Guernsey 24apr06

[Newboy]

It was back in Oct 2005 during a bass trip onboard Revolution that we enquired about an Alderney turbot trip, Josh’s reply was “You don’t want to goto Alderney, you want to be in Guernsey, the women are hotter ……” well, with answer like that how could we refuse. So a 3 day trip was arranged starting on the 24th of April 2006.

 

 

Day 1

 

On the weekend before everything were confirmed and an assembling time of 6:30am was agreed and set off no later than 7:00am. The 8 anglers were Alan and Paul from Stevenage; Simon, Gary and George from Bristol; Tim from Torquay; my friend Chan and I. Originally we were wrecks hopping on the way over, but Josh decided it would have been better to go straight to the CI as wrecking during the past week has been very patchy to say the least. We set sail just before 7:00 and everyone tackled up for their big turbot, using 8’ trace, the end rig differ as everyone have their personal favourite, which they were sure of catching the big one. We have beads, coloured lead beads, spoons, x’mas tree everything including the kitchen sink!

 

The day was a beautiful day, sea was calm and the trip over was uneventful (actually, I was asleep in the wheelhouse most of the way so I wouldn’t know). I was woken up by Doug, the part time deckhand and full time landlord (or should that be the other way round?!), shouting “Get ready guys, we’re almost there.”

 

Josh lined us up at the beginning of the drift; the banks are not unlike the Races of Portland, with violent gushes of water tumbling from an otherwise calm sea. Doug had already prepared stripes of mackerel courtesy of Weymouth Angling Centre. Since I have never fished for turbot (bye catch yes, targeting them, no). Josh’s advice was simple, by holding the rod you would feel a series of ‘dongs’ (the technical term-apparently- for bumping along the seabed) when a fish bite, the tip of the rod would bend over and to encourage the fish to swallow the hook, we let out a few metres of line and then ‘wallop’ the fish should be nicely hooked. Well that’s the theory, some more on this later.

 

The first fish of the day belonged to Alan, who brought over a nice thick turbot. The action was more steady eddie than fast and furious. We ended the day with 18 fish including 2 nice brills and 1 15lb undulate. The largest fish of the day was a 12lb turbot to George which was pulled in after Josh had called it a day with Simon calling him a useless so-and-so, for being the only one without a fish, plus he had the largest fish, a 10 lb turbot. Let just say Simon shut up pretty quick and George savoured every moment with the scale over and over again.

 

Offshore Rebel was also there, they also had a good day quantity rather than quality, they boated over 20 turbots but only one was a keeper.

 

Our accommodation was the Yacht Inn Hotel right beside the harbour; I would say it is value for money at

[Newboy]

Day 2

 

Don’t remember much about the night before as I had quite a few, well not as much as Doug who was totally plastered and he looked really rough, sort of not a very pretty shade of green. Nevertheless the morning was sunny and warm, perfect turbot weather. Unfortunately as soon as we left the channel, a fog bank appeared from nowhere and it stayed with us for the rest of the day.

 

The bank was certainly busy on the second day, Offshore Rebel was there, a few local private boats, one commercial boat dropping trotting lines and Valkyrie from Portsmouth was also there. We found it very difficult, drift after drift, nothing. Then one fish, not a monster but respectable dinner plate sized turbot and it perked up our spirits, unfortunately that was in the morning. Offshore Rebel was no better, 5 fish all morning. However, Valkyrie seemed to be doing pretty well, pulling fish over the gunnels at regular intervals. Then suddenly one of the rods bends over and we could all sense it was a big fish, unfortunately for us, it was one of the Valkyrie’s who was drifting about 30 metres to our port. The guy played the fish while Glen- skipper of Valkyrie ran around like a headless chicken trying to land another fish at the same time. Eventually the fish was landed and it looked massive from where we were. It was as wide as the bloke. Over the radio it was confirmed as being a 18 lber. Then Glen spilled the beans, they were having a crap morning until one guy start catching fish using a 4’ trace. In a flash we all changed the long 8’ to 4’ trace. Over the next few drifts we caught a few more fish and making the day tally to a more respectable 12 turbots. All under the 10 lb mark.

 

[Newboy]

Day 3

 

After 2 days turboting, we opted for the wrecks on the last day. Nothing special altogether about 20 pollocks upto 16lb.

 

The person who did best on this trip was Tim who just plodded his rod on the rail and sit in the wheelhouse talking to Josh, whenever a fish bite, his ratchet goes off and he leisurely walked from the wheelhouse, picked up the rod and reel in fish after fish. His tally for the trip was 2 turbots 1 brill on day 1, 3 turbots on day 2 and 5 pollocks on day 3.

 

Me on the other was below average with a 4 lb turbot on day 1, a 7 lber on day 2 and one small Pollock on day 3, oh, plus a average sized wreck pouting……

 

[toerag]

Sounds like you had a reasonable trip. The fishing at the moment certainly isn't a patch on last year, especially on the banks. The quality is there, but the quantity isn't. Wrecking has also dropped off at the moment too, I think the early may bloom we're getting is the cause.

[Newboy]

The trawlers are catching a lot of breams and some of them are large ones too.

 

They were very nice they gave us 2 large boxes of mackerel (which they were throwing into the harbour) for bait. However, they weren't nice enough to let us know where the caught the bream.....

 

[Sam]

thats a horrible sight no wonder they couldnt tell you were the bream were there all in the boat.

 

sam

[Newboy]

But Sam, don't forget they are earning a living just like evryone else. As long as there are rules in place to protect the fish stocks and the trawlers are sticking to those rules, no one should begrudge them.

 

Guernsey has a range of no fishing limits around the island, which we haven't at the moment.