Plaicehunter

The water temperature here in Plymouth is still only 8.8C, but it was such a lovely day that I headed out in 'Piranha' yesterday to try out some new braid and new lures. The braid, Sunline Siglon Advance, was most impressive: silky smooth, silent through the rings and cast miles. I also gave a swim to various new sub-surface lures. Topwaters are my favourite, but with water this cold I couldn't expect a bass to take on the surface. My new Zonk 120 looked good in the water, a little copy of the Ruf Bay cast a long way and I liked the action of the X-Rap. But it was the reliable Megabass Flatbacker which did the business. First a garfish hit it, self-releasing near the boat, then I had a more determined take and a little bass. I've never taken a landing net to a half-pound schoolie before, but this was the first lure-caught bass of 2021 and I didn't want to lose it. Hopefully the water will warm up soon and there will be many more and much bigger bass to follow! PH

Turned up at the boat club compound this morning with everything I needed -except the gate key... Fortunately I live just round the corner. My usual trick is dragging the dinghy-on-wheels round to the slipway only to find I've left the oars back in the boatyard. One day I set off from the mooring and glanced back to see the rods still in the dinghy. More haste less speed or old age setting in? PH

I don't keep bass at all (though I catch quite a few), but surely no-one needs more than a couple a day for personal consumption? We all know that bass stocks are under threat from excessive commercial fishing and illegal fishing, and that one trawler can take more bass in one haul than most of us will catch in a lifetime. But being seen to abide by limits and not keeping any bass at all during the spawning season gives us the moral high ground and strengthens our argument for restrictions on commercial activity and a clampdown on illegal netting. A free-for-all is just a race to the bottom. PH

I thought I'd cracked it today when my first uptider started nodding before I'd even set up the second. I left the bite, whacked out the second rod, baited with a large calamari on a pulley rig, and picked up the first rod. Fishing 100 feet of water on the Tamar, you have to wind down till everything goes tight before striking, and when I did it felt as if I was snagged. Heavy pressure told, and soon a conger was kicking its way to the boat. Happily it was lightly lip-hooked, so I guesstimated it at 7-8lb and T-barred it off. After such a fast start, I thought I was in for a hectic day, but nothing happened for two more hours, despite an ideal ebb tide. I moved a mile or so downstream, but it was no better there, and faced with the choice of getting back to the mooring before Low Water or after it, I decided to give it best. A modest resistance turned into a half-pound whiting, which like the eel was hooked on half a mackerel and safely returned. So a fish on the first cast, a fish on the last cast and nothing in between. The Tamar is notoriously moody and the water in March is at its coldest for the year, so I suppose not blanking is some sort of achievement! PH

Good luck, Maverick! They are fascinating fish. One thing to add: don't strike at the knocks - wait for the rod to pull round, click reel into gear and resist the pull. No need for violent striking as this is close-range work. They fight incredibly hard, especially on light gear when they turn side-on to the tide. Don't put your fingers in their mouth. They have small, sharp teeth at the front, crushing pads behind and very powerful jaws. They can smash a crab or full-size mussel with ease. PH

Tips for catching gilts. Gilts are not hard to catch so much as hard to locate. They move around in shoals and it's a question of intercepting them as they pass through. Yesterday I moved six times to where I expected them to be at that stage of tide. This is partly a matter of putting in the hours and partly a question of figuring out where the current will be running at a suitable speed. I like some current but not one running really fast. Gilts eat a lot of crab, and when I keep one it invariably contains crab remains. They investigate any structure: reefs, rocks, mooring blocks and chains, so fish near those. Successful baits include razorfish, lugworm, ragworm and soft or peeler crab. Razor is good because schoolies don't like it but gilts and Couch's bream do. Use as little elastic as possible to secure it. I have caught most of my gilts on lug, but last year switched to rag because I could dig my own. However, I would use crab all the time if I could source and afford it, as I think it is the supreme bait for gilts. People always go on about the need for small, strong hooks for gilts, but any gilt worth catching has quite a big mouth. For worm baits I use a pennell with a #1 circle on top and a strong #1 Aberdeen on the end. For crab baits I use a 3/0 crab hook or 3/0 Chinu. The rig is a running leger with as light a weight as you can get away with. I use a short length of 30lb Korda Arma Kord braid next to the hook/s as I was once bitten off on 12lb fluoro by a huge gilt! Tackle is 8ft spinning rods and baitrunner reels. These are essential, as bites can be very violent and you don't want to lose a rod overboard! I don't use braid for gilts anymore. It's not necessary to see the bites, and stretchy mono is no handicap when playing hard-fighting bream. Bites are usually a series of sharp knocks followed by the rod pulling round as the bream makes off downtide. Finally, a plea. Bream are very good too eat but are quite localised. In some areas they have been wiped out by netting and overfishing. If you locate some, keep it to yourself! Last year I had 54 and put back all but 10 in the interests of conservation. Fish of 2-3lb make the best eating, so any smaller or larger go back. My best last year at 6lb was returned and my pal Barry (pictured) had a 7-pounder from my boat and put it back. PH

Although it was probably six weeks too soon, I had a go for an early gilt in the Tamar today. Every spot I tried I was plagued with schoolies, and must have had a couple of dozen to 1.5lb, with one nearer 2lb. I fished three rods, one with rag, one with lug, one with crab, but the only three good bites were on peeler. The first looked very much like a gilt bite - several sharp knocks and a pull-round, but unaccountably I missed it. The second was the biggest bass of the day. The third was a heavy fish which banged about down deep but came off the 3/0 crab hook just as I thought I had it beaten. It was probably either a decent gilt or a big wrasse. A rather disappointing day, but the gilts don't usually turn up here in force till May or even June, depending on water temperature. Pray for a warm spring!

