Maryport Open 24th October 2015

 We headed back across west this weekend to fish the Maryport Open.

This was a heaviest fish match (1 fish weigh in, heaviest round and heaviest flat fish) that was to be fished between Maryport Promenade and Workington Pier.

Conditions were ideal according to the forecast.  We arrived early and headed down to check out a few marks before registration.  There was a nice roll coming in and although it was a bit blustery it seemed like a decent day to be wetting a line.

Maryport Promenade

I got geared up and headed down the beach to a mark I had noticed earlier.  A few rocky streams ran down the beach and I planned to fish alongside them as the tide dropped.

The weather was lovely and we had blazing sun for the first few hours of the competition.  Most of the locals had piled onto a rocky skier near the middle of the beach.  Looking back it may have been worth trying to find a spot but I think there were too many rods there to allow comfortable fishing.

I had a few bites on most casts and retrieved one to find this little guy who had hooked himself without biting.

As Low Water approached you could see rain on the horizon along with some dark looking clouds.  Over the next 10 minutes the sea lifted, the wind hit gale force and the rain blasted in.  Fishing was very unpleasant for a while and you could do little but zip the suit up and wait it out.

As it happened after 15 minutes the weather passed and things started brightening up again.  The bad weather also left a great double-rainbow over the promenade at the top of the beach.

I snapped a few individual shots as the weather came over and I was lucky enough to get this very cool panorama showing the good/bad weather in one shot with the rainbow in the middle.

The competition finished at 7pm.  We had hoped that the dogfish would have moved in after dark but unfortunately they must have had better things to be doing.

I did manage a codling of 1lb 4 and my dad had one of 1lb 12 along with several under-sized fish.

Back at the weigh in there seemed to be a good number of cod in the 2-5lb range but I never saw any flat-fish at all. 

I think a big bass of around 9lb won the heaviest round fish.  

So a good little days fishing despite not a great number of fish.