Author: Neville Merritt (Page 43 of 44)

“Saturday morning, knowing the weather wasn’t going to be great, we left Chichester harbor at around eight and headed Selsey way to Medmery. we had a drift over to try for any flatties willing to take mackerel or squid strip with beaded traces and small hooks. After a long drift with no action we decided to anchor by the street buoy north of boulder bank. After we dropped anchor more boats turned up which seemed promising. However, even with the near neap tides the weed was a problem covering out baits and rigs in massive lumps although my dad did manage a nice edible crab. It was far to big for bait so it was thrown back.

After a while with no bites and weed on every drop we decided to up anchor in the slack and try the gully to the east of Medmery for the flood. There were a few charters trying the same thing. After a while still with no bites and my dad feeling a bit queasy because of the wind against tide chop we decided to head back to Northney. The night before we weren’t able to get a berth as it was so busy so had to get a travel lodge for the night. Our mate who works at the marina had saved us one for tonight. But with a few hours of daylight left we decided to get some more fuel from the garage and head back out to the mouth of Chichester Harbour to get some mackerel as we only had frozen and now defrosted fish.

After about an hour we had almost 20 mackerel which was plenty. They weren’t coming in thick however we had some spaced out strings of ones, twos and threes. And to make it a bit more interesting there were a few scad mixed in. My dad also had a tiny bass and little bream which looked slightly red which made me excited for a new species. However, we decided it was a black bream after a closer look. He had put some small strips of squid on his feathers which i feel could have brought these extra fish, even if they were tiny. We returned back to the marina glad we hadn’t blanked on the day and optimistic for the Sunday with fresh baits.

Sunday morning the alarm went off at five, we tidied the boat and we left the marina at 6am. We went straight to the south nab banks by the cardinals for the flood tide. We were interested to see what we would catch as we’d never fished here before. We had a mackerel flapper on a trace and a few normal running ledgers with squid, prawn and mackerel as bait. First drop i had a small 1-2lb tope on my new rod (12/20lb gx2 ugly stik boat rod) before i even got my second rod in the water. Quite happy with that.

After a few missed bites and some dogs my dad got a nice run which resulted in a nice low double tope. Soon afterwards I was just checking my rod to see if i was holdong bottom . I lifted into it and if felt quite heavy. I didnt see the bite but there was something on. As it came up i wasn’t quite sure what it was as it did take a little line. So I was quite surprised to see that it was a ray. Usually, i find, rays are just a weight to reel in with minimal fight. I had that few seconds of excitement as the ray came up upside down, so i didn’t know what species it was but was hoping for a blonde or even a small eyed as I’ve yet to catch either of those. However, it was an undulate which weighed bang on 10lb. It took a large mackerel and squid bait.

After this my dad lost a heavy fish that was banging its head on the way up on the wire trace rod. Soon when the tide started to slacken I hauled in the anchor and after a quick chat we decided on going south to what we think is Cuba bank as we had the small tides rather than go east to utopia. I dropped the anchor over a nice slope into about 35 meters as the ebb tide doesn’t let you fish the deeper side. I dropped my rig down and a few minutes later as I was boiling the kettle in the cuddy I saw a small few knocks on my big mackerel side and squid bait. When you start eating on the boat you’ll always end up getting a bite bite which lead to a small thornback. That was the last significant fish of the day. We waited out the strong tidal flow for two hours and as it slackened we only had more dogfish. It was good to try some new marks and go bit further than we usually do because of the smaller tides. A fun weekend, I should give reports more often during August as I have six weeks off school for summer holidays and my dad’s promised me lots of fishing!”

First trip out this month, and the weather on Sunday 17th was magnificent. There were a few mackerel at Dean’s Tail so I had a few fresh ones for bait. I had relied on Easytide to plan my day and it was significantly out – the Southsea Marina site is much more accurate. The result was, I only had six hours to play with so I opted for the trusty New Grounds which always produces something. The something this time was a bass of 7lb 12oz

I used raw prawns on one rod and although I caught a smoothound as planned, the wretched starfish kept gobbling the prawns.

The rest of the tally was more mackerel, scad, dogfish and three rays. I can’t quite decide what this one is:

I managed to get out today on Spoonbill for a few hour in the afternoon – after a 3.5hr journey down to the marina 🙁 I anchored in Bracklesham Bay and caught half a dozen Black Bream and about a dozen Pouting – no dogfish! All on squid. It was nice to be out on the water, but there were some torrential downpours (no lightning luckily) and it got pretty dark in the afternoon, so not many other boats about. Got back to the pontoon at low tide at 7:30pm – but managed to get home to vote – just. Here’s me with one of the bream wearing my high summer gear… (excuse the weird wide angle – this is a single frame capture form a GoPro stuck to the cabin window) “

We are heading into the last week of June and bream are still around in reasonable numbers, although a lot are on the small side with a few larger ones among them. Mackerel are well scattered, I have caught a reasonable number but in ones and twos, not stringfuls.

