Scotch_Egg2012

Weather looking good for a trip mid channel Saturday, hopefully holds and we'll get our first wrecking trip in this year

Give Hillhead spit a go over the spring LW, Thornies and Hounds are showing

I occasionally suffer it, usually on a particularly rough day and with my head down tackling up. Not suffered it on my own boat yet but have on other people's. Kwells do the business for me, found Stugeron pretty useless. Absolutely hate it, properly ruins the day if it doesn't get nipped in the bud.

Take up the free SeaCheck from the RNLI, they'll go over your boat have a chat and give lots of advice all for free.

I used to use peeler off the beach, but not anymore. Hardbacks all the way, same on the boat. I don't bother with peelers anymore if I want Hounds. Last year had far more Hounds on squid than I did crab

I reckon the floating beads don't pop the bait up much but give the bait a more neutral bouyancy so it wafts around in the tide.

Just felt I'd better explain as some reading may have thought the hacksaw is used to saw material off the shoe

It's far from "butchering" if done properly with the right technique, linishing shoes with a hacksaw is a time tested method used widely in my industry mainly to deglaze brake shoes ready for MOT. The aim is not to use the blade to saw but used more like a file. You actually have much more control of the amount of material you remove than using electrical tools plus you don't need to remove the shoes from the vehicle.

Absolutely with a respirator, you won't need to remove the shoes doing it with a blade though, just thinking if they were that much of a pain to fit

If they still don't go over rather than lathe the drum why not remove some of the friction material on the shoes? Can easily be done with a hacksaw blade and you won't need to take much off

Gotcha I know it, just didn't know it was nicknamed teardrop

Interesting to know as I was thinking possibly Sowley next weekend, think I may give that a miss and head Needles for something a bit different. Weather dependant ofc

I'm not a big fan of Utopia, Medmerry, the side of Boulder and Pullar are my usual Tope marks. Overfalls for Blondes and Tope. Not heard of Teardrop any idea where that is?

Reckon the next set of weekend smaller tides will see them there proper. Everything hopefully starting to get going, the Smoothounds were 9 & 7lb so they are on the way. Tope are the target for me though, I'll not be bothering with Hounds this year. Tope then onto the Blonde rays

Headed out to Boulder Bank today to see if the Bream had turned up, after a couple Undulate rays at the beginning of our day it went very quiet once the tide started proper. We were the only boat there to start but in the end 3 charter boats anchored not far from us, from what we saw between the 3 boats 3 Bream were landed. We fished the best part of the tide for little result so decided to head out to a deeper mark 15 miles out. A bit different here, as soon as we dropped the scratching rods down we where into Pout / small Whiting and the masses of obligatory dogfisha few of the whiting went on as a live bait. They didn't rouse much interest except for a solitary Thornback which took a fancy to a little Whiting. A couple of small Smoothounds finished our day and we decided to head back in. Quite a bit of swell out deeper which made standing a bit difficult at times but a lovely day other than that

Pretty much what Andy says, I personally use yellow popups on my rigs. I've done side by side tests and found the same rig with the popups 99% outfished the non popup rig some days by a considerable amount. Yellow is the colour, a tip passed to me by a former team England angler. As for groundbait it does work at certain times and marks, I mince fish, squid and add boiled rice with a bit of bran to stiffen it up, freeze it then I use another rod to lower a cage feeder full of it

Pretty dumb but you need to look at the yanks another level of stupidity,

That's a different level of stupid, can't believe he hasn't even googled them to see the difference

Andy would you mind posting your settings for the sidescan, I've got it but have never managed to get any settings that give me a nice image

I thought 300s would be fine for me but going by that calculator to get a "good" effect I'd probably need 2x 600 interceptors and a pair of 300s.

Nice boat, I looked at those in amongst the Arvors. Settled on a Merry Fisher Just adding that you'll get on plane quicker with the outboard trimmed right in, when on plane start trimming out until you hit the sweetspot as Andy described, my trim gauge is done on my plotter so I remember the number I trim to in normal conditions.

Think the 300 would be too small for you, have a look at the attachment zipwake-quick-sizing-series-s(1).pdf

Be interested to see how you get on with them if you do fit them, they are on my wish list

I have used Cosham angling the worm is top notch and at £16 per pound very good price. Although I normally use Rovers in Fareham whose worm is also very good

Nicely done, thought we saw you. I was out on Ray's boat, we started at Hayling Bay until the tide was right to have an early go on Boulder for a Bream. Needless to say Boulder saw no Bream but Hayling gave us quite a mix of species