Paul D

Looking to head out from Christchurch / in Christchurch harbour on Sunday ( later start as have party to go to Sat evening ) or on Monday ( bank holiday ). However, have no crew. Anyone interested ? Alternatively could be persuaded to go out of Lymington on Sun all day to afternoon / evening and try for stingers / smoothies - I am banking on the weed being less of a problem as the tides are small but will this mean the fishing will be no good ? ( only one way to find out I guess ! )

Inventory List on Neo :- Battery/ Battery Tubing Small toolkit for engine Spare warp 2 Stroke oil Funnel Torch x2 Fog Horn First Aid Kit Glove ( for conger ) Towel 25 litre fuel tank + 12 litre spare up front landing net ( for keeping mackeral alive whilst drifting ) Orange squash drinks ( for emergency ) Gaff Boat Hook Radio GPS Hand warmers Water container Bucket of lead Anchor Spare anchor Fillet knife Spare penknife ( clipped in accessible place in case of emergency ) bilge pump Bait tank Fish box ( ha ha ha ! ) - lid used as chopping board Tackle box Little bucket for bailing out. Big bucket for bailing out in emergency , or in Portland Race ! Lifejackets Flares Fire Extinguisher Boarding Ladder Flag No wonder the boat goes slow !

Strange looking Sandeel Paul

Rich, I realise that not all days will be good. Still the worst one ( fish catching wise ) I have had to date though and probably not helped by looking forward to the trip so much ( raised expectations and all that ). Still - red letter day to come now ( soon hopefully ! ).

Peter, Tried using stormies, to no avail. Feel much happier knowing the fishing by the island was so good Still, after the race going across the shingles will hold no fears now

Neo had an awfuls day fishing - in fact the worst I have ever had , but was a nice day to be afloat. Headed off to the race whilst others went for eels to the shambles. On reaching the race decided to head for the west buoy as there seemed to be plenty of charter boats there..... Got to the West Buoy and BW radioed through to say they were catching mackeral under the lighthouse, so decided to steam over as we needed bait ( in retrospect I wish we had used the stormy sand eels instead of spending around 1 1/2 hours chasing mackeral in 5 knots of tide) Around 5 knots of oncoming tide and some very sloppy water meant we could actually keep up with Dawn Raider on the way over. Getting there spent a while drifting for macckie. Only seemed to be able to catch the larger ones though. Thought about heading around to Pulpit rock as this looked like a fishy spot but decided instead to go back to the West Buoy and try drifting with the other boats ( thanks to Rich for thinking of us and phoning me to warn us not to go through the race which was building up nicely ). Not a bite.... Tide slackened and followed BW onto the Shambles where everyone seemed to be feathering for Launce. Tried this and Sam had a couple drop off having been hooked ! Tried some drifts over the shambles with a mackeral flapper and failed to hook into a really good bite ( Turbot or Plaice ? ). Getting ever more despondent and having burnt around 20 litres of fuel decided to go inshore. A change of heart halfway meant we tried another 3 drifts around the West Buoy. Thought I was into a fish but managed to catch James on Dawn Raider ( I think by now I was not using sufficient weight to get to the bottom ). Steamed over to a "mark" that Rich mentioned but didn't have a clue where it was. Radioed through to Dawn Raider to find out where they had gone. By the prison apparently - I thought the prison was a boat in the harbour ? evidently not - maybe they meant the old prison. Decided to fish the Hood and caught a pollack and cuckoo wrasse ( which was promptly eaten by a seagull after I returned it ). Maverick came over to join us and did a few drifts - we moved over to another wrasse mark but I was getting depressed by now, so decided to head back. On arrival back at the slipway found all the other boats there - that would explain why we couldn't get them on the radio I then found that you cannot use the last pontoon as it is evidently a ground baiting platform ( to the extent that someone was throwing bread down onto our boat ) - this caused me to have an anxious moment and steam through their fishing line ( which I wasn't aware was there - honest ). Seemed to please PJ for some reason Now I can't even make fun of my work collegue for failing to catch fish

I would post a picture of Neo's catch but the solitary cuckoo wrasse I caught was eaten by a seagull as soon as I put it back ! Sunday was my worst day of fishing since I had the boat I wish I had stuck to Christchurch as at least I know how/where to fish there, but that's fishing for you.

Wick ?

Hopefully there will be no need to go out next week for the Bass

Rich, You and BB are stars.

Found the cause of the problem this morning. Evidently my next door neighbours TV aerial was literally blown apart and his Freeview box was molten inside. His Computer is trashed and his VCR and DVD player were burnt.... Bit close for comfort but could have been worst - could have been the boat

F2 occasional 3 NW to West according to XCweather, TheYR and Metcheck. Looking good. Neo will be there. I will decide wether to fish the race once we get out there and see how rough it is ! - my alternate plan will be to fish the shambles and bag some late turbot or to fish the smaller race off the West Buoy ( possibly amongst all the other small boats doing the same thing maybe ).

