Post by Mumbles Motor Boat Fishing Cl on Apr 22, 2012 20:56:02 GMT 1
Dean's Report on his Oystercat Fishing trip 14 April 2012
With the small tides and large amounts of bait fish around, I thought we'd have a bash for the tope this weekend. Eagerly watching the weather, it was looking like the chances of us getting down to where I wanted to be was getting less likely by the day.
Saturday morning came, heading down to the boat it looked as if the weather was gonna play ball, so after getting a bit of bait, we slipped the ropes and headed out through the pier heads down towards Oxwich. Setup an exploratory drift as I wasnt sure how we'd drift as the tide hadn't long turned and the wind was pretty strong. This drift came good with Matt picking up a plaice/dab combo and I had a few mackerel in the first few hundred yards.
We continued to pick up good numbers of whiting, lots of mackerel - plenty of shoals about, dabs along with a herring and a little pollack
With the live tanks filled, we headed out off the headland in search for tope. On getting to the mark, it was horrid out there. We dropped anchor hoping once we'd pulled in we'd sit into it ok. Unfortunately the wind was swinging us a lot so we ended up side on a lot of the time and we lost a lot of gear. After a hour of punishments with little to show for it ( 2 dropped / slashed up baits to John, looked like with a good huss or tope ) and 2 huss for me along with a few dogs, we decided to run back into the knoll to get a bit more shelter and comfort.
On the way over, we managed to get up on the plane and skip along the top of the nasty chop that had kicked up, this seemed to put both Ossi and John to sleep.
I knocked the bacon on while the guys hid out of the weather.
This was fairly quickly broken up when John pulled in a nice little plaice.
The dabs came on the feed, but we had the odd quiet spell here - but fishing on the whole was pretty good. Matts Mark2 spreader boom was doing pretty well, also the first gurnard of the year to the Oystercat fell to the 'Mark2 boom'
In all, fishing was pretty good. Ended the day with 30+ dabs, 40+ mackerel, 10 or so whiting, 3 plaice, 1 herring, 1 pollack, 1 grey gurnard, 15 or so dogs and 2 bullhuss. Bit gutted we couldn't stay out in the hunt for a tope, but the weather was rubbish all day. Cold wind, plenty of rain... but other than that a nice day out
Dean Gifford
With the small tides and large amounts of bait fish around, I thought we'd have a bash for the tope this weekend. Eagerly watching the weather, it was looking like the chances of us getting down to where I wanted to be was getting less likely by the day.
Saturday morning came, heading down to the boat it looked as if the weather was gonna play ball, so after getting a bit of bait, we slipped the ropes and headed out through the pier heads down towards Oxwich. Setup an exploratory drift as I wasnt sure how we'd drift as the tide hadn't long turned and the wind was pretty strong. This drift came good with Matt picking up a plaice/dab combo and I had a few mackerel in the first few hundred yards.
We continued to pick up good numbers of whiting, lots of mackerel - plenty of shoals about, dabs along with a herring and a little pollack
With the live tanks filled, we headed out off the headland in search for tope. On getting to the mark, it was horrid out there. We dropped anchor hoping once we'd pulled in we'd sit into it ok. Unfortunately the wind was swinging us a lot so we ended up side on a lot of the time and we lost a lot of gear. After a hour of punishments with little to show for it ( 2 dropped / slashed up baits to John, looked like with a good huss or tope ) and 2 huss for me along with a few dogs, we decided to run back into the knoll to get a bit more shelter and comfort.
On the way over, we managed to get up on the plane and skip along the top of the nasty chop that had kicked up, this seemed to put both Ossi and John to sleep.
I knocked the bacon on while the guys hid out of the weather.
This was fairly quickly broken up when John pulled in a nice little plaice.
The dabs came on the feed, but we had the odd quiet spell here - but fishing on the whole was pretty good. Matts Mark2 spreader boom was doing pretty well, also the first gurnard of the year to the Oystercat fell to the 'Mark2 boom'
In all, fishing was pretty good. Ended the day with 30+ dabs, 40+ mackerel, 10 or so whiting, 3 plaice, 1 herring, 1 pollack, 1 grey gurnard, 15 or so dogs and 2 bullhuss. Bit gutted we couldn't stay out in the hunt for a tope, but the weather was rubbish all day. Cold wind, plenty of rain... but other than that a nice day out
Dean Gifford