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