supper at sundown, watching the terns and the bass hammer shoals of small fish between them. The water was alive with bass which is good for future stocks.

From Ian and Gordon on Orca :

We set out from Sparkes Marina last Friday after a long, frustrating spell in June of not matching free time with good sea conditions. It was a beautiful day with a reasonable tide so we were keen to get going.

First stop was Dean Tail for Mackerel, but three drifts produced a measly three fish. So, we headed for New Grounds to pick up whatever was about. Ian fished whole squid  and I fished a smaller bait – squid head and strip. We didn’t have long to wait long for some action, starting with a good Undulate Ray of 13lb 2oz followed by a Bass of 3.5lb for Ian (which went back with one day to go before the one fish limit comes in !!). There followed three hours of good fishing (on the flood tide) which yielded eight species of fish – Undulate, Thornback, Spotted Ray, Bass, Smooth Hound, Black Bream, Mackerel and, inevitably, Dogfish. Nothing huge but great fun fishing. It was an equal score between the big bait and small bait. We ended up trying to guess the species from the bite and fight – we were right 80% of the time. After the tide slackened, the bites dropped off, so it was back to Dean Tail to try again for the Mackerel (still the best eating fish for both of us). This time we hit some good shoals and bagged up in no time – nice to get a few “full houses”.

New Grounds is a bit featureless but it produces good catches on a regular basis. Maybe it’s a bit of fish transit highway.

By the way, we were using barbless circle hooks all day. We hooked all but one dogfish neatly in the lip, didn’t lose a fish and with easy unhooking it made fish handling a doddle. So, with the introduction of MCZ’s and catch & release this type of hook and using unhooking mats should help us all to play our part in fish conservation.

We headed back with enough Mackerel and Bream for a good supper and fish pate. The boat needed a good wash down when we arrived at the Marina  – amazing how bits of squid get everywhere – so we deserved our pint at The Ship on the way home.

Josh contacted me asking for help finding tope near Selsey. I was able to advise, and fortunately that advice proved good because this was the result: tope to 31lb; smoothhound, bass and conger. A great day by all accounts. Here is the photo-roll: