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

Joining the Angling Trust species hunt.

Hello everyone, welcome back, I took quite a long time out from writing to work on my angling as I felt when it came to sea fishing I was constantly writing with a complete lack of knowledge, I have decided to start writing again now this time with just a slight lack of knowledge instead.

I set myself a target of 30 species and of this so far I have managed 22. Most recently I had my 1st Ray species, it was a 96%, 7lb 12oz Small-eyed Ray, caught on Southbourne beach.

I also managed a Plaice and a Whiting on this session, the Ray took a ragworm bait and the other 2 species were on black lug.

This was my 1st trip out in quite some time as I was working a lot for a few months. Most of the other species I've had have all came along during matches last of which was one of my favourite species.

It was only small but it was my 1st Bull Huss and I was over joyed when I took a proper look at it! There has been plenty of the usual suspects, strap Conger, Dogfish, Pouting, Bass and small Wrasse species (when fishing on the pier at Swanage).

There has however been a few occasions where I have gone out trying to target specimens of certain species, only to be completely outdone by my son.

1st one was his Silver eel, I only managed one of around half a lb and Kieran had 3 over a lb this one going 1lb 3oz.

2nd of these was the Thin Lipped Mullet, not only did he beat me with this but be is also winning the junior Angling trust shore specimen award for our area.

This fish went 2lb 12oz and he was absolutely buzzing to have caught this one!

Thank you all for reading this post, I will be back writing once ever Monday from now on, I have found my passion for writing again now and I can't wait to get out catching more fish to write about for you.

Here's a list of the species I have caught this year to leave you with: 

Bass

Bream (Black)

Bull Huss

Dogfish 

Eel (Conger)

Eel (Silver)

Garfish

Muller (Grey Thin Lipped)

Plaice

Pouting

Ray (Small-eyed)

Scad

Sole (Dover)

Whiting

Wrasse (Ballan)

Mini Species:

Blenny (Tompot)

Goby (Sand)

Goby (Rock)

Shanny

Wrasse (Baillon's)

Wrasse (Corkwing)

Wrasse (Goldsinny)

Crazy LRF Fish

Hello everyone and welcome back, I've not done one of these posts in a long time, so I wanted to bring it back with something slightly different, I wanted to do a review of some Crazy Fish products. I'm going to run through some of the lure patterns I use, or have used. I have been using Crazy fish lures for a long time now, however as of the last few months I have been solely using them and nothing else.

To start off with I'm going to run through my 3 favourite patterns and then go from there into past captures. These picks will be in no particular order as I would struggle to choose a favourite from them, I have never struggled to catch on any of the 3 and the number of different species I have caught on them mean that I go nowhere with out them!

These are the Nano Minnow, Cruel Leach and Vibro Worm. There is a lot of other patterns available and I use a number of them regularly, these 3 though are my go to lures anywhere and everywhere I fish.

Let's start with the Nano Minnow, one reason I absolutely love this pattern of lure is it's ability to attract fish not overly easy to catch on soft plastic.

One species I always struggled to catch on lures before using the Nano Minnow was always the Goldsinny Wrasse, (above) Since using these though I have managed a fair few of them so it wasn't just a one off lucky type of thing. I have always found though that when it comes to this species the more natural colours are a winner, I have not managed one on anything bright and in their faces.

These are also good for most other species as well such as the Corkwing Wrasse, (below) Skorpion Fish, Ballan Wrasse, Bass and Pollack in my local Quay alone. Countless more species to come when I start travelling more for my fishing I'm sure.

So moving onto the next pattern on the list, the Cruel Leach, this is a worm type pattern that will literally catch you any species, last year (my 1st year of LRF) I managed 12 species in total from my local Quay and had all of them at least once on one of these lures!

Again they are very good for the common species such as the Corkwing (above) but has also seen me land fish I've struggled with on plastic before, I hooked my 1st ever LRF flounder on one of these unfortunately lost it on the surface so can't count it but now its getting colder again I'm sure I will manage one again soon! Another species of Wrasse I struggled with on lures locally was the Ballan, (below) until my 1st trip out using these.