Had a close shave with lightning last night. Playstation, Telephone, Network router, 2 PC network cards and video sender all copped it when a lightning bolt decided to hit something too close for comfort. ( That close that the smoke alarm went off ... due to the ionised air I presume ! ). Still, the boat and house are OK Still have one networked PC and the ADSL modem is still working so web site can still be updated

This is the way to clamp down on illegal fishing .... Fishing Vessel detained

Took a late trip out after work from Wick on Wednesday. Gordon and his friend also launched on Cushdie and myself and Paul J on Neo . Launched at 6 PM and headed out the harbour. On the way out I decided to steam alongside Gordon but realised that there was a large vessel inbound and there wasn't room for me, so dropped back but the wash from Cusdie was pulling me in towards the back of Cushdie. Fortunately, I don't think Gordon realised how close we came to clipping the back of his boat After this scare, left a nice gap between ourselves and Gordon and I was wondering what this large vessel was doing heading towards Cushdie. Even more puzzled when it TOOK OFF ! and flew over the top of Cushdie - If only we had a camera at the ready, it woould have made an awesome picture ( it was a powered handglider with floats on the bottom to take off from water. ) Headed over to the ledge and drifted from some mackeral. I left Paul J to feather up the fish whilst I caught some on his light spinning rod - great sport on such light tackle. Cushdie then headed over to XRay and we followed on a mirror like sea. Anchored over a "fishy" looking mark and awaited the large bass. No such luck. The livebaits were being attacked by cuttlefish. Something was chasing the mackeral on the surface at times. Had a pollack on squid ( returned ) and Paul J had a couple of Smalled Eyed Rays ( est. 7 lb ish ). I had some Pout and then a small conger ( around 10 lb ). As it was around 11 PM now - headed back to the slip. A beautiful evening to be out. Fishing not so hot but company and weather were good. ( and didnt miss much with the football ! ) Chatted to James whilst out as well and he was getting no luck over at the bridge, so glad we didn't trek over there.

Alun, Paul appears to have forgotten that one of them was still lurking in the back of the boat - no sitting in the freezer

Strangely, definitely my PC as works on the other one - weird.

Could someone tell me if the tacklebargains links at the top of this page are working - they fail from my PC but the guy from tacklebargains swear there is no problem. ( I even checked with the one from Solent-Fishing-Guide as well. ) Could be my PC> Please let me know if the link below works for you Our Afflilate Link cheers Paul

Adam, I had an e-mail from BobD - he is looking to crew for someone ( ie. Me )

Dan, Now I know you are a member, I will give you the correct co-ords for the X-Ray mark ( only kidding - honest ! ) What time tomorrow ? - Do you fancy taking your boat out Wed evening as well ?

Rich, Can I suggest trying them out on the fish first

A bit of light reading for you Sam Portland Race

Dan, The Shambles are a long way out though. If you trail to Weymouth you could fish around the rocky ground around portland - we had some good wrasse from there and would be good to know club boats are nearby. However, I must admit, I wouldn't feel comfortable myself with a smaller boat and with an engine I haven't got 100% confidence in. ( Engine failure on our earlier drifts would have meant drifting straight through the race and being spat out the other side ) - We started drifting the other side of the race after that and also started catching. Rich still has fond memories of the trip to the race , it is hard work steaming / drifting / steaming etc. and then taking a single wave over the side which deposited around an inch of water in the boat in one go..... But as Martin says - at the end of the day it is your call.

Another really good program that I use is AdAware. You can download it from here :- Adaware Additionally, there is a program called "HijackThis" which creates a log file of everthing installed and running on startup. This is superb for identifying if there are any unwanted trojans / spyware / pop up programs etc. Removing stuff using Hijack This is easy but it is VERY powerful so needs using with caution. However, creating the logfile is easy and if you have problems feel free to post the logfile here, where I will be more than happy to take a quick look and let you know if all is well. Hijack This can be downloaded from here :- Hijack This

Dan, I would use the Alderney method and retrieve from the side ( I have a front hatch on the Orkney as you know but still side retrieve on 90% of occasions ). When using the Alderney method the boat isn't anchored when the rope is pulled in, so the boat is drifting and not necessarily side on to the swell. If you like, I would be more than happy to show you how to retrieve anchor using teh Alderney method, it is quite straightforward really, only 3-4 months ago we had a retrieval / mooring / lifesaving practice, well worthwhile.