This blog is nod to the boat fishermen who were thinking the season had come to an end, last weekend was terrible and we were also wondering if the season had actually fizzled out.
We left "Grace" on her moorings and John and I went out on his splendid vessel "Jules". We locked out of Royal Quays at the top of the tide and headed North with no great expectation given how bad the fishing was last weekend. We were pleasantly surprised to find the water clarity to be much improved from our last trip and our first rough ground mark off Tynemouth swimming pool produced a decent keeper even before our lure hit the bottom. Thereafter, nearly every drop produced Cod that seemed to be feeding close to the bottom although most of them were undersize or just legal so they were all returned.
During slack water the bites dried up so we headed further North to a mark off St Mary's and after a quiet spell we started picking up fish when the tide eventually turned and the drift picked up.
We again found the majority of the Cod to be undersize or just legal but every now and again we would drift through a shoal of decent Cod of 4lb to 6lb which were very clean and very fit.
We returned a lot of legal keepers and we returned a lot of good keepers because our freezers are quite well stocked up. We kept over a dozen which were filleted and disbursed amongst the locals on the Zetland which will hopefully see us in good stead for a pint or two. Sorry there's no photographs, my old Nokia suddenly wont let me transfer pics onto my laptop.
We left "Grace" on her moorings and John and I went out on his splendid vessel "Jules". We locked out of Royal Quays at the top of the tide and headed North with no great expectation given how bad the fishing was last weekend. We were pleasantly surprised to find the water clarity to be much improved from our last trip and our first rough ground mark off Tynemouth swimming pool produced a decent keeper even before our lure hit the bottom. Thereafter, nearly every drop produced Cod that seemed to be feeding close to the bottom although most of them were undersize or just legal so they were all returned.
During slack water the bites dried up so we headed further North to a mark off St Mary's and after a quiet spell we started picking up fish when the tide eventually turned and the drift picked up.
We again found the majority of the Cod to be undersize or just legal but every now and again we would drift through a shoal of decent Cod of 4lb to 6lb which were very clean and very fit.
We returned a lot of legal keepers and we returned a lot of good keepers because our freezers are quite well stocked up. We kept over a dozen which were filleted and disbursed amongst the locals on the Zetland which will hopefully see us in good stead for a pint or two. Sorry there's no photographs, my old Nokia suddenly wont let me transfer pics onto my laptop.
