mike farrants

Gash Gobblers?

nice one - a fish is a fish! saved the blank!

I had a few hours free in the evening and had a choice - do i go and waste some bait on Chesil, chuck a lure under the bridge at the fleet for a school bass, Catch tiny fish off the pier, or try for the elusive mullet in the marina? Inspired by Saintly fish and his mulleting antics - i chose the latter. armed with a few slices of Hovis' finest i went down to the boat. fishing from the boat on the pontoon, I started with a waggler style float and cast into the channel - chucking bits of bread in to feed the area. Lots of surface activity under the pontoons so i moved my float in closer to the stern where i was able to watch the mullet avoid my bait - some nibbled it, some stole it but they were clearly wary. I took Neils advice and ditched the float and decided to freeline the bread - squashed so it sank slowly - what i noticed were the fish were nibbling and spitting out the bread at depth, but the flakes on the surface they were grabbing quickly - I switched tactics and held the bread just on the surface so nothing was in the water apart from the bread (literally 4ft of line from rod tip to surface. I proceeded to feed under the pontoon to draw them out - after a few near misses a mullet came up and took it - all hell broke loose - splashing, thrashing, my loose drag running off - it was fight to get it n the net - (i dont often net a fish one handed!) - but i did it - my first ever mullet - and to watch it take the bread pretty much at my feet was awesome! I was proper buzzing! quite a chunk too - they're bigger/heavier than they look! great fun - i can see why they are frustrating - at least 10 different mullet must have taken and spat out my bait right in front of me - but so rewarding when you do catch one!!

Welcome - i did the same - joined up for advice when i bought my first boat 2.5yrs ago. Plenty of very knowledgeable people on here - and loads of helpful advice on offer - once you get past the banter that is! there a few near you too - so i'm sure they will lend a hand!

Me, Tim and tims mate Marcus were out on Tims boat seadog on Sunday for a bit of the usual. Drifted for mackerel in the usual spot and found the Garfish amongst them (and a smelt) - loaded up with few Macks and Gars for bait and went to try the Hood - this is a Wreck of HMS Hood scuppered in Portlands South entrance to permanently block it - we dont often fish here as its a tackle grave yard and difficult to position (the tide runs hard through the entrance and there's also a wire across the entrance so you cant drift through the entrance completely over it). 2 of us were aiming for wrasse with rag worm, one with baited feathers - one wrasse and few more mackerel and we moved on. we anchored up and started fishing big baits for the rays and small baits for the bream/gurnard etc. Not long in our Guest pulls into a slab - a lovely double figure Undulate. Not to be out done i then hook into a smaller one - my first ever Undulate - stunning fish! soon followed by a red gurnard While our guest was battling with another ray - Blonde this time not long after I landed a feisty Bull Huss Tim was plagued by Conger's of all sizes - from bootlace to goliaths - and had a few bream and a nice ballan too. We all had a steady stream of Bream, eels and Dogs a cracking day out - 3 more fish for my species hunt (Gar, Undulate & Red gurnard) and a first- Undulate! i'm now on 19 species. Lovely day out!

i never had any saints players anyway = but yes looks like it does as there's Luton players in there 😆😜

If anyone is interested i have resurrected the OO League for next season - you have until 11th Aug to get your team together. (don't bother with Haland - i've heard he's a bit rubbish at football he's taken up fishing instead)

ok ive been doing it with a waggler type float that those hippy pond dwellers use..... i might try free lining then!

nice one! what were the tactics for the mullet? id love to catch one - -they're huge in weymouth marina

leave my hunchback out of it - i'm from the IOW alright......

you started it 😜

nice one - was it dinner or returned?

I was amazed how only half the boats came in and some were heading out - guessing they had radar etc

it was well rough out there lol haha - i was trying to straighten the horizon in MS Paint but it came out jaunty!! it was meant to be delete

it was only cause when talking about anchor rope the easiest way to convert 3x the depth is to talk rope in Meters and depth in feet 80ft of water needs 80 meters of rope simples!

yeah i was worried it would out run me!

think it was Lo-Fi on Instagram - and a bit of tweaking with the saturation, contrast etc plus it was a sunny evening so they were bathed in gold anyway!

