Amble 29 May 2020

[My Alibi]

It was a beautiful day, hot and sunny. But that's about it.

Oli and I set off from the marina at 7.am intending to revisit the wrecks that were so productive 2 days ago. But they were pants. The first 2 yielded nothing at all. The third produced a handful of codling around 1lb, and feeling lighter than their size would suggest. The 4th wreck fished better, and we stayed for an hour, with a fish on almost every drift. Problem is, the fish were no bigger than 3lb. This last wreck is 6 miles out, and here the water was clear, but we noticed that inshore, and even the 3 mile wrecks had water with that greenish tinge. Chatting to some of the lads at the marina later, they too had had similar experiences and had noticed the green colour. Maybe small tides and plenty of sun have caused a bit of an algae bloom. We did notice far fewer baitfish on the sounders, and very little bird activity today.

Anyway, we carried on to a couple more wrecks. One was okay, the other had nothing, and these were the wrecks that produced 2 days ago.

With the wind forecast to pick up from the SE after noon, we went inshore and fished Boulmer. A couple more small codling, and in the kelp beds just off from Seaton Point we had a mad half-hour with coleys. All good fun, but all under 2lb. After that, it was back to the marina.

[jonny_s]

Did you see any dolphins yesterday? I fished warkworth pier late afternoon until high tide and was rewarded with a huge pod which played around the end of the piers for about an hour. Never seen so many so close in. they were chasing and rounding something up as the water was boiling. Had to stop fishing as they were so close and everywhere you looked, a truly wonderful experience.

Jonny

[My Alibi]

Hi Jonny,

One of the Tyne boats posted last week that they had seen a big pod of dolphins too. Unfortunately I missed them as we came back in around 13.00. It must have been a magnificent sight.

I have not seen any dolphins so far on the couple of trips that I've made since lockdown ended. Not sure what this particular pod would have been chasing yesterday. You sometimes see huge shoals of small fish on the fishfinders which fill the screens, or sometimes you get long, long streams of them, often stretching for hundreds of metres in length, but we didn't see any of that yesterday. That said, as we approached the piers, there was a large number of seabirds, herring gulls, black-headed gulls, black-backs and even gannets, consisted of perhaps 50-60 birds in total congregated around a small patch of sea about 300-400 metres out from Warkworth pier, and just to the north. We didn't investigate though. Earlier in the week, we had seen some of the big shoals of baitfish and had dropped sabikis down, to find out that there were coleys underneath. It would suggest that these shoals could be small sand eels, but whether it is them, or the coleys that the dolphins were after I couldn't say.

There was someone fishing Warkworth pier at the time that we got in, and there were 2 more walking up the pier with rods, but that was early afternoon so not you I guess.

Cheers,
Adrian

[jonny_s]

It must have been around 7.30-8.00pm when I did notice quite a few birds starting to gather and dive, then I saw some white water further off with birds circling and diving, There were loads of launce about of which I foul hooked a few when having a cheeky quick mackerel check with a spinner. A small private fishing boat slowly came into the harbour after following the dolphins down from the North. The fishing was actually quite good but the dolphins made the night.

[My Alibi]

I've used launce as a livebait in Scotland and Ireland, but have yet to experiment with it in home waters. If I could keep them alive long enough I reckon they could work well on the pollock marks under a float. Maybe I'll give that a try, so if you see us with sabikis off the pier, give us a wave!

[jonny_s]

Will do, tight lines