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The forecast gave very light SE winds, and for once, the forecast was accurate. The morning was beautiful too, with plenty of sunshine and flat calm seas, but later on the showers showed up, mostly inland, thank goodness.
Oliver and I followed the ebb tide north to Craster, but found the fishing slow with minimal tidal flow. Bird activity was a lot less here than just off Amble where we had stopped to pick up some mackerel. I managed to pick up a nice Ballan wrasse though, that went for the mackerel strip.
With the tide slackening off, we went out to some inshore wrecks that produced a steady stream of codling between 4lb and 5.5lb, as well as some small ling. Despite our attempts to send one of the ling back down using a device that Oli had seen used in America, involving a heavy weight and an inverted big hook, the idea being that the fish would get to the bottom de-compressed and a yank on the line would release it, it died before we could set it up. The other one went down okay. Another strange catch from a wreck was a dab. It is not a common species caught on wrecks, though not unique as I had had one like this once before, but what was odd about this one was that the 10/0 hook at gone straight through its head. We both thought it dead, but to keep the flesh cool we put it in a bucket of water. About 2 hours later, fishing the rough ground inshore, it started thrashing around in the bucket so I released it, and it happily swam off !
Apart from the ling, we ended up keeping several large chunky mackerel, the largest of which we weighed out of curiosity, and it came in at 1.6lb, and 41cm long.
Oliver and I followed the ebb tide north to Craster, but found the fishing slow with minimal tidal flow. Bird activity was a lot less here than just off Amble where we had stopped to pick up some mackerel. I managed to pick up a nice Ballan wrasse though, that went for the mackerel strip.
With the tide slackening off, we went out to some inshore wrecks that produced a steady stream of codling between 4lb and 5.5lb, as well as some small ling. Despite our attempts to send one of the ling back down using a device that Oli had seen used in America, involving a heavy weight and an inverted big hook, the idea being that the fish would get to the bottom de-compressed and a yank on the line would release it, it died before we could set it up. The other one went down okay. Another strange catch from a wreck was a dab. It is not a common species caught on wrecks, though not unique as I had had one like this once before, but what was odd about this one was that the 10/0 hook at gone straight through its head. We both thought it dead, but to keep the flesh cool we put it in a bucket of water. About 2 hours later, fishing the rough ground inshore, it started thrashing around in the bucket so I released it, and it happily swam off !
Apart from the ling, we ended up keeping several large chunky mackerel, the largest of which we weighed out of curiosity, and it came in at 1.6lb, and 41cm long.
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