Silloth Championship 24th May 2015

Today we fished the Silloth Championship competition on the West Coast.

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.

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.

Southerness I believe

St Abbs Head 12th July 2014

There had been reports of some good fishing recently at St Abbs Head.
Conditions had been settled for a few days and there was some decent weather forecast for Saturday.  We decided to take a drive up and get a few hours fishing in while we had the chance.  We could only spare the time in the afternoon and so we arrived at a little after 1500 and headed down to our mark.

We chose a mark that we had seen anglers on in the past but could not figure out how they managed to climb down (That hooked point to the right in the pic above)  A few minutes explore revealed a relatively easy path down

The view from our first mark was spectacular.

There were 3 other anglers on the other side of this mark that were not having much luck.  They had landed a few mackerel between them on lures.
We spent the next few hours exploring the features of this mark.  We put baits on the bottom, fished lures and tried floats without any luck.  I had one good take on a silver minnow early on but the fish jumped the hook on the retrieve.

There was rain forecast for early evening.  I did not want to attempt a climb back up the cliff in the wet and so we made the decision to head back up a few hours before low water.

I found the climb up reasonably easy..... my angling buddy however didn't.....

Rather than waste the last of our bait we headed for our usual mark to the south with the intention of getting a few more hours fishing in before the drive home.

This mark had never provided huge numbers of fish for us.  It had so far however never failed to give me a decent Wrasse.  We fished the north side of this mark which saw us putting baits down a 40ft cliff into a gulley among rocks.  This area is always covered with sea birds and so you need to keep an eye on your line to avoid any collisions as they take off and land.

I attempted to get a Photosphere from this mark with my phone.  Apart from a few minor issues I was very pleased with how it came out (click to rotate the view or use the control dial)

Views: St Abbs by Alan Rodmell

My second cast was put up tight to a rocky/weedy outcrop and within seconds I had a fish on.  After a brief fight I had to lift this fish up the cliff face with my spinning rod (very glad I had 30lb main line) and I was very pleased to find myself with a beautiful Wrasse of maybe 2-2.5lb.

My next cast went in the same place and I lost a fish after a good bite.  The following cast got me a small red Short-spined Sea Scorpion...

Followed a few casts later by another briliantly coloured Wrasse of around 1lb.

This poor fellow was returned and as he was recovering from the ordeal on the surface a huge seal surfaced and dragged him under!

With time dragging on we headed back to the car at around 2000hrs.

Not a bad day considering the lack of fish.  We plan to head up here again in a few weeks and by that time hopefully the Pollock will be in properly and we can put all our lures to good use.

Randoms

Drimnin - 27th and 28th August 2013

A last minute opportunity came up for a fishing trip to Drimnin in NW Scotland which we of course grabbed with both hands.
Drimnin sits on the Sound of Mull and has some very deep water within easy reach of the shore.  We fished more or less constantly for two days and saw plenty of fish.  As always with Scotland the scenery was breathtaking.

The two main marks we fished were the Town Pier (lots of Wrasse and Codling and the occasional Conger) and the West Pier (Very deep - down to 300ft. Most species can be caught here) and we did explore a little further out from these marks looking for new species.  There are hundreds of places to fish in this region. Far too many to cover in two weeks let alone two days.  It was worth the 300 mile drive and I hope to get back up here maybe in October this year.

The fishing is very dependant on the state of the tide in this region.  We fished the West pier over high water yesterday and I managed only a few Coalies on the feathers and a Mackerel in 3hrs.  My parents went back 4 hrs later and caught 30 or 40 fish in half an hour including Pollock to 2lb.  We were lucky to have had the time to fish some marks more than once or we may not have had many fish at all.  It's worth doing your homework before making the drive.....

We managed to catch 10 different species over the two days (Cod, Coalie, Whiting, Dogfish, Ballan Wrasse, Goldsinny Wrasse (new species for me), Tub Gurnard (new species for me also) Mackerel and Pollock.  My father had a conger of 25lb+ that snapped the trace while being landed.....

The one that got away..............