Latest Achievement.

Hi guys and welcome to week 4 in a row, I know it's a miracle right? Told you I was really getting back into writing this blog! 

So for any of you that have been reading this from the very start you may have noticed it's been a very long time since I added an achievement to the short list at the bottom right of this page. Well as of now I can finally add a 3rd!

This is no major accolade to be singing and dancing about just like the other 2, to be fair as far as I can tell these are on the same sort of level in their respective magazines. I managed to get myself into the Sea Angler magazine for completing the Shimano mission for the Small-eyed Ray, a fish you probably haven't heard that I caught by now.... ***insert laughing face***.

So I sent in the picture thinking my name would get listed with the other guys on the page, but was literally ecstatic when my good friend Iain messaged me saying my picture got in!

As a subscriber to the magazine my copy was waiting for me at home when I got back from work, as you can imagine I wasted no time at all in rushing through to the page. 

To go along with this I received a badge to be sewn onto a jumper or something along the lines once I've made my mind up which one.

I'm really enjoying my sea fishing at the moment and although I never set out for any of this kind of stuff, I noticed the weight for the fish in the magazine so just went with it on a why not basis. As I said in a previous post next year I am going to try for some trophies within the club I'm a member of but for myself not for any kind of recognition.

My sea fishing as most of you know very much started out with just playing around with LRF, then I joined the Wessex Tackle species hunt, a local store, to test myself a little and from there realised that if I wanted to get more species I was going to need to move on from just the light lure tackle.

This year I invested in some new gear for beach fishing, some 14ft rods and multipliers, tripod and a few other bits for comfort on the long nights more than anything else. I set myself a personal target of 30 species this year, currently I'm on 26, although due to some coming before I joined the Angling Trust species hunt and some out on a boat I'm on 22 officially on the hunt list.

This means I also got another badge for reaching 15 species. I believe the next one comes at 30 so I'll actually have something tangible to show I reached my goal, that will be cool.

Please excuse the poor quality of the pictures of these badges I took them on my phone resting them on my mouse pad. 

I have really been enjoying seeing what fish I can find just casting out different rigs and different baits and obviously still doing some LRF from time to time, next year though I really want to push myself and see how far I can really take it.

Thanks for reading and as always tight lines.

Loni's species hunt

Hello and welcome back guys, so today is kind of a 2 in 1 post. The other night Jen, Kieran and myself went out to fish a match with our local angling club, luckily for us all species caught went towards our respective species hunts, hence the name of the post.

So what I thought I would do with this post is take you over the match as well as a complete catch up with my progress in this latest species hunt.

I wont go back through the other species in much detail at all as I listed them in a previous post and possibly 2 in a row, so let's not make it a 3rd. So as you know I have had a Small-eyed Ray, a Whiting and a Plaice. One that I didn't mention though was a Pouting and the reason for this was I put it back after forgetting I had started a 2nd hunt, so didn't take a picture! (Insert sad face here.)

So onto the match, we started out with Kieran and myself casting out flapper rigs, mine being clipped down, both rigs baited with Ragworm. Jen decided to use a loop rig, size 4 hook on the top and a 2 on the loop hook length, she baited the top hook with Ragworm and the bottom with Ragworm tipped with a small strip of Mackerel.

Kieran was the 1st one in with a fish, as he was winding it in he said he felt a really big bang on the rod top, he kept winding and brought up a really small 10cm Bass but it was in a very bad state, it had almost certainly been hit by a much bigger bass than itself on the way in. I decided not to take a picture of the fish as some of you guys may have found the image slightly disturbing.

Jenny was the next one in with a Bass of 22cm as she was bringing it in I also had one of my own. Both took the Ragworm baits, although Jens Mackerel strip was taken off the hook as well as half of her worm. 

Jenny isn't in any species hunts at the moment although there is one she may be joining in the near future, this is the reason for putting my fish in the picture instead of hers, we didn't take one of hers.

Kieran followed this up with another Bass of his own this one going 21cm, once again just Ragworm being what they liked. At this point he was loving it and ran to throw the fish back and get cast back out, in his rush though we didn't get to take a picture for his species hunt, this is another species added to a growing list now. The excitement seems to take over him quite a lot, as of now it includes, Garfish, Pouting, Scad, Thin Lipped Mullet and now Bass, the Mullet however was my fault as we went out targeting them and I unfortunately left the hunt cards at home.

Next up I caught a 65cm, 1lb 3oz, 47.5% Silver Eel, I entered this into the clubs fish of the month competition for shore competition bracket. Only needed to be 3oz bigger to be in the lead for the Silver Eel Cup mentioned in last weeks post.

Species number 5 added for me to the species hunt, both of these I already had for the Angling Trust hunt, it is actually though a personal best for me so i was very happy, I'm hoping to get out again soon targeting some bigger ones!

