fishybuisness

I love that area of coast! Nice little session!

Great little trip out, ive been land locked because of work and other commitments for the last month. Nearly every trip out past the 12mile marker i see them. The last sighting was similar to yours, we were jigging away on a wreck with a few pollock and cod showing and this noise just made our heads turn and 20ft away clear out of the water was a monstrous barrel with the switch turned to rabbit speed! I dont know about you but i feel kind of lost holding a 100g jigging rod and as thin line as i can get away with when these girls are about. They kill the fishing on a wreck as well i have found going to have to book up on one of the chart boats just to tick the box

Quite interesting as last year we had a number of 44cm bass that were around the 7lb mark! they looked deformed and stocky like a bream

The tope are much further east buddy!

Yes bream have been caught for the first time off the piers down here for a while. As much as it sounds like a great day out i cant quite muster up the enthusiasm for bream on the boat. Normally they are a bycatch for me later on in the year off the beach. Matt certainly has chosen a good year to get away, he looks happy and content! i think the charters like matts service would really struggle with the fuel costs and the general game out there. Its really sad as i was looking forward to the cod on the wrecks but they havent and the ones ive had have been fairly small with the biggest going to 9lb. I felt quite angry and bemused when searching for a mark that would fish well the other day. I was sat on my swim platform enjoying a beer over the top of the meat boat with my legs in the water and dolphins swimming quite close around me. Thinking what to do? im very interested to keep up to date with the likes of shande and spot on with there catches and see whats happening. I doubt ill be venturing far afield in the future it just hasnt been worth it. Next Im going to probably hunt some tope of other species that aren’t really targeted here

Yea i think the frustration is from every direction. Lyme bay fisheries actually applauses themselves for being conservative. I dont think thats the case its just so they can put a higher price on there catch being from a (not so) sustainable fishery! The mudstone is a local mark to me and its a great obstacle course at night coming home from Dartmouth. what is happening is very very silly they know full well that if they wipe everything out then it wont return. Its been proven over and over again. Im guessing the bay will now have a couple of years of very hard times. They hit all the pollock before it reached up here and then whwn some of them made it through to the 25-30mile wrecks they were slaughtered. Fish have breeding and spawning patterns and i think this is just enough to disrupt it for them to not come back. Ive never ever seen it this bad ! There is no way to stop the netting the pots aren’t bad and are not destructive at all. You can even fish amongst them. I can also see the reason why the pressure is on due to high prices and running costs and also a very high price for bass and pollock at the moment. I believe its at an all time high due to the low catch rate this year.

With the hot high pressure recently and calm seas i thought it would be great to spend some time offshore. Leaving the harbour with some new gear/jigs to test out and needing a bit of content for a future article my hopes were high. I thought id start on the north wrecks to target the bass that should be there first and make my way down south after the pollock and then the cod at slack after flood. Every single mark, wreck, reef was netted and pots all over them. I was quite surprised as we are in the biggest springs weve seen for months! I tried to pinch little drifts avoiding the gear on the bow or stern of certain marks and pulled out a few small pollock and a couple of schoolies before heading 25 miles further south to a little honey hole that has produced some really good specimens lately. I arrived to find 2 sets of nets up and down tide on this and they were a large spread with no way of drifting any part of the mark. I moved further east to its sister and to my surprise i found that had the same treatment. This sister wreck is not on any graph and is a little secret so i was surprised to find the commercials had put gear on it. I moved further south to a wreck that rhyms with curry’s to also find that with gear and pots on it. This one is a special mark in my eyes and so i roped up a bouy and just drove in circles collecting and tangling all the bouys in a heap and leaving them. 80mile trips to. Ot have one mark we can fish really crossed the line with me. I understand that they have to make there money but this is catastrophic. We have gear being dragged in every part of the bay and around the wrecks and then every single wreck is netted. I doubt we are going to see a very good season and its about as bad as anyone can imagine. I dont even think its worth filling the boat up again and have been thinking of taking it down to birth in cornwall and get away from this. My explanation of my alarming whale rescue!— I was returning home on one of the last sessions happily cruising along drinking coffee and eating gingernuts! I was approaching the bay and had 5-6 miles to go and i see this thing yellow and disappearing in the troughs of the little swell we had. OMFG its a very intoxicated woman sitting on a yellow rubber ring made for kids lying back in the water and going turtle arms. She was propelling herself further out heading east! I came up to her and asked if she was ok? She casually explained her events of the day and said shes feeling a little tired !! Well you obviously need to come on board i said. She was very protective over the one item she had in her hands and that was duck tape. I asked her what that was for and she explained that she has a hole in her ring!! At this point i start to realise what im dealing with here and put the ladder down on the swim platform and hand her a rope to pull herself up. I had wondered if id get a 1000lb tuna through the shark door and im convinced it can now be achieved! After a brief discussion it was obvious that she was fuelled and she continued to jabber on looking through my fridge and helping herself to my mermaid gin i had won last month and my cigarettes. I bit my lip and met the rnli in the bay that were looking for her. I now believe that we really do live with some people that are just something else! From manchester and as big as they come! What a vile disgusting silly silly beast. She was handed over with her ring and roll of gaffer tape to the orange taxi service and i made my way to my birth! Ill put a few pics below of some fish ive been playing with.

Nice report GPS. It really is a big issue now with the gear on everything. I went out on wed and its thick with gear on every mark up to 30miles. I now tie up to one buoy and then take it round and round in circles for 10mins or so. I leave it with all the bouys heaped together. Twice ive been out lately and its been upsetting after 200-250 pound fuel bill each time. maybe i shall start towing the gear off the wrecks again.

Good to just get out in this weather. The high pressure has killed the fishing a bit. I went out last wed and ive never seen so much commercial gear on everything inshore and out to the 30mile wrecks, Its everywhere! i think they are having a hard time and also struggling with the fuel prices to make a living. managed a few bass on jigs and also a couple of wrasse on crab. The commercials may have a bit of a knightmare when pulling there gear up. The scad shoals are absolutely huge

Thanks for a nice report. I hit the inshore north wrecks last sunday for bass and everyone we tried was netted. So i ended up back down and out we had a couple of half tidy bass but still it was frustrating as greed is rife and it cost me dearly in fuel to get back in a f5 westerly.

Its great to see others playing with shiny bits of metal. The hardest lesson i learnt was to KEEP THE LINE VERTICAL. You will loose alot less gear by casting down tide and as your boat catches up to the jig you have a brief period of vertical action before winding up and recasting. The wind is the biggest enemy with jigs

Yep thumb size bit of rag very close in

I had a little session on tues night and pulled in a few rays and hounds. I love love this time of year. Its very productive and everything on squid apart from the sole

I was on a wreck and it was slack tide, i put a peeler on a 1.0 attached to my 40g spinning rod. It was an interesting fight. It was in January aswell

I forgot about this beast. Nice to catch a big one again after they have been hunted for the fish farms