Nothing seems to be able to resist this pattern and again I am really looking forward to heading further afield next year in search of anything and everything I can catch.

I have one last pattern to mention on this post and this is the Vibro Worm, this one is accountable for many captures, it is also the source of many of my strangest takes. I have managed to land some fish on these that aren't much bigger than the lure itself.

This is not something you would think to be to shocking if I was talking about Bass or maybe even if I was fresh water fishing for some Perch, however as you can see below, even Goby aren't shy for these!

So to close out this post I will start off by saying all of these fish were caught in 30 minutes of fishing on the same day, all from the same spot on Poole Quay. Needless to say I have been having some serious fun with these and will continue to do so for a long time to come!

As always thank you for reading and stay tuned to see what Crazy Fish lures throw up for me in the near future!

Two Short Beach Sessions

Hi guys and welcome back, This week has been a mad one for me, as once again I've been out with the man himself Mr Mark Tiller chasing them salt water fish species for the Wessex Tackle and Guns species hunt!

I have been having a lot of fun with this lately and to be honest I have had nothing else on my mind at all, although I have just bought myself a nice new baitcaster Pike set up so I'm sure there will be some toothy sessions on here again soon!

So to start with Mark and I headed back down to West Bexington in the pursuit of anything that took the bait, this time there was no target species for me although I did say to him I wouldn't mind if a Doggy turned up. Mark on the other hand was after a Plaice.

I fished one rod at range all day with a Pully Pennel rig baited with either a whole Squid, a lump of Mackerel or a mix of both, that was hoping a rouge Ray might be out in front of me, with hoping being the operative word I think.

The other rod was fished with a single size 2 hook on a long flowing Pully rig, this one I was fishing either Ragworm, Black Lug or Smaller strips of Squid just to see if anything smaller was around.

Mark managed the first fish again this session a nice little Pouting and it was a new one for him in the hunt so he was happy, I followed that up with a lovely Bass form in close just before a Thunder storm decided to blow over and we decided at that point to call it a day!

So on to the second session, once again I was out with Mark this time though we spent the day down Poole Quay chasing after Marks first ever LRF mini species!

This was a great success and he managed a cool looking Shanny and another one of those really small Corkwing Wrasse I've been getting lately.

 When it came to the evening we decided we were going to head over to Branksome Chine a beach very close to home and one with a decent reputation for turning up a few fish through out the year.

This time I did have a target species in mind and had set out to catch a Smooth Hound! I had spent the previous three days watching videos on which baits, rigs and anything else I felt might help, as well as googling areas near me they had been caught and going back through numerous local fishing news papers.

Mark once again had the first fish and once again it was another awesome little Pouting, a nice fish to see but this time didn't help his cause, I managed the second fish and this one in my mind was a turn up!

I put this one back and re baited, as I walked over to cast out I noticed my other rod bouncing away and picked that up first, I was absolutely buzzing to see the shape of a small Smoothy when Mark lifted it up out of the surf for me!

I took this one on a fair sized peeler crab snipped half way through and elasticated into a sort of crab sausage on a Pully Pennel.

Mark was next up into a fish and as it turns out it was the beginning of a flurry of three Smooth Hounds each in the space of two hours! Mark was getting them on Ragworm where as I had one on Sand Eel, one on Crab and one on the Ragworm as well.

One thing I was not sure about was the markings on the fish as two of them had the 'stars' on them and one didn't, luckily for me I took pictures of both with the card just in case as they both counted on the hunt!

That's it for this week guys thanks once again for taking your time out to read this it really is much appreciated and I really sincerely hope you enjoyed the blog!

Species so far: 10

Shore Rockling

Plaice

Rock Goby

Ballan Wrasse

Shanny

Corkwing Wrasse

Bass

Lesser Spotted Dogfish

Stary Smooth Hound

Common Smooth Hound

Family LRF Time.

