Thu Jun 10, 2010 2:51 pm
People:Seirt, myself sat Keiran, myself sunday
Duration:8 hours both days
Tide:flood to ebb
Weather:very nice apart from fresh sea breeze pm
Bait:ragworm whites, mack , launce, herring, crab
Rigs:sabikis, spreader bars, gilling rig, shrimp rig
Results:see below
[b]Report[
Day 1 Rosie’s Individual points max 5 species.
Well, set off at 10.00am with a plan of attack, and first stop was the bank near 6 buoy. This proved to be a good move as we were into herring, launce, sand eel, whiting, codling, and a plaice and a dab! As with all rosies comps, we have min sizes for each species, as per the cork small boats comp, so get an “ in size “ fish was the order of the day, unfortunately we could not get a herring in size, but the place was full of small ones, so much so we had to move out of them. As this was an individual comp, the usual etiquette is that if your opponent on the boat reaches his five species limit, we give it another 10 mins and then move to the next target; this is to make sure if one person on the boat is doing well, he is not held back by the other competitor. So, after we moved out of the herring, we I started to pick up launce, and on the 2nd rod, a nice plaice, that looked like a piece of kelp! Seirt was picking up sand eels!! After showing me the difference and that they were in size, it was interesting to note that I was exclusively catching launce only, and seirt, sand eel only, the difference being the colour of the sabikis. !!. Matchman as he is it was not long before seirt had rummaged in his tackle box and out came the colour I was using and he soon had his five!!
Well, after a few in size codling, and a couple of dabs, we decided to head out offshore as the tide was slack, but the wind was just starting to freshen, a nice spin out to the lings, were we went about picking up the reef species, with seirt hockeying in the ling, and myself a variety. With a good few species maxed out now, we moved to the clean ground north of the lings. Here seirt started to pull clear of me with a few different species, whiting, red gurnard, ling, LSD, but no haddock.
Time was pushing and the sea was getting quite choppy with a good ebb tide against wind, so a call was made and we headed back to the shelter of the harbour, (wrong) have seen this a good few times now, but wind south of daunt rock westerly, Harbour mouth Southerly!, so the plan was to anchor the reefs near the entrance which we did. What followed was a frantic and lively 50 mins fishing, the conger went daft, and baits were barely in the water and bang, off went the fish! Not shy little taps, but running away with the bait like tope!! In 50 mins we boated 5 very large congers, all well over 20lbs, and lost another 8, mostly to tackle failure etc, they were just so aggressive. We also managed to pick up Ballans, Tompot blenny, corkwing Pollock and poor cod, so a great last hour topping up the points, but still seirt was just ahead. With 10 mins to go before we headed back to the slip we lifted the anchor and were away.
Back at the slip, a lot of nice fish were caught by the other boats, but nothing too big, my plaice was pipped by predator 2s megrim 0.6kg, and the heaviest round was a nice cod. Seirt was 1st overall with 1020 points, with me sitting on 960, so close enough. We ended up with 18 “in size” Species , Pollock, coalfish, codling, ballan wrasse, corkwing wrasse, cuckoo wrasse, ling, pouting, poor cod, LSD, red gurnard, whiting, Launce, Sand eel, mackerel, dab , plaice, conger, and 5 none counters, Tompot blenny, weaver, herring, goldsinney wrasse, grey gurnard.
Day 2, boat five species limit.
Well, seirt couldn’t make this one, even he has to sleep some times, so Kieran, thankfully stepped in to crew for me. This comp was the same as yesterday’s format, but for the boat only, so we fish as a team. After yesterday it was decided to follow a similar path, and start on the bank, though fewer in numbers we still managed our quota of launce and codling, and a single sand eel, we had a couple of undersized plaice too, but it was less active than Saturday, so an early move was made offshore, it was lovely and calm but the fishing was patchy, so we moved out to the lings, and again picked up the old favourites, Pollock, cuckoos, coalfish, ling, poor cod. By now as happened on Saturday, as the tide turned the wind picked up, and it began to get lumpy again, so we did some more drifting north of the lings and picked up whiting, LSD, red gurnard , grey gurnard, codling, and ling. I had deployed the drogue to slow down the drift, and it made fishing easier, but the sea was still building so we headed back in again. Exactly the same sea met us in the harbour mouth, but we anchored at the conger mark and it was still fishing its socks off, with 5 congers in 30 mins along with more ballans and corkwing. We spent the last 45 mins fishing at anchor near the 6 buoy, but all we picked up was lots of small codling and not the dabs we were hoping for.
Back at the slip, we thought a nice Pollock of 3.9kg we had, might pick up the heaviest round, but again was piped by predator 2 with a nice 4.2kg huss, no flats were bought to the scales. The results came in and we found we had won the day with 1060 points. Happy days, species count for Sunday was 16.
Overall a good couple of days fishing, at times pretty demanding with the wind being completely different to the forecast (what’s new) next comp on the 19th.
regards
screeming