We had never fished this competition before but we were hopeful of finding at least a few fish and hoped we could possibly get a Zone win or two between us.
We arrived to register in Silloth about 0730 and had an hour to wait around before we could draw pegs. We took a look at the venue and tried to ascertain where the pegs were without any luck.
As it happens the pegs started a mile down the coast at Skinburness and ran right down to the beach in front of the Skinburness hotel. 80 pegs in 4 zones.
It was a catch, measure and convert match that meant length rather than weight was the aim of this game. Plus it was great to know that all fish were going back immediately and not being hauled off to weigh in.
When it came to drawing pegs my dad drew 20, my mum 32 and I unfortunately pulled out 78.
After I dropped my parents off mid-way down the pegged area I arrived at the hotel, parked up and headed to the beach.
The weather had started out blustery and went through patches of dullness and then brilliant sunshine. It was comfortable to fish and offered some great photo opportunities.
I have never fished this stretch of beach before having only fished the promenade last year for the Thornbacks. The beach was pretty muddy and fairly flat. There was a nice bit of movement on the sea and it looked brown and murky....as my dad put it...it looked fishy. I hoped so.
The comp was fishing an hour down to low water and 3 hours of the flood. (10am-2pm)
In the first hour I had a decent sized flounder and a few under-size. I had bites most casts but didn't manage much else until the flood.
I had a few more small flatties and then another decent flounder. Not much of a decent size seemed to be catching around me up until the flood when a few guys started pulling in some big flounder.
The biggest being 44cm.
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| Big flounder guy |
Fishing in the "end zone" as I called it seemed to be pretty poor. I heard talk of most fish coming in from the 2nd zone with a few Thornies coming in (one 4-5lb and another maybe 7lb) along with a number of dabs and big flounder. The overall win was out of reach for me by this time. I had caught 2 size and 4 undersize fish.
The few big flounder that the guy beside me had caught also meant a zone win was out of the question.
My dad had pulled out several decent flounder (biggest two 40 and 41cm) and was probably placed for about 2nd in his zone behind some guy who had the thornie and 10 or so flounder. My mum had a few decent flounder and a couple of dab. Not enough to win her zone as a few guys had a few more fish.
When we packed up at 2pm we were fairly sure that the overall and the zone prizes were taken, As this was a money match there was no prizes for second and so we didn't bother going back to hand in the cards.
Overall a great day and another new mark fished for me. I didn;t have time to photograph any of my fish as I was too busy getting the baits out again after retrieve. But I did manage to get some great scenic shots throughout the session.
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| Southerness I believe |
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