Josh

@Saintly Fish and I hit the Solent yesterday I the search for an early season cod. A very early 4.30am wake up for me saw us depart the marina not long after 6am and out into a flat calm river and a lovely sunrise.

We'd heard a tip from Neil's pet rumour-monger that a mile-long flock of seabirds had been seen working the Solent for baitfish recently, so our plan was to feather for fresh bait if we spotted any birds.
The Solent was pretty flat as we left the river, but scanning the water for birds was disappointing - nothing doing. We headed towards our mark and made good time. Nearing out mark we saw some fish on the sounder and dangled some feathers, more in hope than expectation, but Neil comes up trumpa with the first Solent mackerel we've seen in ages!

Marv the Mackerel was kept in a bucket as livebait, just in case.
On to the mark and down goes the anchor. Strap conger and smoothounds, but no cod.

The tide was ripping as we fished, requiring 1.5lb of lead to hold bottom. After a while it became clear that no cod were at home, so we headed to a new spot to see if that made a difference to the tide and made fishing any easier.
In short, no. One more strap conger, lots of beam-on rolly wash and an anchor tangle later we headed off to a flock of seabirds that Neil had spotted in the distance.
As we neared the birds the sounder cam alive with fish arches.

Feathers down and they were hit by large scad, mackerel and school bass. Many strings later we had a bucket of baitfish for the winter. A mix of mackerel and scad. A productive way to end the session.

Oh really
was they sharking or same lot trying for tuna 

Awesome job to the those guys who chanced it for the tuna off there . First and only tuna on that side in what 60 odd years turned out to be 100inch fish … what else lurks beneath

Awesome job to the those guys who chanced it for the tuna off there . First and only tuna on that side in what 60 odd years turned out to be 100inch fish … what else lurks beneath

Had Gary ( @thejollysinker) out for a trip yesterday. He was on holiday locally and dropped a line for a trip. By chance had space so he joined us for an expedition to the deeps. 
 
What an all round nice guy 🙂 was great to have him aboard! Sadly I didn’t find him a blue whiting for the species hunt was a fast drift, and a bit lumpy… (LOTS of pot holes and speed bumps in the sea on way out and back in again, but cat bashed her way through) 
Gary did manage one blue…. Took a while to get it in. I did learn some new colloquial phrases from Devon that apparently aren’t safe for social media… but I can’t blame him when this little smiler popped up next to the boat after a heavy 35 min scrap 🙂 
Top work that man, expertly played, tagged and released… 🙂 
Another 5 finished off the day nicely 🙂 
 
 

Was a bit better today… another 3 in 2 hours, rest of time on sharks, 10 blues to 100lb… bit of a special day 

1 of 2 and a few blues today
we ride again at dawn…. 

Well that's what we're calling it. For some reason mackerel sizes have been going bonkers here with increasing length and girth, biggest this week was a 40cm fish with plenty pushing for the title plus the launce are getting bigger with one weighing 82gm at home on my digital scale so possibly 90gm+ fresh weight. 
Not surprised that a BFT is caught off Whitby really! Just need the herring shoals to get closer in.

Sure have….
Its inshore of the stark grounds but I may have a spare weekend in the diary so may try a recce trip inshore to see if any others hiding out 

Solo trip and early start due to a major rowing race taking place and all the gigs use the slipway 🙄
Absolutely flat sea and arrived on the skerries at 08:00. Straight down with my Plaice bait, and I also put down tinsels for snake / mack, and a large fish bait for Turbot.
The first away was the mack tinsels, with a steady stream of single fish, but a good size.
The  next bit is for @jonnyswamp who was told the fish were small. I fished from 08:00 to 13:30 and had 9 plaice, with 3 keepers. The MLS is 27cm, but I don't keep under 35cm. I measured all the fish (just out of interest) and the keepers were just over 35, the rest were 27 - 30.  I don't use worm, only fish baits, usually whole king prawn tipped with squid, or mack strip tipped with squid. I was getting a lot of bites that didn't connect, and that could have been postage stamp fish as I tend to use a 1/0 instead of the size 2 that a lot of folk use.
Also in the mix was loads of finger sized pout on the tinsels, and 4 good sized grey gurnard on the plaice rod.
My Turbot baits went untouched all day, not even a dog.
Got back onto the slip at 1:45 pm, a loverly day, not a cloud in the sky and quite warm., but the sea was great so an easy 50 miles.
We had the plaice for evening meal, and it was excellent.

Just one pic, coz we have all seen plaice before 🙄

 
 

Had a free afternoon before the Euros finals and it was lovely so i took pugwash out solo to see what was about. Just a simple potter about with some feathers. 
not much action - just 1 Small tub gurnard - 

lovely afternoon to be out though!

