Big Tides no fish? blah blah blah...Like Stingray, Team Slinky (minus Steve this week) headed out into the North Sea at an extremely leisurely time of 0800 (at least 4 hours later than normal!)
Discussions abound earlier this week about the MASSIVE tides affecting the fishing adversely with quite a few peeps buying into it ...have to admit it had also sullied our expectations and so we set out with the mindset that any fish was a bonus
Don’t know where Richy was fishing to have no wind but around St Marys it was blowing an absolute hooley for the first 3 hours we were out and as such Norman made the call to drop anchor to combat the racing car drift...we tried this in a number of spots on the rough ground as it was always Normans intention to fish the hard ground until slack water before heading off to the wrecks.
Well we had fun and spent our time at St Marys conducting a bit of a pre-spring audit on the tommy codling population...happy to report it seems to be thriving as we caught about a dozen or so to half a pound (all of which went back safely) in the first couple of hours
So it was off to our first wreck and with the wind still up Norman fancied trying the anchor – by the way this also falls under Cabin Boys responsibilities (it’s lucky I’m ripped like Arnie under this 16 stone frame )
Well it was worth a shot coz the drift was still very strong – yet again caused by this mystery wind - but alas there were no fish on that there wreck...not even the lowly macky. Anyways up anchor for the last time and off to yet deeper water
Finally managed to find the macky and after harvesting two or three hundred we started “proper” fishing
Well as has been said elsewhere the drift was really rather good today and as such enabled us to fish the wrecks pretty much like we would have done on any other good day
Norman was first into a sizeable fish - a nice Ling of about 5lb (no pic)
Next I was into a nice fish – a 3.5lb Pollack
And then Norman also caught another small Ling
We pottered around a few more wrecks with not much happening when we stopped over a spot not visited for a while – and as is sometimes the case we didn’t need to move on again for the remainder of our day out
Fish after fish came over the gunnels – more Ling, some nice Cod (best to 6lb) and even more Ling. We also put over a dozen back and they seemed to go back with no trouble
Final scores on the doors of fish kept for the pot stood at 5 Cod, 4 Ling and 1 Pollack (I really like Pollack) and 75.367354 mackerel (give or take)
So what should have been a crap day by all predictions turned out just great – great weather (after the wind died down) and great fishing with plenty of fish eager to pull our string!
Roll on the next set of big tides – can’t wait if the fishing is this good...cheers as ever Norman, did I say it was great day?
Me having a GREAT TIME by the way...
‘til the next time
Cheers
Tony
Discussions abound earlier this week about the MASSIVE tides affecting the fishing adversely with quite a few peeps buying into it ...have to admit it had also sullied our expectations and so we set out with the mindset that any fish was a bonus
Don’t know where Richy was fishing to have no wind but around St Marys it was blowing an absolute hooley for the first 3 hours we were out and as such Norman made the call to drop anchor to combat the racing car drift...we tried this in a number of spots on the rough ground as it was always Normans intention to fish the hard ground until slack water before heading off to the wrecks.
Well we had fun and spent our time at St Marys conducting a bit of a pre-spring audit on the tommy codling population...happy to report it seems to be thriving as we caught about a dozen or so to half a pound (all of which went back safely) in the first couple of hours
So it was off to our first wreck and with the wind still up Norman fancied trying the anchor – by the way this also falls under Cabin Boys responsibilities (it’s lucky I’m ripped like Arnie under this 16 stone frame )
Well it was worth a shot coz the drift was still very strong – yet again caused by this mystery wind - but alas there were no fish on that there wreck...not even the lowly macky. Anyways up anchor for the last time and off to yet deeper water
Finally managed to find the macky and after harvesting two or three hundred we started “proper” fishing
Well as has been said elsewhere the drift was really rather good today and as such enabled us to fish the wrecks pretty much like we would have done on any other good day
Norman was first into a sizeable fish - a nice Ling of about 5lb (no pic)
Next I was into a nice fish – a 3.5lb Pollack
And then Norman also caught another small Ling
We pottered around a few more wrecks with not much happening when we stopped over a spot not visited for a while – and as is sometimes the case we didn’t need to move on again for the remainder of our day out
Fish after fish came over the gunnels – more Ling, some nice Cod (best to 6lb) and even more Ling. We also put over a dozen back and they seemed to go back with no trouble
Final scores on the doors of fish kept for the pot stood at 5 Cod, 4 Ling and 1 Pollack (I really like Pollack) and 75.367354 mackerel (give or take)
So what should have been a crap day by all predictions turned out just great – great weather (after the wind died down) and great fishing with plenty of fish eager to pull our string!
Roll on the next set of big tides – can’t wait if the fishing is this good...cheers as ever Norman, did I say it was great day?
Me having a GREAT TIME by the way...
‘til the next time
Cheers
Tony
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