Just had my auxiliary serviced and my inflatable tender is in for repair. Hope to have both back in action late next week. The Tamar looks like milky coffee after lots of rain and never fishes well when coloured up. There have been a few cod caught, some whiting are still about and there are resident conger and the chance of a thornback, so hopefully something will pull my string until the bass and gilts return. I don't like fishing for very early plaice as they are so thin after spawning. PH

A big cat at Dartmouth for offshore and the Skerries and a little one with a cuddy in Plymouth for the Tamar. Love fishing Weymouth but the Shambles is too scary for me in my own boat! PH

DRIVE? My boat club in Plymouth is a 7-minute walk away from home, then it's a 100-yard row to the mooring. A Lottery win wouldn't drag me away from here, though it might tempt me to move the boat to King Point Marina a similar distance away, where I could just step aboard...PH

I agree! I'm based in Plymouth where there is no effective rescue service except the RNLI. There are a tremendous amount of pot, net and wrasse trap buoys inshore, many of them just dark blue or black 5l oil drums which are impossible to see in a wave or bad light. Some of the buoys are inadequate when set in a fast tide run and just submerge. A couple of years ago I was coming round Rame Head on the plane when I hit a submerged buoy and came to an abrupt stop. Fortunately it cleared itself, but when I had the engine serviced the engineer said I was very lucky that it wasn't disabled. In that case I would have needed my 5hp auxiliary to limp home. I have also fouled the prop on a clear plastic bag which I didn't see and which stopped the engine dead, and on a mooring rope (my fault) which wrapped round the prop. My main engine is a 60hp Mariner regularly serviced from new, and the battery is used only for starting the engine, but things can still go wrong. If would feel less safe without my auxiliary, which runs on an integral tank. I also carry spare petrol at all times. PH

I wouldn't use anything 'fresh' from the fishmongers. I catch and freeze mackerel, dig king rag, hunt for crab and buy peelers if feeling flush. I have tried razorfish from Morrisons without any success at all, though tackle shop frozen razor works for me, as does tackle shop calamari. I sometimes wonder if seafood in supermarkets has been treated in some way to make it fit for human consumption but which makes it less attractive to fish.

I agree with most of the above, though the best two from my boat last year (6lb and 7lb) fell to king rag on pennell rigs. In 2019 I also witnessed a bigger one caught on lugworm and lost a monster on lugworm myself. I check stomach contents of the few gilts I catch, and they always include crab remains, so I plan to fish live hardback crabs up to 50p size on one rod this year. Although they make very good eating, may I please ask for restraint? I personally fish to a slot size of 2lb-3lb, returning all larger and smaller gilts. It's particularly important to return the larger ones to preserve the prime breeding stock. PH

Hi, Andy! The whiting I kept will go down the throat of my ever-hungry fox terrier. I don't eat fish and my wife likes cod, plaice and gilts! PH

...with hungry Tamar conger around? This one around 1.5lb was nailed by a big eel before I could retrieve it. Unfortunately it attacked the end without the hooks! One huge wrench and it let go. I did land two straps and a conger of around 10lb, plus loads of whiting, mostly returned. A fun day with lots of action. PH

Instead of obsessing about surface lures, I am going to fish with a range of diving lures this year when the bass won't come up. When the tide is running fast, I'm going to try Flying C's and use bombardas and Red Gill Rascals more. Last year I spent much of my time hunting gilts and didn't really go hard for the bass till autumn. This year I'll mix it up a bit. Target for this year: a 10-pounder of each species! PH

....if I'd know it was going to rain so hard, but I'm glad I did! Tonight I walked to a local pier for a short two-hour session after whiting. Bait was mackerel caught by me from the same pier last week, so no bait bill! I used two carp rods for more sport and had a great time despite getting thoroughly wet from the hem of my coat down. Here in Plymouth, whiting used to disappear after Christmas, but there are still plenty around of a good size. It's just good to catch decent fish at a traditionally slow time of year. PH

All my lures eventually suffer hook rash, but I'm not sure it makes much difference to the bass. I also had a 7-10 bass on a Sakura Mousty in 2020. That's one noisy lure! PH

I'm very lucky - especially as I can catch my own bait by walking to West Hoe pier. Mackerel are still about, and catching a few on light float gear is fun in itself. I feel very sorry for people who can't fish due to travel restrictions. My posts are not intended as a taunt! PH

Whiting don't seem to like floodwater, at least I couldn't find any when I returned in 'Piranha' to a favourite Tamar mark off Torpoint today. I was greeted by filthy water and a small tide; this mark seems to fish best when the ebb is really pushing through. On one uptider I alternated whole calamari and whole joey mackerel, caught yesterday on the float from West Hoe pier. On the second uptider was a two-hook flapper baited with bits of squid and mackerel. The downtider sent down a live pout on a 6/0. It soon became obvious that the whiting were absent, with only pout bothering the smaller baits. An ambitious strap conger of a pound tackled a squid on a pulley pennell with two 6/0s. I was beginning to wonder if nothing bigger was biting when the big rod dropped yards of slack and I wound into a good eel which gave me a great scrap, including much surface thrashing, spinning and powerful dives. I guesstimated 20lb-plus and T-barred it off. It took the mackerel, but two subsequent smaller eels took squid. All four eels were lip-hooked and went back unscathed. Despite the lack of whiting- and cod - I felt I'd had a pretty good day in unpromising conditions. PH

Good guess! Patchinko 125 in 500G. What a lure! No sadder sight than s dead bass, and all mine are returned, along with most of my gilts. PH

It's true! I use my auxiliary in this way (when I can get it to start!) Much more convenient than using an extension steering arm on the little engine. Only problem is that turns are a lot slower, but it does work. PH