Another day afloat

As much as I enjoy trying new marks, there’s always that fear of blanking, knowing full well that you can pretty much guarantee a catch at another mark. I’d kind of got myself in a rut this past year so it’s been good to venture further afield, testing out some new venues. The previous day had proved quite fruitful so I decided to try another spot in the Bristol Channel. As expected the water was very muddy, a combination of spring tides and being further up the Channel itself.

I took along a good selection of bait, hermit crab, mackerel and unwashed squid. I keep my bait frozen, only taking out what I need. This usually means that there’s a handful of squid, a single mackerel, etc, in my bait box at any one time. I can happily keep bait frozen for several hours, taking home and re-freezing what I haven’t used.

Below is a photo of my ‘working box’ which is situated between my legs at all times. It contains a selection of baits, bait elastic, knife, baiting needle and an assortment of weights to cater for the every varying tidal flow.

The fishing was quite slow to begin with, though eventually a couple of smaller sized Thornback rays came to the kayak. The tide flow was strong hence retrieving even the smaller dogfish was quite hard work.

 

As per the previous trip there were some very small Tope caught, pretty to look at, though not the big adults I was hoping for.

 

The Dogfish were once again being a real nuisance, it really does amaze me what they manage to ram into their mouths. I can’t possibly believe that they can actually chew what they attempt to eat, surely the chance of succumbing to a slow death as a result of trying to eat these baits must be a real possibility. Here’s what I mean………

There were some small but firm taps on one rod. I knocked it into free spool and let the fish take some line before tightening up and setting the hook. Whatever is was stripped line from the reel at a steady pace. Every time I managed to recover a metre of two of line a few hard runs saw several times that taken from the reel. The tide was still running hard and from the strong head shaking I was fairly sure it was a Conger eel on the hook. My concern was that i was only using 80lb monofilament and the longer this fight went on the higher the chance the line would part. After ten minutes the fish was under the kayak, well 20 metres under the kayak.

It eventually appeared on the surface and it was a really good size. It still had plenty of life in it and went under the surface a few more time before I finally got it alongside. Despite being a somewhat ugly fish, it was a beauty!… very pleased

I lost a few fish during the session including a couple more decent eels during the slack water period, no complaints though. I watched the sun go down and waited for the tide to turn onto the ebb before paddling the half mile back to the beach.

Another enjoyable session, I didn’t catch the large Tope I’d been looking for though I wasn’t in a position, nor mood, to complain about it !

Bristol Channel – something different

I’ve spent many months reading old books and fishing guides and I’ve slowly been adding new marks to my GPS. I’ve literally dozens of new marks that I want to try out over the next couple of seasons and there seemed no time like the present. This mark didn’t look very fishable due to the rocky beach. Apparently there’d been a slipway here in the 1950’s though it’d long gone.

I walked the beach and decided that it was probably manageable. I loaded the kayak onto the BB trolley and I hoped that its over-sized wheels and great stability would allow me to work my way down to the waterline. It was rather difficult going and a few large rocks had to be moved to allow progress to continue, though after about 20 minutes I was at the waters edge.

The weather was stunning with the temperature in the low 20’s. The wind was but a breeze and the paddle out was a pleasure. I pushed out about ¾ of a mile into 17m of water. It was just before mid-tide so I expected the high water depth to be about 22m. The tide was ripping through and once the anchor touched bottom I let out another 80m of line, my spool was all but empty.

I was hoping for some smoothounds, rays, bullhuss, conger and tope, so the rigs were quite heavy with baits being varied between whole mackerel, lashes of mackerel, double squid or mackerel squid cocktails. Back to the tide, it was fierce, the float was pulled straight under and I needed 2lb of lead to hold bottom, even then I had to let out another 50m+ of line once the lead had touched bottom, otherwise it was lifting clear.

I didn’t have to wait too long before the rod tip pulled over hard and I was straight into the first of three nice sized Smoothounds. Despite the heavy tackle they were extremely spirited and caused a bit of a stir once on the kayak. I’ve caught some of the action on video, I’ll piece it together later in the week.

Rather annoyingly, the dogfish were showing in plague numbers and the two hook pennel rigs often resulted in two dogfish coming up at a time. These fish are the pigs of the sea, the try and eat whatever you put on your hook, regardless of the size. They have no hope of eating some of these baits yet they come to the surface literally impaled on these over-size baits, often not even hooked !

There were some very small Tope that were also trying to gorge themselves on the large baits, not the big fish I was looking for, though quite pretty to look at all the same.

 

As the tide eased off the fishing followed. A handful of small Bullhuss also made a show, though I’ve seen reports of much bigger specimens from this area. The rod banged over hard towards the end of the flood tide and I was into what felt like a nice fish. I thought it was perhaps a small conger due to the amount of head shaking, so I was rather surprised when a nice Bass rolled onto the surface. I didn’t want to take the risk of weighing it afloat as I’ve lost bass in similar circumstances before!. It weighed in a shade under 7lb once gutted, perhaps 8lb overall.

That marked the end of a very enjoyable session. I pulled anchor and drifted for a while enjoying the stunning sunset, it made the whole day worthwhile, the good fishing was just a bonus.