Geoff

Tuna are so last year...... real men catch dogfish and whiting @Andy135 😉 

Good news! Fingers crossed for a smooth transaction for you Luke 🤞

The wheel is fine, but it is often the tyre they put on them that has the incorrect load rating .............
TBF, most steel wheels supplied by trailer manufacturers are crap ........... mine are 18 months old and showing quite a lot of rust, despite being washed down after every trip.
However, this winter I will get them powder coated ......... that seems to last OK ............

well i have put the new calls ect , on the outboard and we have a grate spark. know i will have to save up for the starter motor.
as i am lazey

Couldn't make our first day out of lockdown (work keeps getting in the way) so plumped for the Tuesday instead, as the forecast for the rest of the week was shite
My mate (and one of the usual crew) was out on a charter on the Monday fishing up near Clevedon (my intended area on Tues)
After the picture of his 3rd codling, I rang him and spoke for all of 5 secs before he said "got to go, got a bite"
He rang me back after 10 mins or so just after his picture message pinged on my phone showing a plump 6.5 pounder, seems like it's carpeted with them says I
"Well", says he, "I've had 4 and there's one other on the boat"
I went back to my work wondering if I should take the big cooler box, instead of the smaller one for all the cod we were going to get Tuesday
And after receiving another 2 pics showing his total for the day (6 to around 7lb) I genuinely considered the larger one
Anyway, back to our report (can you tell I'm trying to pad it out a bit)
We took the 7.30 lock and headed straight up/over to Clevedon, on a steep bank/reef which is usually a good spot
Plenty of conger, couple of dogs and a few thornies were all we had for the first 2 hrs of the flood, so opted to move a bit closer in to Ladye Bay
We found a parking spot in between the flotilla and dropped anchor, much the same here with one small (8lb ish) ray doing a very good impression of a double figure cod and really got the blood pumping
A phone call from the charter skipper that my mate had been on the day before revealed he hadn't even had a bite on his boat (he opted to go further up channel)
Another move across the channel to just inside Newport deeps resulted in more of the same, so by about 2.45 I miserably pulled the pin and trundled off down the channel to get the 3.45 lock in........Codless
Speaking to the others in the lock, there were 2 codling between 20 odd anglers, although I did hear of a few doubles that had came out (including 2 from Clevedon the previous day) and the charter we spoke to ended up with 6
Shit weather for the foreseeable, but I will return
They can't hide forever
Can they?
 

Hell ya.... Was quite an eventful year all told, but the one good thing is, because we knew what was going to happen, we had time to spend quality time together... That is the bit that really counts

If ya gonna do it..... Lol
Was 6 years or more ago now. The shame of it was, we bought the boat for Dad's last summer, he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and no known cure..... That curtailed that summer. We never got to go out fishing again.

A long time ago I was out with my dad in his kit car......

Talking of locks, although on a river/fenland drain.....
Was on a boat with my Dad, and we were heading for the great ouse relief channel, I brought the boat in to the lock while Dad walked round to the control panel. So, I'm sitting there holding the boat steady using the lock ladder waiting and waiting.... Nothing... Shouts to Dad to find out whats going on and he says he can't get the controls to work. So I tied a hitch to the ladder and climbed up.... Sure enough, controls are unresponsive, turned it all off, reset and tried again, sure enough, starts working, tells Dad to stop it till I get back to the boat.... Nope, didn't happen, so ran back, jumped into the boat and set to trying to undo the rope... All to no avail. With the same creaking and cracking as Headlight mentioned, we started getting a serious list on, by which point, I've thought, fuck this, I'm out of here. Just as I got to the top of the lock as heard an almight crack, looked down to see the cabin/ring deck starting to detatch!!
Runs back to the controls, E stop and everything else not working.... Ran to other end, keyed on and just hit the gates open button (normally you use flapper? valves first then open gates), mad rush of water and water back up on a slack rope. Limped it out of the lock and back to it's mooring before trailering it up to take it home for repair....
Needless to say, some arsehole in a kit car came storming round a corner, lost the back and started coming straight at me.... I swerved, missed him, caught a run off ditch, denred the van roof with my head, recovered just in time to see the trailer do the same.... Pulled over only to find that the side roller had punched through the hull...... And he never stopped... Barstard!!

I did have to park a sail boat in Milford locks this summer....
They were taking so long to get alongside the lockmasfer asked me to raft up and move them in.... My mate Rob on his cat did another one at same time. Was quite entertaining to see these 2 posh types having a side along tow next to a shark boat🤣🤣🤣 
 

Yep, for me it's outboards only. 1. it's easier to free the prop if it gets a rope round it, and 2. it's easier (and dare I say cheaper?) to re-engine if ever the need arose.