Hello everyone, fingers crossed you like reading about LRF because it's all I've been doing lately, I have been spending a fair few weekends out waiting for a few fish to turn up and it looks like they might finally be on the way!

As you may know from reading previous posts I have joined a species hunt this year and I'm banking on my LRF to keep me in the running as shore fishing is not really a strength of mine. I have now signed my boy up to this as well.

I picked up his card a little while back but had not been able to get out fishing with him until this weekend, Kieran is a very competent light lure angler when it comes to Perch so I felt that now I could spend a bit of time teaching him a few different rigs and some watercraft to help him find a few fish in the sea.

We started off in a little corner that I know is an absolute haven for Shanny, I showed him how to set up a nice little split shot rig and off he went searching out every little gap in the wall, now normally what happens when I go fishing with Kieran is it takes me 2 hours to get set up as he catches fish after fish whist I'm tying up my rigs. This time though I set my rod up at home and came out ready to rock!

Fish number 1 to me and another species to add to my list for the species hunt, I know I said we were out to teach Kieran but its still a competition and I'm extremely competitive even when it comes to my kids, I am trying to instill the same level of wanting to be the best in them as I have.

It didn't take him long at all to get one of his own and I did nothing to help him, he fished perfectly, from seeing the fish, presenting the rig on its nose, setting the hook and swinging it to his hand. I could not have been more proud of him!

Right so with him up and running on the hunt I was very happy with him when I gave him the option to keep fishing here or to move on in search of something different, he decided he wanted to see if he could get a few Wrasse species in a spot I fish for them all the time.

Whilst on the way to the Wrasse spot we decided to stop off at a spot we call Goby City to see if anyone was home.

Second put in he managed an awesome little Rock Goby and he was loving the fishing. He had a couple more looks all around the spot but there was nothing else there that wanted to take a lure.

Once at the area to try target a few Wrasse I helped him change his set up over to a light drop shot rig, I have notice here that 90% of the time there are no bites on any rig other than the drop shot, so now I don't bother with any other rig there.

I managed the first fish and was made up to have a second new species in this trip, this cool little Corkwing absolutely nailed my lure which was a small piece of Squid flavored worm.

Once again Kieran was not far behind me and had one of his own in his hands, now he grabbed it before I could warm him about how sharp they can be but he made no fuss at all and got the fish ready for a picture.

Honestly I could not have been happier with how he was fishing and dealing with the fish as well, he was extremely careful with them on returning them and they all went back swimming which is always a bonus!

I finished up the session with the smallest Corkwing I think I have ever seen but that just makes it a lot cooler!

Thanks again for reading and once again I really hope you enjoyed the post.

Species so far:

ME: 6                                               
Shore Rockling                               
Plaice                                           
Rock Goby                                     
Ballan Wrasse
Shanny
Corkwing Wrasse

KIERAN: 3
Shanny
Rock Goby
Corkwing Wrasse

Difficult Times.

Hello everyone, so as the title suggests things have not been easy at the moment, I'm talking about LRF as there has been little to no species around and what I have seen have been extremely shy biting and very hard to hook.

My first 3 sessions of the year resulted in blanks, this was a little bit strange to me as by this point last year I had a good few weeks where I picked up a couple of nice early species.

My usual banker spots had not been producing anything at all even with trying out small pieces of ragworm instead of the Isome!

I realize that this time last year the weather was a whole lot better than it is at the moment and whilst I'm not an expert, I have been putting all the blanks down to the colder weather this year!

I kept on plugging away at it and eventually I did manage one, I spent a full morning down the Quay as I'm off of work on holiday at the moment, I walked from one end to the other trying out countless spots, nothing was going on at all until I got to a spot the other side of the bridge I had not fished before and decided to give it a go.

I decided to start out fishing ragworm but to no avail, so decided to go back to the Isome, this is probably the only lure I use in the early months of the year just to see whats about.

As you can imagine after failing so many times this month even this tiny little Ballan made it all worth while.