On Father’s day I went out with my daughter Aedy. It started with a promise of good weather, but that deteriorated through the morning, and with only dogfish and a ray to show for our efforts by lunchtime we decided to feather up a few mackerel and head into the marina for lunch.

While I was preparing our modest cook-up, Aedy amused herself by rigging up a makeshift crab line from an old trace, and impaled a large lump of frozen mackerel on the end. She was happily filing a bucket of crabs off the back of the boat when suddenly, a 4lb 7oz bass grabbed it – under the boat, in the marina and in about five feet of water and plenty of commotion around. Not what you would expect! Anyway, a combination of marina rules, bass nursery and EU ban meant there was no chance of bass fillets for supper so back he went. I thought Aedy had taken a photo but no, being 19 she uses Snapchat so here is a still from her video but it hardly does it justice. It did look big on the pontoon!

Tried night fishing for the first time between Boulder and Medmery on the Friday night. Only doggies all through the night. However when the sun came up we had a few bream on baited feathers as they were robbing all the bait on our bigger hooks for rays etc. We then headed to a mark south of Pullar trying for tope. No luck However I did have an 11lb conger and my dad had another bream as the tide slackend. We then came in and tried another mark on Medmery throwing up no fish before coming in. Excuse the bad photo of the eel!

The sixth month of the year already. The first June weekend had great weather. I was out on Sunday in Bracklesham Bay after my first bream of the year. First cast a bass. Why does that always happen when there is a ban? Then a right old mixture of a small tope, 12lb undulate, smoothhound, mackerel (yes – 4) and finally a bream, albeit a small one. And about 50 dogfish of course. word on the pontoon was the flood is fishing a lot better than the ebb. Good to know. By the way this is the bass, I prefer to unhook fish I am not keeping while still in the water, it causes a lot less damage and stress.

Dave and Caroline were out on Monday:

“We ventured out to an area I had great success on last year to see if there were any cod there. We managed 15 Pollack which we kept and 1 Cod. The best Pollack went 14lb and the rest were split about equally between low double figure and single figure. It was a fish a drop and an hour and a half later we were heading back.

On Monday we decided to try searching out new areas after not attending the Brighton Pollack comp as we had intended. We arrived at my chosen area and about 25 minutes later I had found what I thought looked Interesting. First drift and I had a pouting up.. Second drift and Caroline landed an 18lb Cod. We were both ecstatic and I set the drift up again. This time we were both in and Caroline’s surfaced first, it came in a lovely 17lb fish. Mine came in at 13lb. We went on to land some single figure fish as well which were returned. Little over an hour of fishing and the sea state started to look unfavourable so we packed up and headed for home.
Cracking successful day and we will be exploring the area more fully in due course.

You can see by the boat angle it was starting to get lumpy, so Caroline resorted to kneeling to get the photo.”

Phill was out last week – “Fishing at Bullock Patch last week – every cast a dogfish- anybody got any clues how not to catch dogfish would be much appreciated.”

Email your suggestions here! In my experience that is tough one – if you are using any static natural bait you will probably attract a lot of dogfish, particularly if you are using fresh fish. l have switched to whole small pout and caught ray and bass with no dogfish, if that helps!

Gordon and I made the most of some settled weather ( at last!) and had two days fishing on the 26th and 27th May. There was an easterly wind but it was pretty light for most of the time. On day one we turned right out of Chichester Harbour and fished around Sandown Bay where we enjoyed a nice sunny day largely undisturbed by fish apart from the inevitable doggies. Gordon managed a couple of bream but that was all. Some of this lack of success was self inflicted as there was a strong tide run and I persisted with leads that were too light – a lesson learnt

On day two we turned left towards Selsey and had a much more productive day. We fished the tide up and caught a variety of fish – or rather Gordon caught a variety of fish while I kept the dogfish population of the area occupied. (As an aside I am a real convert to barbless circle hooks – it makes the whole unhooking process really easy and I don’t seem to lose fish using the hooks. I use a Dremel to grind down the barbs) Using squid head as bait , Gordon had bream, an undulate and thornback ray, an 8lb smoothound and a 2.5 lb bass ( duly returned). I finally caught a nice thornback and a smoothound to join in the fun. Really nice to get a couple of days out on the water .”