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Wasn't going to bother with another report from my trip but pace Mark as all seems quiet I thought I'd hoy another one up. After three days in the pub sheltering from the remnants of Hurricane Bertha my last night in Portsmouth saw the winds relent giving me a chance to get out for a last fling on the shingle and give some much needed respite to my liver.
Picked up another lb of Ragworm (£12) from Lock Stock and Tackle where the lad behind the counter very kindly took extra picking them out after I asked him not to put any king rag in as I was after more discerning quarry. The plan was to stay local and with LT at 7:30pm my starting venue was Clarence beach Southsea.
Clarence is a shingle beach near the entrance to Portsmouth Harbour and a venue noted for fishing over low water and over the early flood. It is also a very easy place to fish - you park your car on the seafront road, walk over the shingle and there you are. The only downside is it's proximity to the Hovercraft terminal as they are right noisy buggers and in a westerly wind like I had throw out loads of spray...
I was soon set up with two rods, one dropped in close and the other belted out into the deep channel that can be reached fromn this beach with a decent cast. It was a lovely evening to be on the beach (pictures selected just for Mark
)
(The view over the Eastern Solent)
(over to the Isle of Wight)
(sunset over Gosport, any former Matelot's may recognise the submarine escape training tower)
It wasn't long before I had my first decent bite of the evening, a good rattle on the close in rod giving me a nice 30cm Bass on the shingle to save the blank:
Unfortunately things weren't going so well on the long range rod, weed in the water making it difficult to get the rig up and over the edge of the channel and after losing a couple of rigs on the retrieve and no bites I decided to drop both rods in close. This proved to be a good plan and as the sun went down another good rattle saw another Bass landed almost exactly the same size as the first one:
The tide was flooding quite quickly now and as 10pm approached there was still no sign of my hoped for target fish - Sole. I decided on one more chuck before making a move to my old favourite mark, as I was tidying my kit up a really good bite got me all excited so imagine my disappointment to land a horrible snotty Eel of about 2lb (at least it didn't trash my trace):
With the gear in the car I moved a couple of miles East to my old local beach at Eastney. This is another shingle beach, quite shallow and capable of throwing up allsorts of species. It does however have a very strong tide run and on this massive tide I was a bit worried that I would be weeded off. Fortunately this proved not to be the case and I was able to get another couple of hours good fishing in.
First chuck at range produced a canny bite and another fish on the shingle, this time a Starry pup of about 1lb
The action then moved to the closer in rod where I had another 4 Starry pups and a couple more snotty Eels, one of which did a very good job of destroying my trace. Then the tide kicked in and started to really steam through and the action moved to the distance rod. Another couple of Starry pups and then, just as I was running out of bait I had the worlds littlest Bass:
One more fish was to come, another little Starry pup and then the bait was gone. It was 2am and time to go back to my friends house to catch up on some sleep in preperation for the long drive back to Durham. Despite the best efforts of Bertha I had a decent trip fishing wise - two sessions seeing three species for the hunt and some good hours on the shingle over four different venues. Final tally for the two sessions was 4 Bass, 3 Eels, 8 Black Bream and 12 Starry Smoothhound (and surprisingly no Common Smuts or indeed Pouting). Hopefully next year the weather will behave and I'll get a trip to Chesil in as well but all in all an enjoyable few days away.
Picked up another lb of Ragworm (£12) from Lock Stock and Tackle where the lad behind the counter very kindly took extra picking them out after I asked him not to put any king rag in as I was after more discerning quarry. The plan was to stay local and with LT at 7:30pm my starting venue was Clarence beach Southsea.
Clarence is a shingle beach near the entrance to Portsmouth Harbour and a venue noted for fishing over low water and over the early flood. It is also a very easy place to fish - you park your car on the seafront road, walk over the shingle and there you are. The only downside is it's proximity to the Hovercraft terminal as they are right noisy buggers and in a westerly wind like I had throw out loads of spray...
I was soon set up with two rods, one dropped in close and the other belted out into the deep channel that can be reached fromn this beach with a decent cast. It was a lovely evening to be on the beach (pictures selected just for Mark
)
(The view over the Eastern Solent)
(over to the Isle of Wight)
(sunset over Gosport, any former Matelot's may recognise the submarine escape training tower)
It wasn't long before I had my first decent bite of the evening, a good rattle on the close in rod giving me a nice 30cm Bass on the shingle to save the blank:
Unfortunately things weren't going so well on the long range rod, weed in the water making it difficult to get the rig up and over the edge of the channel and after losing a couple of rigs on the retrieve and no bites I decided to drop both rods in close. This proved to be a good plan and as the sun went down another good rattle saw another Bass landed almost exactly the same size as the first one:
The tide was flooding quite quickly now and as 10pm approached there was still no sign of my hoped for target fish - Sole. I decided on one more chuck before making a move to my old favourite mark, as I was tidying my kit up a really good bite got me all excited so imagine my disappointment to land a horrible snotty Eel of about 2lb (at least it didn't trash my trace):
With the gear in the car I moved a couple of miles East to my old local beach at Eastney. This is another shingle beach, quite shallow and capable of throwing up allsorts of species. It does however have a very strong tide run and on this massive tide I was a bit worried that I would be weeded off. Fortunately this proved not to be the case and I was able to get another couple of hours good fishing in.
First chuck at range produced a canny bite and another fish on the shingle, this time a Starry pup of about 1lb
The action then moved to the closer in rod where I had another 4 Starry pups and a couple more snotty Eels, one of which did a very good job of destroying my trace. Then the tide kicked in and started to really steam through and the action moved to the distance rod. Another couple of Starry pups and then, just as I was running out of bait I had the worlds littlest Bass:
One more fish was to come, another little Starry pup and then the bait was gone. It was 2am and time to go back to my friends house to catch up on some sleep in preperation for the long drive back to Durham. Despite the best efforts of Bertha I had a decent trip fishing wise - two sessions seeing three species for the hunt and some good hours on the shingle over four different venues. Final tally for the two sessions was 4 Bass, 3 Eels, 8 Black Bream and 12 Starry Smoothhound (and surprisingly no Common Smuts or indeed Pouting). Hopefully next year the weather will behave and I'll get a trip to Chesil in as well but all in all an enjoyable few days away.
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