I gave it a few more days before heading back out again and that paid off for me as well, this time I didn't bother buying any ragworm it was going to be an out and out Isome approach.

Once again I was there for a few hours trying many different spots until I finally found a few fish.

I spotted a few small Wrasse in a hole in the concrete but they would pop out peck my bait and back up again, nothing was happening until this Rock Goby flew out and engulfed the lure.

I also hooked up with a small Shanny but unfortunately it dropped off as I lifted it out the water, it was a shame but I will be back down there to get him out again very soon!

Thanks for reading and once again I hope you enjoyed!

 

Getting Started.

Hello everyone, I'm sure by now you will have seen on my Twitter, Instagram or Facebook I have finally managed to get out and do some fishing. Something very different for me though by way of heading to the beach to start off my salt water species hunt for the year.

I started out last week heading to a local tackle shop and buying 2 of the cheapest rod and reel combo's I could find, The main reason for the cheapness was that I wasn't sure just how much I was going to be able to get out shore fishing or if I would even like it. To start out with I went to a local beach by the name of Durley Chine to see if there was anything at all about.

That session was only about 2-3 hours long and ended in a blank, usually I would walk away from a blank feeling slightly down on things, this time though it only made me more determined to get things right and finally break my lifetime shore fishing duck!

After this trip I just wanted to get a species or 2 under my belt so it was time to get out and dust off the LRF gear!

Unfortunately once again I managed to miss read the tide times and arrived at an extremely fast moving Poole Quay, one that was absolutely impossible to fish! After all these Issues I decided it was time to call in the expert from the last time I went shore fishing Mr Mark Tiller.

We decided it would be a good idea to head over to Chesil Beach, somewhere I have never been let alone fished. Our target species was Plaice, although to be honest we both just wanted to get off the mark species wise so would have been happy with anything.

We for reason decided it would be a good idea to leave home at 5am... however to be fair once we arrived and I was hit with these views on the road in I wasn't fussed at all by how tired I was!

After getting the rods set up and cast out it was now back to the waiting game, we decided on leaving the first cast 30 minutes and see what the baits came back like, if there was no bait we would shorten the length of time between casts and vice versa.

After speaking to guys in local tackle shops before the trips we took Mackerel, Squid and Ragworm as bait, we were told there was a few Plaice, Dogfish and the odd Ray being caught which was the reason for the bait selection.

Mark was first off the mark with a nice little Whiting, taken on a Pulley Pennel rig baited with a few large worms.

Quite some time went by with no other action so I decided to have a change up of rigs and bait, I went with a 3 hook flapper rig with a small strip of squid on each hook. I didn't notice any bites but when I wound in I had a nice little surprise by way of this awesome little Rockling.

We were both ecstatic to be off the mark in the species hunt as well as our own personal goals for the year, as you might recall from my post where I outlined my goals I am aiming to land 20 salt water species this year, unlike last year where I set the goal for LRF only this year is by any means, so with lures, bait or even on a boat.

As I already said above our target species for the trip was a Plaice, so with that in mind I took the flapper rig off and put on a Wessex rig, both hooks baited with Ragworm and sent out around 50-60 yards.

I put the rod up on the tripod and returned to the comfort of my chair, as I sat down I had 4 decent tugs on the rod tip, followed by 3 more and then as I walked over to the rod 5 more big tugs so I hit it, after winding in what felt like a bin liner full of water my mind was blown by what emerged from the surf!

Some may call it luck, personally I believe it to be a massive amount of skill but either way I had done it! The decision to change over rigs worked before I could get comfortable in my chair, to be honest I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, I read Plaice on the rig, put some bait on and chucked it out, but it worked out good so I'm not going to complain!

After this success I had other things on my mind, like the thought of a Ray, so both rigs came off and fresh Pulley Pennel rigs went on, both with a chunk of Mackerel and a whole Squid elasticated together with bait elastic.

