iowspence

Purchased Orkney Pilothouse in July. Just getting back into fishing with my son.
Will be fishing out in Cardigan Bay next season. Looking forward to uploading more photos  next season

Only in France, never, ever, never in the UK ! ............. does @iowspence still fish for mudpigs ?
 

Nah Andy ............. fly fishing is something that has never appealed to me ....................and I have at least 2 Fly lakes right on my doorstep ...............
My fishing is pretty much just boat fishing in the UK, with maybe an estuary shore session probably once or twice a year ............
In France (we go there for 3 weeks at  time under more normal circumstance) I tend to fish the rivers, mainly for Carp, but you also get the enviable Catfish. I can assure that a near 50lb River common Carp really pulls your string ..................I reckon maybe another 12 months before I can do that again ................
 
 

That will make a nice change from doggies and blanking. Geoff. ☺️

Shame, I had visions of Tarlach Too in purple with lime green go-fast stripes... 😉

8 or 9 years 
I popped into the water in the summer to check for growth but had none.
Ill prob get it redone next year. It ain’t cheap to do but lasts a long time 

Yep

Oh your jokes just get better with age. 👍🏻🐽

They are already trying, they sent a virus on ahead.

Quite nice down here tonight... 3 of us in pub, boat filled with fuel and another 200l in reserve, enough to get me to lands end or Bristol 😅😅
 
7am lock booked fingers crossed to get out 🙂 Even so, a day off mucking about in boats beats working 🙂 

Nice cod, I heard there had been quite a few in Solent, more than previous years 🙂 
Hopefully I can get out in Bristol Channel soon to find some 

So trip planned for the lymington launch (as per last post)
arrived 7am ready for action
unstrapped boat ect ready to go 
bung plug in .
Turn , turn , click..... spin...
oh dear ....
threads gone... wow this is a first .
ok so now the trip is done... I’m head in hands gutted.
hold on i kno I’m keen but I’m not putting lives at risk over a cod ... 
hold on
There’s still some thread in there 🤣.
get the electric tape out . Thicken the screw head up in she went and much tighter ! Not as tight as normal but a damn sight tighter ..
gameplan was if in the unlikelyhood it was now to come out , whack the bilge on ... then throttle wide open to the beach’s.
to be fair I was confident with the bodge or I wouldn’t of gone.. anyway the fishing .
so plan was to go on a cherry pop south needles ground but with the above I felt a little better about staying in the Solent also a first, I usually fish the east IOW.
found some ground set the anchor a little way away from the masses of boats.
We were straight into straps from the off and a steady flow of pouts coming in bursts.
about half way thru the day I had a solid bite that I was convinced was a cod and turned out to be a better conger of the standard we was getting Rebait drop down 
off it goes again . Another eel I said to Charlie , ‘Yeah pulling really hard defo another eel .’
up she came my first in years ! 
into the cool box.
thankyou very much.
‘twas the only one but a very happy bunny . Absolutely flat calm eary foggy water all day.
a salvage success !
 
josh
 

Well, no unicorns sadly but a good day on the water nonetheless. Plenty of fish to keep us occupied, and good banter.
Big thanks to @Saintly Fishfor keeping a sharp lookout as we came back in thick fog!

Decided to try a spot on the spoils at Nab which has done us well in the past,  lumpy run out which pegged us back on speed so took a little bit longer than we were hoping for. 
Dropped anchor started fishing and realised I'd left my bag in the car which had all my food and drink in it d'oh, too late to go back for it now. 
Had a very busy day with loads of fair sized whiting a couple of which were just sub 2lb, sorry no pics from my boat as my bag also had my phone in it!!  Absolutely tons of smaller straps with a few better ones thrown in. Biggest of the day just under 40lb.   Annoyingly nearly all of them falling to our whiting rigs not the bigger baits geared up for some something a bit better to latch on to.
I had a take quite early on in the day which was going well on my scratching rig only for the hook length to let go (17lb flouro) I reeled in a Conger a couple of hours later that had my brand new hook and short section of line stuck in it's gob.  I've seen eels landed that have been snapped off before but usually very close to the time of loosing it not 2 hours later.
Had heard some very quiet noises that the Spurdogs were starting to show and that was the reason I ended up out there, sadly none showed today but a friend had landed a 14lber from nearby earlier in the week.  Did hear of some being caught today by the chatter on the VHF so hopefully we'll be lucky and bump into one or two next time out. 
Our buddy boat got a nice pic of us passing the forts on the way back in the fog,  radar is a godsend in those conditions. 
 
 
 

Well weather still looking like it’s half holding for Tuesday.... last chance to to get back for at least a week....
Strap myself in and ride the swells for 100NM... going to be a long 5-6 hours I think 🤣🤣🤣

🤣🤣👍

So Andy was getting all despondent that I was out fishing him. His face had dropped , so I did the only thing a mate could do... I let him reel in this beast. 22lb allegedly .
 

I’m in awe of Andy. Not only is he the forums dogfish master, he can even get them to come to the boat by the tail.. 

Fisty and I left early to chase a unicorn in the Solent. As we made our way down to the pontoon we were stopped by @Scotch_Egg2012 to say hello. Good to meet you Scott 👍
As we headed out of Pompey Harbour I caught Neil doing his best catalogue model pose

We're now anchored outside of Cowes.

Whiting, pout, dogfish (yes!!!) and a couple of straps so far.


Stay tuned for more updates...

New improved version....
Its hand sketched and hopefully a slightly better surface finish on the white of the shark....
 
Just need to get it scanned and someone get it made 🙄🤔

Yeah I’m not sure they can recreate from a supplied sketch.... 🤔
 
First draft is attached, currently being recreated by hand ready for submission.... 
Hoping to have a shark with a blue on top, else it may just be a black outline.... depends on the print people.

Apologies to the exiled dude down under, rather than continue in his excellent threads blatant hijacking,  thought I'd stick up a quick ditty here.
Couple of hours to waste, went out to pester Mullet, had two on floating bread before they went off the feed at HW, switched over to lures and ran SPs in the run at the mouth of the harbour.. with a Wrasse followed by two Bass one after the other. 
 
 

Bit early to be making much noise yet.......

So today was the day that I was finally able to get my first mate (Leo) down to the boat for a shake down trip after the fitting of the refurbished turbo. What with work and poor weather chances just didn’t crop up. 
But today the stars aligned.

Quick check of the engine bay to make sure the turbo was still connected and not in the bilge, and we were off.


So the engine ran well, no worse than before. Pick up and throttle response seemed a tad quicker. Overall top speed was still lacking 4 knots and revs still down by 150. I’m putting this down to a dirty bum and possibly a dirty propeller?
I think the extra weight of 3 additional batteries doesn’t help much. Still waiting for Andy to help me fit them. 
 
I did however notice an oily patch on my new air filter cover that seems to spray from a breather pipe. Any ideas why this would be ? Plenty of oil still in the engine. 

 
One last shot of the engine bay, just because I took it. 

 
overall I’m happy that the boat still runs as it did, with the bonus of no exhaust smoke in the engine bay.