GPSguru

There is a mark about 5nm from me where Cod can be caught during the winter. Mostly fish of 5 - 8lb, but the have been fish of over 20lb caught in the past.

No, local for me is Teignmouth, Brixham, and Torbay.

That works for both herring and sardine, but you need size 4 or 6 hooks. we use tinsels with size 6 hooks. However, both are messy gits and you end up with scales everywhere, much worse than mack.

Agreed, also fresh plaice is high on my eating agenda.

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 👍

Yes, it had the colour of a Huss, but on inspection it was a dog.

Correct, this time of the year I use a 2 jig rig. 30lb mono with a blood loop 3” above the lead for the cuttle jig, and another blood loop about 3ft from the lead for the squid. We always get cuttle on the bottom jig and squid on the top jig, so it works a treat.

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

Yep, didn't have my sunny’s on and it stung like feck, luckily Kyle had a water bottle in his bag and soon sorted it out. All my clothes (jacket, hat etc), are all in the wash today !

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 🤣

As it is on the PC, and copying pics from the PC to an iphone is a PITA, here is 'seagull rock' (it is under 39ft of water so you would need f'off big seagulls to land on it 🤣

Nah, not quite, I will send info via whattsapp 😉

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

Well done, and spiders smell well good when cooking ! How we missed each other I will never know, but we always (usually) go inside the Orestone when crossing the bay.

Yes, I thought it was close but the crew had already lobbed it back 🙄🤣

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.

I am surprised that we didn't see each other ! I was there on Sunday morning, from about 8 until 9 (ish), then had to come back into Teignmouth to drop off daughter and grand daughter before we went down to the skerries.

Squid are more accurate than cuttle 🙄🤣 you wont find a better bait than cuttle guts for the larger Bass 😉👍

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.

True 🙄, although grandchildren duties and the evitable OAP health issues can sometimes put a damper on it. I will keep you in mind as I sometimes have a spare seat in the winter months 👍 (The wife is a summer angler and Kyle is nose to the grindstone with A levels)

Bigger boat next ?

Is it time for annual service ? I noticed it was out and on the trailer this afternoon 🤣🤣🤣🙄

Gary, I missed out an important point 🙄. The moment you drop the anchor, always 'mark' it on the plotter, you can then use the plotter to drive in a large 'C' around the anchor, this is often easier than doing it by guesstimate when watching the buoy, especially in deep water, as it is sometimes difficult to guesstimate distance etc. On the plotter you can see exactly your location with ref to the anchor mark. As you pass the anchor, you should see the warp firmly change direction. On the outer edge of the skerries, there are a couple of marks when I drop the anchor in 150ft, and then let the boat drift back on the warp (450 - 550ft of warp) to put me fishing half way up the bank shelf. These marks are on my plotter as 'anchor drop' marks. To recover from these solo by hand, would be an absolute nightmare !, using the Alderney method it is a 5 min job.

I tend to use a lump of 2x1 with an hole in the middle to loop the rope. Sometimes I just put a clove hitch around the wooden priest and use that 👍. If I am mega lazy, I just tie an alpine loop on the warp and clip on to it with the buoy, then when it is time to recover I just motor up to the buoy, clear the apline loop to allow the ring to slide, then just drift back in the tide until the warp tightens to recover. I generally like to take off the ring stop before I recover, as it saves it banging on the gel coat.

I know that some sea schools teach that method, but on most boats it has limited visibility to the warp and buoy position. BTW. You can always anchor with the buoy close to the boat (10m ish), and then let some warp out just before you recover.