by johnwest » Tue Dec 19, 2017 7:27 pm
At last the weather changed from frost and cold winds to mild with a more favourable southerly wind direction and I decided to chance a day out. I loaded up the car and hit the road west. It was still quite cool and the mist and fog was still clearing, a couple of miserable-looking buzzards were perched at intervals along the roadside waiting for flying conditions to improve as no doubt after a cool night they were ready for a feed. The temperature rose steadily through the morning and by the time I reached the beach it was a pleasantly mild 7-8 degrees. Grub eaten and coffee drunk, I set up two light rods to try for flatties but after more than two hours of the early flood, not one bait had been tasted. Perhaps the recent frost had convinced the flatties to head for deeper water so that’s what I did. Arriving at the next mark at about half tide and in daylight I wasn’t expecting much but even as I was settling the rod in the tripod, it started kicking vigorously; a hungry coalfish around the 30cm size. This rod was fishing in close in mixed ground where I was hoping for a rockling or two for the species list. The coalies continued to feed on mackerel strip and to a lesser extent, razorfish, and came in 1’s and 2’s steadily. The other rod was fished at distance over sand but did little or nothing. The coalfish tally reached about 15-16 with the best going 35cm, not huge but giving great bites and much preferable to the hordes of 15-20cm coalies which can often be a plague. As darkness settled, the far rod started to register a few bites as whiting came on the feed, 3-4 reaching to 29cm length. No rockling, pouting or doggies showed which was a bit surprising and the last fish of the night was a 35cm pollack which took half a sandeel. It was now shortly after high tide and the bites suddenly died away; I took the hint and packed up for home, pity as it was still mild and there was plenty of bait left. After a very pleasant day out despite the lack of a few flatties, I was disappointed to see a very freshly killed deer lying on the hard shoulder, I wonder are those buzzards still hungry. If you’re out there Chuckaroo, how much would the head be worth?! Venison for Christmas anybody?
- Attachments
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- 1st of 16 coalfish to 35cm
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- 29cm whiting
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- Best of 4 whiting
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- 35cm pollack
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- Roadkill deer
2013 species; 31
2014 species; 27
2015 species; 28
2016 species; 32
2017 species;28
2018 species; 33
2019 species; ballan wrasse,blonde ray, coalfish, cod, cuckoo wrasse, dab, dogfish, flounder, goldsinny wrasse, ling, mackerel, plaice, pollack, poorcod, pouting, scad, sea scorpion, spotty ray, spurdog, thornback, tub gurnard, turbot, whiting.
- For this message the author johnwest has received thanks: 5
- corbyeire (Wed Dec 20, 2017 1:17 pm), joe the junior (Fri Dec 22, 2017 2:42 am), lucky13 (Fri Jan 12, 2018 11:06 am), mickser (Sat Jan 13, 2018 2:14 pm), zeke (Thu Dec 28, 2017 10:42 pm)