Geoff

Awesome days fishing and some fantastic memories made there!
(I also once lost the anchor bouy while anchored - had to leave the anchor rope attached to a load of fenders, go rescue the bouy, return to my anchor rope, then fashion a new alderney ring out of a bucket handle. I learned a lot that day!) 

Nah, I'm not eating a squids ring ! 🤣
TBH, not keen on it or Cuttle.
IMHO it can be put to better use as bait for proper fish to eat 👍

Today has been on the cards all week, albeit a little colder, sea conditions looked favourable until mid afternoon, however, with spring tides we needed an early start to be back on the slip for 12:30.
Yes, a lot colder, at 7:00am I cleared the frost off the jeep (2c), picked up Kyle, and we launched at 7:30.
The plan was to go for some more cuttle and squid, which would give us a good bait stock for the winter.
A short steam to our usual mark and we were soon into the cuttle and the odd squid, all of which were a decent size. The sea was NOT as forecast and was a tad lumpy, but very doable.
Kyle also sent down some baited hokkai’s and was rewarded with Grey’s, dogs, scad, and Mackerel.
One of the cuttle got its own back on me, I left it in the net over the side of the boat whilst I unhooked the jig from the mesh, and it got me full in the face with a shed load of ink !
All too soon it was time to head back in, but we had more than met our target with 24 cuttle, 6 squid, dogs, gurnards, scad, and Mack.
The boat took a lot of cleaning as both cuttle and squid are dirty bastids.
The Bait freezer is now completely full, with 41 decent cuttle, 12 large squid, over 200 mackerel and a load of king prawn. This winter we might target winter Cod, a big ask in our location, but I have a couple of marks in mind. Also, Kyle wants a 25 - 30lb winter Blond off the skerries.
Kyle with the smallest dog I have ever seen 🤣
 

 

It a good job border force were not out there, you know, black bloke with a beany in a rubber boat 🙄🤣🤣

Hi Geoff,
Thanks for the advice.. I’ll have a go and let you know how I get on.
Many thanks..
James 

It was a real fun day, so glad Emily had such a positive experience, and you now know how it feels for your kid to out fish you 🤣!! 

 

Out with @Saintly Fish, Leo and my daughter Emily this morning on Tarlach Too. This was Em's first boat fishing session and we were hopeful of a catch or two to keep her interest levels up.
Skipper delivered us to the mark and bites began from the off. Before long the first fish came to the boat, courtesy of Em's rod - a lovely late season bream.

Leo was into a fish next, a conger of reasonable proportions.

Swiftly followed by one for his dad...

Em was up next with another nice bream.

And before you ask... yes, I managed a dogfish or two on the sly in between baiting up and unhooking for her 😁
We moved out into the channel proper to practice our MOB drills with @Saintly Fish's anchor buoy when it decided that it would prefer to jump ship and bob off downtide. A sticky snap-shackle seemed to be the culprit.
The tide was pulling hard by now, but we did manage to boat a few more fish, including a nice little smoothound for Em.
Headed back home about mid-afternoon and saw a Spitfire flying over us just before we left. More drama as we retrieved anchor - the windlass was clearly straining this time and the reason why quickly became apparent. The anchor had picked up an old pot rope which gave Neil some grief until a sharp knife was found to cut it free.
All home safe and sound though and massive thanks to Neil and Leo for helping to make Em's session such a success. 👍👍

Club comp tomorrow from Burnham, first time out on our boat since June i think

Now that's a quality write-up about a quality fish! Very well done to you all, but top marks to @Herbs73! Fantastic fish mate 👍👍

So me and the wife have flown across the pond to see an old school friend who lives in Tallahassee Florida via New Orleans. He’s also a keen angler so he organised a fishing trip.  We’ve travelled from Tallahassee to a small town called Apalachicola for a few days and yesterday we went out with captain John Layne from JB charters and fished the St.Vincent sound targeting red drum  It was a bit overcast but flat Calm, fishing was a bit slow so we tried a few different marks caching small red drum, pin fish and cat fish Tim catching most of them,  fishing in about 2 ft of water using light tackle. Then Tim caught a lively 10lb red drum which gave an hell of a fight and went back as it was a breeding size fish. I still continued with the small fish. The time to pack up came and went as John wanted me to catch a decent fish. Then on my last cast my reel screened off and after a very tiring 15 minute battle (these fish fight hard) John netted a 30lb red drum.  
when we came back John took us back to his house where he prepped the fish and which we could keep and we took to a local resteraunt. 
  He also run us back to the hotel in his rock crawler 4wd, these Americans like their toys. 
 The boat was pretty awesome, a centre console design powered by a 250 Yamaha which did over 60 knots. What was interesting is that it didn’t have an anchor, on the bow is an electric trolling motor which keeps the boat in position by gps, on the aft they have “power poles”which in shallow water are deployed by a motor and extend down into the mud to hold the boat. 
  Fantastic days fishing with an old mate that I don’t see enough of and a brilliant skipper. 
 

