Poole Patch Sat 29/04

[bootlegger]

Finally the refit for Bootlegger is complete and with my bank balance considerably smaller we headed out for the first trip of the year, (the first fish of the year was two weeks ago when we moved bootlegger from Rockley to Parkstone Bay and fished off the mooring, result a 1 1/2 lb flounder.

 

We arrived on the patch at about 9.15am, there being about 7 other boats on station and that increased over the morning.

 

We started fishing directly over an outcrop on the sonar, and initially we started losing gear very every cast, then we decided to fish with a ledger rig with long traces, bounce the lead off the bottom and wind back on the reel by two revs.

 

For the rest of the day no tackle was lost, there was some 40 feet under the keel and so the fish were obviously not spooked by the boats and as a result some 2 dozen fish were caught.

 

There was a onsiderable lull at slack water but when the tide started moving again the bites commenced again.

 

The baits used were rag, squid, and mackeral.

 

Rag was by far the most succesful bait

 

The species caught were wrasse, pollock and pout. All were undersized fish (especially the pout) apart from one reasonable wrasse of about 1lb and that was nothing to write home about.

 

At about 2.45pm we spent about 45 minutes drifting off the inner patch, nothing doing.

 

Apart from the fishing which was ok, it was a lovely spring day, conditions were perfect and if nothing else it was nice to get out and look at all your really nice boats.