As my trip on pugwash was cut short due to fog i decided to swap boat gear for float gear and hit the rocks at Portland bill - light spinning rod targeting Wrasse: Only gave it a couple of hours but managed a couple of wrasse and a Pollock - great fun on the float. Then Sunday afternoon I used up the ragworm on the pier chasing even smaller stuff! sort of made the weekend a bit better!

Had all day to myself so decided to take pugwash out solo - the plan was to drift the entrances, and a little wreck and a reefy area for mackerel, gurnard, pollock and wrasse. with no time constraints and no wind all day I left it till lunchtime before heading out - which turned out to be a bad decision - as i left the marina i could see a huge bank of fog on the horizon - i carried on and kept a close eye on it - it was moving very slowly - and creeping up the coast - i did about an hour and half before it really closed in - i moved close to the pier as the visibility dropped - headed in disappointed with just 3 mackerel (at least i didn't blank). was gorgeous when the sun was out though! it went from this..... to this.... to this in about 30 mins obligatory pic for Jon: to console myself i then tried for mullet in the marina - with even less luck. By which time the fog had lifted to a lovely sunny day again! after id packed up the boat! to console myself even further - i went home, swapped boat gear for float gear and hit the rocks at portland bill - see separate shore report for that!

nice one - got to love a big old tope!

nice one - on bread too wow!

Looks like a fab day out! Gilts and stingers wow! Awesome! Well done both! And not one dogfish pic (phew!)

I have 80m and let the whole lot out - im usually in no more than 70ft water, if i need more i have another 70m on the other end (150m total, tied off in the middle ish)

carrier bags do fight hard in a bit of tide.....

Me Tim and Phil out on Seadog - all set for a lovely day - warm sunshine and flat calm seas - could it get any better? it did - best days fishing for a long time! Started off by finding mackerel on the way out - drove over a bait ball and bagged up a tough tub full of fresh mackerel - took the chance to fill the freezer too - must have had over 50 mackerel between 3 of us in 30 mins. Off to the mark filled with optimism - now this mark throws up all sorts of fish and today didn't disappoint - 12 species and 2 PBs to the boat from the same spot. dropped anchor and it was fish from the off. Tim had a lovely red, and a good run of bream, dogs, smoothies and conger, even managed a Pollock I had a lovely bull huss, and the usual bream, dogs and conger, I had a lovely little spotted ray followed by a huge pull down, taking line and fighting all the way to the surface, up came my PB Blonde ray - 13lb - an absolute blanket of a blonde ray! Phil was having a slower day than us two - just thornies, dogs and congers on big baits but he couldn't connect to the bream on the small stuff - while me and Tim carried on bringing them to the boat. odd. so phil switched back to the big baits and then he got his bream a decent size one too - on a 6.0 hook on a strip of mackerel! as tim was dropping his bream rig down he was getting hit by mackerel right under the boat - so we had some more fun with the feathers between bites - (maybe they were sheltering under the boat - but they were literally at our feet!) Tim was reeling in a bream and suddenly we saw it getting followed by a tope - Tim left it in the water to see if the tope would attack it - but must have ben spooked - one hook was bitten off but not the fish. so now came a plan - within 30 seconds i grabbed the feathers and pulled out a live mackerel to send down for the tope.... rod in the rod rest and left with the ratchet on...... in the mean time we carried on fishing - low and behold Phil gets a bite, says it feels different (slack line, head shakes, swims uptide) - bang - Tope to the surface - sadly though it snaps off at the surface - bitten through 100lb trace. would have been his first too! not to be outdone though - phil gets the last bite of the day and when it hits the surface i drop everything and grab the net - BASS - Phil's PB at 4lb what a day! - 12 species (at least - may have missed a or 2) Mackerel, Bream, pollock, Bull huss, LSD, Conger, Thornies, Spotted ray, Blonde ray, Smoothound, Tope, Red Gurnard, plus we took home 40 mackerel for the freezer between us - the bream that was intended for the BBQ got relegated tot he freezer as soon as the bass surfaced - dinner sorted! home bound via the pub for a quick one and a reflection on the best days fishing this year so far! PS note to self - remember to reel in the live bait before heading off to pull the anchor - we had to abort pulling the anchor as the ratchet was screaming! 🙂