 
 

Hi James, the inside repair looks to be quite good. but the outside glass mat spoils the job. As Zook said grind/sand back the glass mat on the outside (some of it on the edges of the repair may chisel back to the original gel coat) and paint over with new gel. You will need to thoroughly clean the area and lightly abrade the edges of existing gel to ensure good adhesion. Go steady with the gel, no need to apply too much. Cover the newly applied gel with shrink wrap and gently smooth over the gel through the wrap and leave to dry. In cold weather it is worth wafting over the repair using a heat gun or hair dryer to assist curing. When dry remove the cling film and gently sand over and blend. It is very unlikely that you will have a perfect colour match, but should get somewhere close. That dinghy will look very nice if you can manage to get the woodwork sorted. Good luck. Geoff.

Hi Geoff,
Thanks for your response. I don’t think there was a hole in the hull as I don’t remember seeing evidence of this on the inside. I’m not actually at home at the moment so can’t check. I’m thinking there was probably just localised damage to the gel coat. As I mentioned in the thread, the boat was my father in laws and it would be great to restore it as it holds some memories for him & the family. There’s no issues of restricted access, it’s just a fairly small fishing boat. It would be great to restore it and do something with this patch that doesn’t look great. Your advice on this would be appreciated. I’ve attached a couple of photos of the boat now and also one from the past.
Many thanks & best regards
James

Given the weather was so calm all weekend and into Monday i decided to give the squid a go off weymouth Stone pier after work
 
as i arrived, people were landing and losing squid so it filled me with confidence - the piers in Weymouth get rammed in squid season - people travel from all over bringing underwater, lights, tents, banter, BBQs and beers, and its a bit crazy to be fair!
I found a spot half way down the pier, and was soon crowded out with people right next to me - one of them had an underwater light which made for some good viewing of the underwater world after dark. amazing how many small pollock, wrasse, pouting etc are drawn in.
I was armed with 2 rods, one set up with a jig below a float that i could leave out and then i worked the other jig on a cast and retrieve method. 
more squid came from the end of the pier, but it wasn't long before they moved down the pier and on our side a shoal appeared and we all hooked up at the same time!
I had one squid in in hour at dusk, and missed a few takes. but then it went quiet. 

the guy next to me was using live prawns and he heard of a bass chasing someone elses squid jig, so he moved across the pier and within 2 mins (after nearly losing his rod) he hooked into a decent keeper bass - seems live prawn is like crack to a hungry bass. 
 
a lovely sunset, more bait for the freezer and my squid account open for the season!!

Yes, a shame but hey ho,
I weighed it at 2lb 14oz, using Reuben Heaton digital scales 🙄

Took my twin son from Cheltenham out Sunday for his first trip in over a year. He’s had a tough time this summer with a medical issue but he’s making a great recovery and he’s still working on it. With that in mind I decided a trip out to the last place I went on the reefs by the Ore Stone would be best.
we were out early and shot over at full tilt and were there and fishing in no time. Feathers and jigs deployed we were soon into mackerel and scad. The mackerel were nice and chunky and we loaded up the cool box with them and a load of the scad for bait.

 I decided to drop a rig down with squid jigs on and within ten minutes was into my first of the day, result! We tried drifting all over the reef with varying results and on one drift a cuttlefish came up but by the time we sorted out the net he’d dropped off. I made up for it later by bagging a bigger one 👌


with the tides being so small we had to wait ages for some run to anchor in and even then it was pitiful. We persevered and dropped some big baits down in exactly the same spot where I’d done well two weeks ago but the bites were mainly from doggies ripping off the baits. I did manage a small huss and Tom hooked into a much bigger fish, only to lose it 3/4 of the way up….😕 I reeled up a massive spider which Tom wanted to keep but the reality of dealing with it later on would have been too much so we gave it a squid bait and sent him back 😅

when we packed up I used the advice given about the Alderney ring retrieval with the buoy way up front and it worked a treat, no dramas at all and confidence restored 😊
Tom had an absolute blast, a real boost for him although I could tell he was cream crackered bless him. Got home safely and dealt with all the fish in good time, couple of beers, shower and bed! Great day out, no big fish this time but we weren’t bothered 😊

37cd13e4-7987-4518-9f8d-36720ce3b922.mp4

Ugh! much better as bait! Geoff.

FTFY Andy. Geoff. ☺️

Ugh! much better as bait! Geoff.