So I had a go at this last night. Turns out I was worrying about nothing.
I jacked the trailer up and got it on 4 axle stands and took the wheels off. The axle is bolted to a piece of angle iron on each side that has the mud guards mounted on some steel straps welded to it. These are then attached to the trailer with 2 square u bolts on each side. Access was easy to the u bolts and could easily cut through them with an angle grinder and pull the axle out.
 
Waiting for some more u bolts and stainless bolts and I can get it back together. The new axle has everything ready to go.
I have rebuilt the overrun unit by buying one that was the same from a caravan and stripping it down and rebuilding mine with the bits so that is all ready. 
The galvanising where the angle iron attaches to the trailer is worn off and I need to clean the rust off and paint those bits, other than that the trailer will be all good to go. 

Hi, everybody! I'm Graham Broach, aka Plaicehunter. I've been fishing for 60 years, which is strange as I feel only about 35...
I do all sorts of angling, but this year I have spent most of my time fishing the Tamar from my boat 'Piranha', a Yamarin 5400 with a 60EFi on the back. I managed to hit my season's target of 50 gilthead bream  with a bit to spare, and do a lot of bass luring from the boat - best this year 8lb 6oz on a Patchinko 125.
I also do a fair bit of plaice fishing from my pal AW's boat, based near Salcombe, plus the occasional reef trip with him.
In the winter I fish for cod and thornbacks in the Tamar from my boat, though I catch a lot more conger than cod! Last winter I had a nice 5lb bass on a 10" live whiting intended for cod, and am aiming to fish one rod with a livebait slider rig this winter. Cod are in the river already....
Most of my fishing is catch-and-release, with ALL bass being returned regardless of size.
Tight lines to you all! Graham 
 
 

Sensible decision Luke 👍

Legs can be ok if looked after. My boat used to have twin Yamaha legs but after spending 20k to get them fixed and reconditioned he gave up fitted a pod and twin outboards.
Offshore 25 far better boat than an osprey. Osprey doesn’t have much beam so will roll. You won’t get a good one for 20k thoigh 😞 

My mates leg is rebuilt every winter, it's a volvo.  Last summer it spat it's gear linkage so it was a lifeboat tow home, then out of the water at the nearest boatyard.  This, very short after lockdown, year it spat the whole prop assembly (lifeboat) then refused to lock into reverse.  It also met with a mooring line.  We couldn't get the rope off at first as it was holding us off the rocks without enough room to anchor (lifeboat again!). The rope had gone into the gap between the prop and skeg, welded to the thrust washer.  The volvo leg only raises as far as the cavitation plate, so rope removal or prop changing at sea is dangerous, sat on the bathing platform, in the swell, unable to see what your trying to work on.  An auxhillary has been tried, but lifting a 40hp over the transom and trying to drop it over a bracket on the (slippery and swell washed)  bathing platform is just daft.  This is the first boat with a leg that I've spent much time on and, considering it's a proper engineer maintaining it, I just don't trust it.  Much rather have twin outboards, where you can easily get to any problems and have the constant re-assurance of a second engine if stuck.

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 🙂 

Collecter!!!  Geoff. ☺️

Pictures aka image hosting.
Don't know how many of you have considered image hosting, but there is a very good reason to do it. If you use a host such as flickr, then they are paying for all the storage, if you don't use a host, the offshore outlaws pic up the tab.
I use flickr, so will work with that, but there are others such as imgur that work more or less the same..... So, basically I download my camera to the pc, open flickr, select what pics I want to keep then upload them.
I have my flickr account well locked down with regards who can access my pics or share them ie, me and only me........
When I want to use an image, I open it, click share and the link comes up then just copy and paste the link into the forum post and voila.....
Theres no messing around with resizing and resaving in correct format, it's done.... Flickr is free to use for 1st 1000 images, which for most people is a lot. It can be used with phones as well......
It may seem pointless to some, but there are 3 people paying for this site out of their own pockets, as the site grows, and content with it, there will come a point where there is an excess of content that is beyond the licence of the site..... The more like this we do, the less liklihood of needing ads etc to pay for it........

Most boats do seem to have names. Some people believe an old superstition that it is unlucky to change a boats name, but I think to most of us that is nonsense. I have always named (or used the existing name) every boat that we have had. At our boat club members often refer to the boat name when discussing the crew - we are all getting a bit older and maybe that is easier to remember!!! Geoff.

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
 

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. 
 
 
 

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.

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.. 

No blank for either of us. So far I have pout and whiting to my name, plus a tail-hooked dogfish 🤣