I'm starting to realize that sea fishing baits are absolutely disgusting, most things explode random gunk all over you and or try and bite you, to be fair though if its going to catch me a fish I have zero complaints on the matter, but when I put my cloths out to wash when I get home the other half has a few!

We fished on into dark but that was the end of the action for us this time, with a near 2 hour drive in front of us we had plenty of time to make some more plans for the next session, I think its going to be down Sandbanks trying to get Mark his Plaice and I'm going to have a go for anything that swims.

Thanks very much for reading and I really do hope you enjoyed the post, I have a lot of fishing planned in the near future so hopefully these are going to be a whole lot more regular again, as I realize I said they'd be weekly. I will do my best to keep to that from now on!!

Orchards League 1st Round

Evening everyone sorry it has been a while since my last post but I have been having a few family issues that are for the most part resolved now, so here I am, I am now running a week behind my fishing so as long as I find the time I will try to get a post out in the week to catch back up.

Okay so onto this weeks post, the 1st club match at Orchard Lakes was run last weekend and here is what happened, At the draw I was very, very happy to have drawn peg 44, it is an end peg up the middle spit, this is by far the best section on the lake and a hard one for most of the other sections to keep up with, so as you can imagine to be on the end of it was an added bonus!

To make things even better though I was the only peg on the section to have had any kind of feature to fish to, other than the far bank of course. I had a lovely looking Lilly bed to my right and another across and to my left, this one was sunken and very dead but a feature none the less!

As you can see from the above image the other Lilly bed across is not visible and to be honest was hard to make out standing there, I started off fishing maggot to the right of me just to try tempt some Roach or Crucian's to feed. Normally the matches here are very hard going in the 1st 3 months of the year so to get anything in the net early is normally a good move.

       After around 20 minutes I had probably just over 1lb of Roach and a single small Skimmer in the net when the guy next to me hooked a Carp across, I had been keeping an eye on what had been happening around me but hadn't noticed what bait he was using. Normally though corn is a good shout on here so I went over to the other Lily bed with a single grain of corn fished dead depth, after about 3 minutes the float went under but the fish was so fast into the snags and I lost it.

        I got my rig back but it was very badly tangled, I decided to chuck out a bomb with punched bread on a quick stop, I used 3 10mm pieces of punched flake and tipped it off with a single 10mm piece of crust to pop it up, this was fished on a 6" hook length of 0.16 to a size 16 hook.

        My plan was to leave the bomb out there whilst I untangled the rig but as I was sinking the line it pulled out of my hand and I was finally hooked into a better fish of my own.

I decided at this point to chuck it out again with same bait to try and untangle the rig again, this time though my plan was to shallow it of and dob bread across to see if there was many Carp up for a piece, I managed 2 more smaller Carp on the bomb before it went quiet and I decided it was time to start dobbing, this time I went over with a 8mm punched piece I had prepared in the microwave the night before.

I managed a few quick fish on this method before again going quiet, so I spent the rest of the match switching between bomb and bread and dobbing bread and I started to put together a few fish unfortunately though the guy on the peg next to me was emptying the lake at an awesome rate, although somewhat depressing I could not help but watch on at some of the best angling I have seen in a long time!

The fish seemed to be of a better stamp when dobbing the bread and the better fish were the shallower ones as well, to be perfectly honest I was caught out thinking it was going to be a lot harder than it actually was and wasted a whole lot of time fishing for bits rather than targeting the Carp. Not a mistake I will be making next month!

The only rig I used on the match was a Dino F1 float to 0.13 mainline with a 0.11 hook length and a size 18 B911 F1 hook, these are by far my favorite floats for winter fishing as they are perfect for all manner of fishing, as it displayed on the day.

I weighed 26lb 6oz for 4th in section which when you compare it to my weight here last year of 1lb 4oz again for 4th in section you can see the difference.

Thank you very much for reading guys I hope you enjoyed, as I said I am sorry I missed last week but it really could not be helped, I will try my best to either catch up this week or next but will be time dependent!