daio web

Launched at 7:30am this morning just before high tide, onto a beautifully flat sea, however, the wind was due to veer South later in the day and I knew that would bring a wind over tide situation, but hopefully not a problem as the wind speeds were very low.
Crew for the day was Kyle and my wife, both of them absolutely love fishing the banks.
We arrived at the Skerries in about 40 – 45 minutes, and I was surprised at the lack of fishing traffic, given the calm conditions.
Although the MLS for Plaice is 27cm, we decided to keep nothing under 35cm, and the smaller fish are a pain to fillet. Kyle was first in with a decent keeper, however, the drift speed was a tad fast at 1.9kts, so we were making 2 mile drifts across the banks from inner to outer. We found that unusually most of the bites came on the outer banks, so we concentrated on that area.
I also dropped down some snowbiki’s for fresh mackerel and the first hit was a full string of proper snake launce, one of them we measured at 26cm ! The drops with the tinsels were producing Mackerel, Launce, and something I have never had before, which was a full string of 5 Gurnard.
Talking of Gurnard, the Skerries was full of them and we lost count of the number caught, however, I know that we definitely had, Tub’s, Grey’s, Red’s and one or two Streaked. They were all a reasonable size of up to about a 1lb.
Just before the flood slack, Kyle hooked into a decent fish which was a 7lb Small Eyed ray, a new specie for him.
Once the flood slack came we were stationary, and that is when the dog’s came out to play, of which we had four, before I got fed up with them !. Whilst we were waiting for the drift to start again, Kyle set up my HTO Shore Game spinning rod and was catching Mackerel, Launce and Gurnard using a 12g metal.
Also, during the slack I managed to foul the prop with one of the lines, but luckily I was able to unwind and free if off quite easily after tilting the engine.
The wind veered south at about 2pm, but the sea didn’t get too angry, and we headed back the 18 miles to port at about 3:30pm, arriving back on the slipway at 4:15pm.
An excellent day in which we covered 49nm, we returned 3 Plaice, but 9 were keepers, also we had 30+ Mackerel, 20+ snake Launce, a 7lb Painted Ray (small eyed), 4 dog’s, and way too many Gurnard to count.


 
African Queen was close by,

Concrete wetsuit, I'd bet he'd even offer to pour it for you 🤣

Picked up a Shimano 3 piece grappler last week ready for the winter run of bluefin and yellowfin tuna. This is an 8ft lure casting and popping designed for lures in the 120g size. Had a couple of casts the day I bought it using a 10,000 twin power and 80lb braid, which banged lures an impressive distance considering the heavy line class.
Had to wait 5 days to try it with light lures having went down with Covid but back in action again today. Due to wanting to test it on small fish and light lures I used a 5000 stradic with 20lb 131 suffix braid and 50g metal lures. Ive got other 8ft rods built for casting 50-60g lures which is far lighter than this but to my surprise this thing was actually getting lures further out. 
Soon hooked a salmon but unfortunately this was almost instantly intercepted by a shark, so both fish and lure gone. New lure soon found another small salmon which was good to see that a rod designed for fish in the 60-80kg size still managed a nice little bend with a small fish. The rod is light and even though a heavy class I didn't feel any fatigue casting continually also considering I was sick on my back two days ago with the plaque. Looking forward to taking it to the tropics in a couple of months.
The swell was pretty big with virtually no wind at all, in contrast to the sea the lake behind the beach shows not a ripple.
Over all very impressed with the rod and how small it breaks down.
Tomorrow heading into the mountains and snow chasing trout.

