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!!