 

I was left doing duties helping out transport for old people I somehow ended up volunteering for 😐
While once again my daughter headed off in search of some more tuna for smoking. I bet the wind will blow its bum off when I get chance to head offshore. Hopefully some big tuna heading up the coast behind the first run of smaller ones. 

 


 

Fingers crossed….. I’ve heard of the first sighting off St Ives by Sam yesterday. 
 
Im spooling up some reels this week so I’m ready to go once we get some sightings at our end…. Hopefully they show up this year in higher numbers…

Good going @Odyssey
oh them scad will be getting hoovered up soon no doubt 

Couple of pics from last few trips, usual stuff, pollack, sharks, wrasse etc 🙂 Numbers improving all the time. I’ll keep adding to this thread as I often can’t remember who caught what when but will keep it a rolling update…
Numbers of scad around at the moment is insane… make a good bait so not all bad 🙂 
Back out on sharks this weekend, then a weekend off followed by an empty boat for the weekend (17th and 18th August) if you fancy getting in on the action drop a line, nice tides for SPJ and sharking else I’ll just have to have a practice run for the tuna…
 

Looks great day out and a feed bream is so good to eat 

Looks great day out and a feed bream is so good to eat 

The plan was to hit the same mark we'd had good success on a few weeks ago for stingrays and smoothounds. We had the boys along chauffeuring us to the mark.

Lovely conditions gave a smooth ride out. 

We dropped the hook in less than 3m of water, and with clear vis we could make out rocks, cables, abandoned anchors and even starfish on the sea floor.
What we could not spot however, was fish. No stingrays, no smoothounds, no nothing. Neil had a decent run, typically on a scratching rig, which snapped him off after a couple of minutes. But other than that it was a desert. We moved into slightly deeper water where we rustled up a few bream.

Unfortunately we had a rather negative experience next. Not far from our mark, what seemed like the entire Solent population of WAFI's were having their annual Teddy Bear's picnic, and decided to use Tarlach Too as a marker buoy to see which of them could pass the closest to us. We must have been buzzed by over 10 yachts at least. I lost a rig to their idiocy and several bouts of fruity language was deployed as they passed within a gnat's whisker of us. Truly disappointed by their navigational behaviour.
We decided to head back in, somewhat salvaging the day by a high speed blast back that saw the boys reliving their antics from when they were a good few years younger.



Amazing to see how much they've grown since they first met on board TT, and no matter that they're now almost "too cool for school" they still enjoy a faceful of sea spray on the way back home 😀.
Despite the lack of target fish and poor form from the yachts we still managed a good few giggles and some lively worm-related banter with the boys. Thanks as always to @Saintly Fish for hosting us 👍.

The weather has improved so a solo trip to the wrecks with Bass as the target.
launched at 7ish into a flat sea and hauled my arse out to a wreck at 15 miles in 200ft that normally holds bass. 
There was already a rod line/ potter commercial on the wreck, but also very friendly which is good. Surprisingly it was at least a fish a drift, pout, coalfish, scad, pollock, and Bass.
I had a few bass and was playing ‘change the bucket’ to keep them alive to select the biggest and I kept 2 at 53 / 54cm.
Annoyingly, I hooked and lost (after a decent fight) what I suspect to be a largish bass, experience suggests 8lb plus, but the hook pulled. The fish were only taking small 115mm lures, so small 2/0 hooks.
spent 3 hours on the wreck, then I noticed the swell was increasing and shortening, so time to come back in. 
A very pleasant morning ………..and it was nice to see a coalfish, even though only 2lb ish
couple of pics
A 53cm Bass

A tiddler Pollock

Bit of mixed fishing this weekend. Managed Huss, conger, gurnard, ballan and cuckoo wrasse, cod, coalfish, dogfish, weever, mackeral, pouting, bass, launce and pollack. Loads of pollack on offshore reefs. Inshore was a bit slow, so much bait fish in the water I guess? 
 
 

South side  @Dicky
20ish mile out  

Lots about this year. It’s been late starting so they’ll hopefully be around for a few more weeks at least as well 

Me and Jon C entered Brightlingsea Boat Comp on Sunday, the tide was awful, the sea conditions were terrible and the weather was crap but despite that Jon C won a £50 chandler voucher with best unusual catch which was an 8lb Stingray, we both enjoyed the 3 hour raffle after as well which meant we missed all the football but we made great use of Jon C’s Willy Wang Air horn abusing Bradwell beach goers as we passed them.

Nice one mate, were you north or south coast if you don't mind me asking

nice one!