Oli and I took advantage of a calm day to have a couple of hours out on the water. The weather was incredibly good for the end of November. In fact, it would have been nice if it had been this calm at any point during the summer. Mind you, we had to de-ice before leaving the marina!
We didn't go far because of the short daylight hours, ending up at Northern Hill where we had found so many fish just a fortnight previously. However, this time the fishing was slow. They were moderate tides, but there was no drift, always less than 0.5 knots and often 0.1-0.2 knots which may explain it. Even around the skeers we found ourselves almost stationary. I took 10 small codling, the best being around 2.5lb, and Oli had the same number.
There were about 7-8 boats out from Amble, all clustered around the same marks, and chatting to some of them back in the marina later they had had similar results, or some even fewer fish than us. What we had seen was a big increase in the amount of bird activity, and seeing big shoals of tiny herring on the screens, some of which came up to the surface in front of us made us think that perhaps the cod were all focused on nothing else but these. Conditions were otherwise great - 10 degrees water temperature and visibility never less than 5 feet and sometimes 8-9 feet, even close in.
In spite of the poor fishing, it was a lovely day to be out on the water, and I've just added some photos of what it was like. Oh yeah, and a photo of a large velvet swimming crab that neatly sliced off the tail of one of Oli's homemade lures, much to his annoyance. A particularly malevolent-looking creature, I've entitled the photo "Call me Mister Crab" !
Tight lines to everyone!
We didn't go far because of the short daylight hours, ending up at Northern Hill where we had found so many fish just a fortnight previously. However, this time the fishing was slow. They were moderate tides, but there was no drift, always less than 0.5 knots and often 0.1-0.2 knots which may explain it. Even around the skeers we found ourselves almost stationary. I took 10 small codling, the best being around 2.5lb, and Oli had the same number.
There were about 7-8 boats out from Amble, all clustered around the same marks, and chatting to some of them back in the marina later they had had similar results, or some even fewer fish than us. What we had seen was a big increase in the amount of bird activity, and seeing big shoals of tiny herring on the screens, some of which came up to the surface in front of us made us think that perhaps the cod were all focused on nothing else but these. Conditions were otherwise great - 10 degrees water temperature and visibility never less than 5 feet and sometimes 8-9 feet, even close in.
In spite of the poor fishing, it was a lovely day to be out on the water, and I've just added some photos of what it was like. Oh yeah, and a photo of a large velvet swimming crab that neatly sliced off the tail of one of Oli's homemade lures, much to his annoyance. A particularly malevolent-looking creature, I've entitled the photo "Call me Mister Crab" !
Tight lines to everyone!
