So glad you remembered how fishing goes, Martin. 😉 A lovely autumn day, some fish playing ball and good company, what more could you want, apart from more and bigger fish!
If I may (well, I'm going to), I'll attach my record to yours. My friend Pete and I headed out about 08.30 and it was bloody tight getting under the town bridge. Going through the harbour with a flat sea no other boats about got me thinking what a shame it is not October. I decided to use the first of the ebbing tide trying for plaice and this proved to be a good decision with a good stamp of fish interspersed with other varieties making their presence felt. We had quite a few small to medium sized bream, sometimes two at a time, Pete got a couple of small bass, a lone dab showed up, something I haven't seen (or eaten, very sweet) for a long time, a thornback ray to me on the plaice gear and, as I reeled in the last cast, a BIG mackerel. What a good start apart from there being not a single squid around. At one point, Alun turned up and neither of us saw where he came from, suddenly he is just there sitting off our bow with about five rods out for squid, Ninja fisherman! And no, he didn't get any either.
Now, off to the edge of the Ledge to try for bass which we ticked off, fish around the 3 - 4lb mark, perfect. We also had a lot of wrasse including one very large specimen which put up a bit of a scrap. Then, it all just suddenly stopped so, we decided to fish our way back to Poole, drowning the remaining worms. We did stop at Hengitsbury to see if there were any more mackerel about but, no luck. I did have something plucking at my feathers but not hooking up, I did convince myself that this was probably a squid, not getting it's tentacles caught on the small single hooks. Nothing else interrupted our peace on the saunter back to base. With an 04.30 start, the drive home after the boat washdown seemed to go on much longer than necessary.
Looking forward to the next window, it's good, as Martin said, to be retired!
Terry.