Is it still only April ??? ........ the fishing was never like this in April .........
One word to describe todays outing ... Awesome !
What with all the build up prior to the easter weekend and day after day of mist and easterly winds it seemed this weekends trip may be doomed never to take place and be delayed (maybe even to the day of the royal wedding .... now that would never do )
Have watched the webcam from Longsands with interest but it never seems to have a picture, well it does but always the same .... mist !
Still ... never mind, undaunted Tony and I (steve unavailable today - I bet your kicking yourself steve ) set of for a 5.00am meet with the view that the wind is at least small and if it turns out really misty then we'll exit the piers (by way of GPS) take a sharp left and fish inshore out of harms way .....
After the usual exit and fuel up at marina ..... £1.16/Ltr for red diesel we headed off towards the piers, although a little mirky and misty we could make out the piers from before the fish quay so I reckon we had about a mile or so visibility...... wrecking already springing to mind ...
We stopped off at a close in wreck just ouside the piers to test the conditions and dropped a line ...... whoooo hooo first fish of the day at 5.50am ... a nice 5lb codling could this be a sign ? (yes it was )
Not a lot more here so we discussed the options ... haha as if there were any, with a mile visibility and the tide 2 hrs or so from top it was an easy decision ......... head east !
What a great decision ! we moved from wreck to wreck (about 5-6 mile out) picking up several fish on each, using the day to really do some serious experimenting with baits/lures/shads.
Our target (I forgot to mention earlier) was set at 12 fish to the boat, a little steep by all accounts but fired by the recent catch reports coming in seemed plausible .....
By 8.30am we had surpassed the target and were still catching.
Catch rate was probably fairly well split between pirks and baites on one hand and pure shads on the other but due to the fact that shads were always on single hooks , clean and easy to use then I think the concensus was that the day was better for shads than bait. Probably borne out by the fact that we discarded bait while still fishing as it became shad city in the end.
most successful today were,
We left one wreck today as we felt we'd had a good day on it and thought it better to leave than to take too many .... now theres a change
All in all an awesome fishing trip .... from which we returned in time to listen to the football .... ... maybe not a good idea after all.
with a happy heart and more than twice our target and a species list ever growing for Tony.
Many thanks to crew of the day Tony .....
as ever a few pics of the day ...
awiating the green light in the marina at 5.15am
best and closest we got to a sunrise
Nice cod to a blue shad
a nice cod for Tone to a red gummie
My 8lbd cod to a sidewinder minnow
Tonys cod to a pirk
A ling to a muppet (orange )
Tony with a nice cod again to a gummie
and Tony with a whiting ...
crew working hard between wrecks, cleaning up, re-baiting etc etc....
and another nice codling
A stranger we picked up on the way back into the marina
and as ever nice boxes of fillets .....
all in all an AWESOME days fishing ..... if this is anything to go by then it looks like this season is gonna be a bumper
cheers
norm
One word to describe todays outing ... Awesome !
What with all the build up prior to the easter weekend and day after day of mist and easterly winds it seemed this weekends trip may be doomed never to take place and be delayed (maybe even to the day of the royal wedding .... now that would never do )
Have watched the webcam from Longsands with interest but it never seems to have a picture, well it does but always the same .... mist !
Still ... never mind, undaunted Tony and I (steve unavailable today - I bet your kicking yourself steve ) set of for a 5.00am meet with the view that the wind is at least small and if it turns out really misty then we'll exit the piers (by way of GPS) take a sharp left and fish inshore out of harms way .....
After the usual exit and fuel up at marina ..... £1.16/Ltr for red diesel we headed off towards the piers, although a little mirky and misty we could make out the piers from before the fish quay so I reckon we had about a mile or so visibility...... wrecking already springing to mind ...
We stopped off at a close in wreck just ouside the piers to test the conditions and dropped a line ...... whoooo hooo first fish of the day at 5.50am ... a nice 5lb codling could this be a sign ? (yes it was )
Not a lot more here so we discussed the options ... haha as if there were any, with a mile visibility and the tide 2 hrs or so from top it was an easy decision ......... head east !
What a great decision ! we moved from wreck to wreck (about 5-6 mile out) picking up several fish on each, using the day to really do some serious experimenting with baits/lures/shads.
Our target (I forgot to mention earlier) was set at 12 fish to the boat, a little steep by all accounts but fired by the recent catch reports coming in seemed plausible .....
By 8.30am we had surpassed the target and were still catching.
Catch rate was probably fairly well split between pirks and baites on one hand and pure shads on the other but due to the fact that shads were always on single hooks , clean and easy to use then I think the concensus was that the day was better for shads than bait. Probably borne out by the fact that we discarded bait while still fishing as it became shad city in the end.
most successful today were,
- norweigan pirk with feathers above
- rhubarb and custard shads
- sidewinder minnow shads
- any blue shads
- oh and the odd walkers crisp packets (beef flavour)
We left one wreck today as we felt we'd had a good day on it and thought it better to leave than to take too many .... now theres a change
All in all an awesome fishing trip .... from which we returned in time to listen to the football .... ... maybe not a good idea after all.
with a happy heart and more than twice our target and a species list ever growing for Tony.
Many thanks to crew of the day Tony .....
as ever a few pics of the day ...
awiating the green light in the marina at 5.15am
best and closest we got to a sunrise
Nice cod to a blue shad
a nice cod for Tone to a red gummie
My 8lbd cod to a sidewinder minnow
Tonys cod to a pirk
A ling to a muppet (orange )
Tony with a nice cod again to a gummie
and Tony with a whiting ...
crew working hard between wrecks, cleaning up, re-baiting etc etc....
and another nice codling
A stranger we picked up on the way back into the marina
and as ever nice boxes of fillets .....
all in all an AWESOME days fishing ..... if this is anything to go by then it looks like this season is gonna be a bumper
cheers
norm
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