Bristol Channel – Thornback Ray & Conger Eel

Well this trip was meant to happen yesterday when the wind was nil and the sea as flat as a pancake… however, it didn’t due to work commitments. Somehow I managed to wangle to today off today and I was on the road by 9am, heading in the direction of the Bristol Channel. The last two trips here have been truly awesome and I was hoping for some similar action.

I took a slight detour and had a full English breakfast, and it was just the ticket. The weather on the other hand wasn’t so good. A blustery wind blowing from the south east, though the headlands offered some protection, I didn’t hold too much hope once I was a few hundred metres out.

I was rigged and ready to launch just before midday. The sea looked perfect, how deceiving an offshore blow can be!

I paddled to my mark and watched the wind pick up as I left the shelter of the headlands. It was a little worse than I’d hoped for, blowing a steady 15 knots, gusting towards 20 knots. Being wind over tide during the flood period caused the yak to swing almost ninety degrees to the tide flow, not ideal. I was wishing I’d bought my drogue along, next time!.

The baits were big, pennel rigs using 6/0 Sakuma 545 hooks. A cracking hook which I highly recommend, strong whilst being extremely sharp.

I only took squid and mackerel as it’d proved so successful on my pervious trips. I was assured that it was still a bit early for the cod to be about in any numbers so I held back on purchasing any lugworm.

The first 15-20 minutes were quiet, though the conger soon started to show themselves. They remained quite small throughout the day varying between about 6-15lb, the average being around 10lb. Though I'm hardly knocking that, on my 6lb rod these are still cracking sport.

I also took along my 20lb Ugly Stik rod in the hope that’d attach myself to a cracking eel as I’d managed the previous week. Despite being a 20lb class rod it still retains quite some flexibility whilst giving very clear bite indications.

Waiting to strike…

Fish on!

The reel in the above photo is a Shimano Charter Special, a small lever drag which I’m hoping will be used in anger next year against some tope, to date it’s proved to be an excellent piece of kit.

The 6lb Shimano rod was getting good workout throughout the day, coping with the smaller conger with ease, as well as the bigger rays that were proving to be plentiful.

Nothing like a good bend in your rod….

The fishing never really let up for the 3 hours of the flood, slack water and into the ebb tide. The ebbs tides runs strongly here and I’m assured that the ebb tide is the better part of the tide to fish.

The tide was quite small today, though it still produced a good 2 knots+ on the ebb. On the flood I was getting away with 4oz of lead to hold bottom. On the ebb I quickly moved to 6oz, though I was eventually forced to use 8oz despite being in only 8-10m of water. This is where the 6lb rod struggles, anything more than 6oz of lead (2-4oz is ideal) and the pleasure disappears, there’s no feel to the rod and the tip is pulled over. Still, it’s a good excuse to purchase a couple of 12lb rods in the near future!.

The rays were a good size today, rarely dropping below double figures. There were a couple of crackers amongst them, I didn’t bother weighing them though they were clearly heavier than the 11lb ray I caught on the previous trip.

 

In a running tide on the 6lb rods these are fantastic fun. Taking line, hanging in the tide, getting them back to the yak can take quite some effort at times. Below is my best ray of the day.

Now when it came to capturing some images of the conger I had a cunning plan. A while ago I purchased a Hero Go Pro video/still camera. It’s a cracking piece of kit, waterproof with a near 180 degree view. I reckon it’s ideal for the yak. However, I experienced ‘technical difficulties’ today, all due to user error!. Basically is comes down to being more familiar with the unit. With it head mounted, you’ve no indication as to whether you’ve correctly switched it on, or selected record.

On a couple of occasions I failed to depress the record button sufficiently, meaning some great scenes weren’t recorded. However, I did manage a great what I thought would be a great bit of congering footage, alas, I neglected to remove the lens cap!!!!.

I did eventually manage a couple of pieces of film which I’ll endeavour to edit and post over the next couple of days, again, it’ll be a learning process.

Here’s what little I did manage to salvage…

To conclude, the day produced another cracking session. I ended up with 15 conger eels and 6 thornback rays averaging around 10lb a piece, that’s a whole lot of fish. Chatting to the locals I was told not to expect too much as the tides were small, the best fishing would be over the weekend as the tides headed towards the springs. If that’s the case there’s hopefully better to come. I know that there are some big eels down there, and what with the cod due to show in numbers over the next few weeks the area promises some cracking sport.

Deep Water Anchor Reel

I have a small dive reel that holds approximately 90m of 2mm cord which I use as my anchor reel. The photo below shows my current setup.

Due to the fairly strong tides that are experienced in the area that I tend to frequent, that tends to limit my maximum fishing depth to around 20-25m. That’s working on the theory that I let out three times the depth in anchor warp once the anchor has touched bottom. I.e, if I’m anchoring in 20m of water, I’ll let out an additional 60m to ensure I hold bottom in a strong tide. That’s 80m of warp for anchoring in 20m of water.

Most of my fishing takes place in 5-20m of water so my current setup has always proved more than adequate. However, in the summer I had an opportunity to fish the deep water lochs of Scotland in an attempt to catch a common skate. That trip didn’t materialise in the end, though I did prepare fully, which resulted in me producing an anchor reel suitable for deep water anchoring.

I’ve seen several setups over the past few months to cater for deep water anchoring, none of which seemed totally ideal, though they did what the owner required.

There was an article on a forum in which someone had purchased an electric fence reel for this very purpose. On the face of it, it seemed just about perfect, my only reservations being the all plastic construction of the item shown. Sure, it’s great for corrosion resistance, though I felt what with aging over time, and being under stress, it would eventually fail. However, the idea was still pretty sound, so I did a little more research and came up with a similar reel, albeit constructed a little heavier.

The spool is plastic and 8” in diameter and holds almost 300m of 2mm cord, suitable for all situations I intend to put myself in. There’s a locking brakes on the side, chunky enough to use with gloves and the reel locks solid. The bracket is steel, though plated to resist against corrosion. I stripped the reel and coated all the spindle and associated parts in a copper grease to give some lubrication whilst preventing corrosion in the long term.

One area of concern was the spool itself, or to be more precise, the lack of a line guide of some description. I felt that with the reel in the water, there was potential for line to spool off over the side and that would be far from ideal.

I visited the local supermarket and purchased a cheap stainless steel potato masher. After drilling out a couple of spot welds, removing the mashing head and then welding on a stainless ring from the local chandlers… I had a line guide. This was bolted onto the reel using the existing fittings.

I added some padding to the bracket in the form of a few layers of string, over the top of that I added some heavy duty heat shrink tubing. This had the result of producing a reasonably comfortable handgrip. Time will tell how this fares.

To the hand grip I added 4m of floating rope (removing the existing knurled knob left a perfect attachment point). This can be threaded through the ring on the anchor trolley and tied with a slip knot to the kayak lifting handle adjacent to the seat. A quick pull and the kayak is released from the anchor, leaving the whole setup in the water, though supported by the buoy to allow easy recovery to the anchor as required.

Adding up the coast of the reel, warp, rope, anchor, buoy, etc, the whole setup cost around £40, which I consider pretty good value!. Ok, it’s something that’s rarely going to be used, though it’s there ready to go should the need arise.