 

 

 

 

 

 

good report mate 

I snatched a couple of hours this evening at a mark on the Fowey estuary.
As you can see the water clarity was good. I was using a Rovex 9ft spinning rod and a Major Craft 30gr slow jig in Zebra Glow pattern. The mark was a slim finger of rock past which the ebb tide was flowing, creating a small rip that I hoped would be used by bass or pollack as a spot to feed on sandeels. Casting across the rip and letting the jig flutter down it didn't take long before I had a hit.
A nice plate-sized pollack which came home for tea, closely followed by a fat mackerel.
Not to be outdone, a small ballan wrasse also took a shine to the slow jig just a few casts later.
Three species within 30 minutes. Result!
The light had begun to fade by now so with several more "last casts" I called it a night and headed home with two fishy friends in tow. This mark could be worth another visit if I can get out later this week.

well done top dangling congrats on 3 rd place 

I’ve not used one…. I’m on NSE12… had a play with NSS12 but still prefer the NSE…. I don’t think I’m the only one to want to stick with old stuff. 
 
Speaking to the rep he said not much difference but touchscreen etc, he even said he preferred the NSE over NSS….

Sounds like a nice afternoon, almost like being a boy again!! 

Kept the launce for bait and may go back tomorrow too 👍

It's been a bit grey here today so I looked at the tide times for our local pier and headed off with my spinning rod to get bait for our boat competition in a fortnight's time. 
The pier is a mile long and I like to fish the flood from the end. It wasn't long before I had the first long fat snake and shortly after another but smaller. It then got quiet for a while and I got distracted by a dolphin and got well snagged up. I use a piece of broomshank to break out but as I did that I could feel a fish had pulled it out. Now I have had pollock just short of double figures on this rod and judging by the bend and fight I might have something near 5lb or so. After pumping it to the side of the pier I saw 3 plump coalfish attached to my sabikis. I use 20lb braid and there's a combined weight of 3 or 4 pounds of fish to haul up! I wound down as far as possible and lifted up managed to grab the line a foot or two above the trace and pulled gently and grabbed the trace unhooked and returned the lovely coalies. 
Managed a double shot of pollock much smaller and off home after a couple of hours. I'm now sat in blazing sunshine and contemplating a beer 🍺 
Sometimes it's the little things 😁

Forgot to put a report up from last weekend. We had a junior comp on Sunday, just a short one over high water. 4 boats with 8 juniors took part. Plenty of fish caught for all. Lots of rays, straps, dogs and hounds. We managed 6 hounds on our boat and my daughter took 3rd with her biggest of around 13lb. It was great to have them out on the boat again and a nice bbq and pint afterwards at the clubhouse. Happy days 

hope you have better luck next time out

A 5am start this morning to make the run down to the marina to meet @Davemc for a bream trip. Dave had been up most of the night luring for bass at the top of Pompey Harbour so how he looked so chipper when we met in the marina car park is beyond me!
Setting off into glamour conditions saw us making smooth progress out of the harbour and past the Solent Forts. We spotted a flock of seabirds between No Mans Land and St Helen's Forts so we paused to drop some lures over the side. First fish came to a small slow jig

But that was all for this spot, so we kept going. As we neared Bembridge we saw a bank of fog rolling in.

We cautiously proceeded at a sensible 11kts, following my track from the previous week.
Eventually we made it into Sandown Bay and set to fishing proper. I was using my go-to bream rig, a two hook flapper with pennelled snoods and floating beads, baited with squid strips. Dave was using a selection of soft plastics and slow jigs.
A few drifts later the first bream fell to squid.

Dave had a couple of missed bites but persevered with lures.
We scratched another couple of smaller bream before deciding on a move further into the bay as the fog lifted. This proved to be the right call as we found a patch of large nests on the sounder. Dave switched to a heavier Slow Blatt jig to get down quicker and this paid dividends almost instantly, with a lovely male falling to the slow jig.

I was quickly into another bream too, and on subsequent drifts we had double hook-ups, which made for some frantic unhooking with only one net between us.


While I was gutting the keepers we'd taken I left my rod to bounce on the drift, which quickly attracted a savage take. I looked up at the sound of the ratchet whizzing to see the rod bent round and the line being taken under the hull. This was the culprit.

Before we knew it, it was time to head in. We had each boated several keeper bream and had returned several more, including both bass. The conditions were perfect as we made our return at 26kts back to Gosport.