Kieran followed me up with an Eel of his own that went 50cm putting him firmly in the drivers seat when it came to the Junior part of the match. This put him at 4 matches and 4 wins, hes winning the Junior league on the Pier with 30 points and now he has 10 points on the Junior home shore, I believe hes only 30 points behind for Junior club champion with 7 matches to go!

Thanks again for reading and as always I really hope you enjoyed the post! Until next time take care out there and tight lines!

Mini Species Hunt.

This week I thought I'd go back over something I was a little more confident in when entering the Angling Trust species hunt, I had a fair few species I felt I could bank on when it came to fishing down the Quay.

I have been fishing there for a few years now and I know I can consistently find 3 species of Wrasse, 3 Goby species and 2 Blenny, all of these I can get in one small area, there are a few extra species down there that if you move about they can be found but seem to be a lot harder to find, one of these I managed nice and early this year.

I was extremely happy to see a little Sand Goby out, especially seeing as I felt the Rock, Common and Black Goby were going to be easier to find. That being said I have only managed a Rock Goby so far, there seems to be a massive abundance of Shanny there this year and nowhere near as many Goby.

I have managed 4 Wrasse species so far this year, I had a great day down the Quay where I managed all 3 of the ones I knew were there in a short hour session, these are the Corkwing, Ballan and Goldsinny. I did however manage a 4th species but during a match on Swanage pier, of the mini species of Wrasse my favourite is the Baillon's.

On the same day I caught the Wrasse down the Quay I also managed to pick up both of the Blenny species I know reside there, the Tompot and the common Blenny or Shanny. Some of the others we get down there but a lot fewer and far between are the Scorpion Fish and the Sand Smelt both of these have also evaded me so far.

I did however pick up a Black Bream on the LRF gear this year on Swanage pier.

I have had a lot of fun fishing for the mini species again this year, even though I've not had anywhere near the amount of time to get out as previous years. Next year is going to be a big one for me, I am going to be putting a serious amount of time into finding as many species as possible for a 2nd species hunt I have joined but there will be more about that in a post in the near future.

Plans for Club Angling

At the beginning of the year I joined a Sea fishing club, it was originally to meet other anglers and learn about fishing locally. I have since decided that next year going into it I'm aiming to win at least 3 trophies, there are 3 I have my mind on but I'm not worried if they don't work out I have a couple of back up ideas.

To start with I felt I needed to decide weather I wanted to go down the line of match fishing trophies or specimen trophies, now I completely understand that I have a whole lot to learn when it comes to match fishing side of sea angling, although on the same side of things I'm fully aware how much time and effort top anglers put into specimen fishing.

With this being said I have decided To go with the specimen route this coming year, to start with the 1st one I chose was the Ray Shield. I realise also that last blog post I wrote that I only just managed my 1st Ray species, this is maybe a slight disadvantage as I dont know much about fishing for them, what I do know however is I have so much fun targeting them that even without the success keeping it up would not be an issue!

Currently my personal best stands at 7lb 12oz for the Small-eyed Ray, I'm yet to set a PB for any other ray species but my next target is the Spotted. 

Secondly I am going to be fishing for the Silver Eel Cup, this is a trophy I feel I stand an okay chance at winning, there are a few marks locally that I fish that hold a whole load of smaller Eels, I am certain though that if I stick it out a larger one will come along, they are a fairly simple species to catch it's just learning how to pick out the larger fish. 

So far my PB stands at 15oz, last year the trophy was won with a 3lb Eel that was caught on a boat, this year however it's being won with a fish of 1lb 5oz, one that my son almost beat but missed out by 3oz, next year though this will not be the case as the junior members will have a set of trophies for themselves.

The 3rd and final one I'm going to be trying for is the Mullet trophy, this is a slightly strange one though as, as far as I can work out all species of Mullet fall under this trophy. I will probably be targeting a single species in particular though, I enjoy fishing for Thin Lipped Mullet from a small gem of a mark I was lucky enough to be put onto by a quality local angler named Shane, as far as I know he is planning on starting to write his own blog soon and I will link it for you in a future post, he does however have a youtube channel that I will link at the end of this post.

My Thin Lipped personal best is 1lb 7oz that if I remember right came in at 69% I am hoping to manage my 1st 100% Mullet next year. I will also be out trying to catch a Red Mullet and Thick Lipped Mullet for the species hunts I'm a part of.

Out of the back up trophies there is one for the largest fish caught on a lure, this one is right up my street so to be honest it might not be much of a back up as much as one I try to win along side catching the Mullet! 

Thank you again for reading, I very much hope you enjoyed this post and I look forward to writing next weeks one.

Vision Angling (Shane's youtube channel) : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHhSIKhUCCSd34CO28uZRxw