Hi James.  It is unusual to just patch the outside with CSM. Was there actually a hole, or just a bit of local damage to the Gelcoat? Normally if it was a hole the repair would be done from the inside of the hull unless the damage was very little. If there was a hole in an inaccessible area it may need further discussion. If I can be of any assistance to you please do not hesitate to contact me. Geoff 🙂

Hi James.  It is unusual to just patch the outside with CSM. Was there actually a hole, or just a bit of local damage to the Gelcoat? Normally if it was a hole the repair would be done from the inside of the hull unless the damage was very little. If there was a hole in an inaccessible area it may need further discussion. If I can be of any assistance to you please do not hesitate to contact me. Geoff 🙂

Its more 'how' than 'where', also the cuttle window is relatively small compared to squid that hang around right into January. Fortunately, I live in cuttle central, and the Brixham commercials refer to the season as 'black gold'. A couple of years ago one of the local smaller trawlers broke the landing record for cuttle after just a mornings fishing, his landing fetched £250k at the Brixham fish market, not bad for a mornings work !
Almost 100% of the UK cuttle goes to Spain, Portugal, Italy, and France.
They make a superb bait, and many charter skippers will tell you that cuttle will outfish any other bait for Cod, Conger, Bass, and Rays, but anglers don't use them that much as they retail between £8 -£10 per kilo, especially for XL,and XXL cuttle. Most of what I caught would be XXL.
If you know of a mark where you can catch squid, that also has a soft sand or mud bottom, then it will most likely produce cuttle.
Whereas you tend to catch squid in the first third of the water column off the bottom, for cuttle your jigs need to be just a few inches off the bottom. Rigging a paternoster and flicking it a little way from the boat is the easiest method, but a flying collar (wrecking boom) with a short trace works just as well as long as to work the jig as you would with feathers (but slower). They are aggressive gits, so any jig will do.
Once you feel the rod 'load up' then give it some low tension line (not slack line) for a few seconds, then a steady slow reel to the surface. Often they let go before the surface, but you need to have the net ready as many will 'throw' the jig at the surface, or pull away quickly to break off their grabbing tentacle. TBH, the landing rate is poor, about 1 in 5 hits will get to the boat. Yesterday I was getting bites within a few minutes of hitting the bottom.
Cuttle are masters of cammo, and tend to lay in hollows on the bottom ready to attack any prey, they will quite happily eat stuff the size of a joey.
Once in the net, then dump it straight into a bucket, where it will blow out a ton of ink. If you keep your deck wet, any ink will clean up ok. The white gel coat (inside the boat) needs to be regularly wiped down with a sponge. When the dirty bastids grunt the ink, it often goes every feck'in where, so keep the bucket covered with a cloth that can be binned (it will be black !). Also, wear sunglasses, as the gits will shoot water and ink at your face, and it rarely misses.
Yesterday I had 4 buckets of cuttle, as you can only fill them 3 parts full, due to the volume of ink.
 

Well done Ian 👏
I very nearly went to the Skerries on Sunday but Tom (my son with the medical issue) was down for a trip and it would have been too much for him….so we fished the same place I did two weeks ago.
Report to come but we did manage to land one cuttlefish and six squiddlies 😊

Sunday was a cracker of a day so an early start for the skerries, stopping on the way for fresh Mack.
We spent an hour on the Mack, and whilst kyle and the wife were busy with the feathers, I got the squid jigs out and found a couple of cuttle and 3 fresh squid.
Then a decent run to the skerries ( stopping to play with the Dolphins) where we drifted for plaice and soon bagged up, but only retained 6 decent keepers. Once the tide changed and started to pick up I dropped the pin and down went the big Ray baits.
We were soon into the Blonds and boated  11 with the biggest at 13lb. Also we had 2 dogs and a decent Grey that went almost 3lb. All too soon it was time to pull the anchor and head back. There was a shoal of BFT busting a bait ball just off the banks.

 
Monday was to be a bait gathering session, just the wife and I, as we had the school run in the afternoon.
The wife was on tinsel duty, and I set up a squid jig pat to target the cuttle. We were pretty successful with 20+ Mack and 17 cuttle. The biggest cuttle went almost 5lb and was taking line ! Cuttle are annoying as you only land about 1 in 5, as they grab and let go the jigs.
Also in the mix on the tinsels were Scad (lost count) and small tubs.
@thejollysinker is going to be fuming, as he fishes right over the cuttle, but unless you actively target them, you would never know they are there.

 

 
Cuttle are dirty bastids, so cleaning the boat was a jet wash job, but keeping the deck wet helps a lot. They probably emit 5 times more ink than squid. All in the freezer now as cuttle will out fish all other baits in the winter. The quantity and quality of the cuttle would cost about £250 -£300 to buy as frozen bait, so well pleased.
2 days and 120nm, tired but happy.
 

You're the arse Jeff!!