I'll put up some videos of the day later tonight.
Thanks Dave for a top morning's dangling and proving that bream can indeed be taken on lures 👍.

A good forecast and a small tide saw me relinquish my tiling/kitchen fitting/general house renovation duties that have taken up pretty much all of my weekends and spare time this last few months 
With Shuff and Nipper for crew, we got the 7am lock and headed up towards Portishead, with the first half hour of the flood helping us on our way
The targets were some Bass and maybe the odd Sole
A flat sea made for a comfortable, uneventful journey until an object that appeared a few hundred yards ahead slowly began to take the shape of what looked like a floating corpse
I slowed down and had a better look and it was indeed a dead body of a male floating face down
Rang the coast guard, gave all the details etc and they asked us if we would stay with it until the Penarth lifeboat got there
I stayed around 80yds away and the lifeboat crew got there around 40 mins later, thanked us for staying with him, put on their aprons and gloves etc and we left
We carried on to our chosen mark and did a bit of fishing, one keeper Bass at the first mark for Nipper and a tiny Codling for Shuff, then nothing for hours
Moved to another mark just before high which gave me a small Bass and a nice keeper that evaded the net and lived to fight another day
We called it a day around 2.30 and got the 3.15pm lock back in
Bit of a subdued trip and very surreal drifting along side a body for 40 odd minutes wondering how he got there, is anyone missing him etc
Mrs Swamp saw an article on one of the news pages and apparently he had gone missing from Gloucestershire on May 10th and there weren't any suspicious circumstances
At least his family now have closure, if that's any consolation
RIP Victor 
 
 
 
 

Whilst away in Turkey joining on any free wifi connections I was watching Sundays forecast holding nice on the iow grounds. so a day at home to turn the boat around Saturday and by 2am Sunday I was on the road towing to Chichester harbour (from Kent takes me about 2hr) so semi local …as all of us boat anglers know you don’t turn down good weather windows, they don’t come that often .. I could of done with the extra rest on the back of the delayed flights ect but the fishing instinct got the better of me. Blasting out the harbour  I noticed my tell tail wasn’t overly strong so I stopped and fiddled around with the hood off (as it was so calm I actually climbed in the transom area ) but couldn’t get to the hose clips.. ended up putting the hood back on then manually sliding a bit of 400lb mono up from the outside jiggled it and then it was clear and pushing out strong . Super pleased as I hate problems or potential problems as I’m sure we all do ha.  
Saw a big garfish swimming round the back of boat .
Anyway Carried on blasting to the overfalls to try drifting with dead launce (big bastads from the previous Cornwall trips ) for bass. First time for the overfalls for me always heard of horror stories so picking exceptional weather and a mid size tide I thought would be ideal for a first go. All be it not a single bass as a result quite a few pack tope biting us off some managing to come in I did lose a better tope (assumably)which gave me a great fight on my spinning rod .. but ultimately pulled the hook.Once drifting off of the overfalls I stuck the chum in and set up a shark rod on the hope of a early thresher but not to be and another tope hit those live baits. So nice to have plenty of mackerel especially this time of year good signs for coming months. After a few more hrs we shot in dropped anchor to see if we could nick a blonde ray but only managed a couple of small spotteds. All in all a very pleasant day on the water. Can’t wait to get back out 
 

 

 

 
 

The reason is that Garmin no longer load the charts as tiles, you just select an area and upload it.
I also had to delete the tiles and reload an area, however, my delete and reload worked perfectly.
I spoke to Garmin support because they had not issued a tech statement to say what was happening or how to do it. Apparently is was because of the septics who had trouble with tiles, but the uk support geezer said he preferred the tile system, and so do I, but it all works Ok , so I guess it is fine.

hi neil i am going to have a go tomorrow fingers crossed its taken me 2 days to load active captain lol 👍

It helps though to know that I have you to fall back on should all else fail! 👍🏻

i bet hes got panda eyes lol

It matches his sunburn!