Swainiac

I see that my earlier prophecy of Poole or Christchurch launced boats fairing better than Weymouth launched ones was spot on I too, thought I saw a Garfish flick last friday, but only one fish turning on the surface isnt enough for me to crack out the float. Good to see seven species taken, well done that boat, seven speices in summer months isn't a bad score, so here's the kiddy to watch. Did anyone snag a mullet, or indeed have a try for them?? Are they about yet Dan?? Well done again........Four species Rich

Kam, the idiot was so close, he could have counted the twists in the warp from cleat to water, it was a diabolically stupid act, considering the badge that the vessel was carrying. I know that I dont hold any certificates in seamanship, but to allow your vessel to drift within twenty feet of an anchored small boat, who maybe not showing the black ball, but who's anchor bouy is clearing visible to crew fishing off the back of the boat, is pure dangerous folly. The ship steamed straight at Enticer as we were drifting, and I remarked to Mark, just how close he came, before altering course. I believe that Gordon took photos, which could of course be used as primary documentary evidence, should the Coastguard Agency wish to follow this incident up, and Mark and I were close enough to witness the entire incident, and recognise both crewmen fishing. On a personal note, one thing that we should actually be doing, as a club which promotes safety at sea, is encourage proper use of of maritime sigmnals in compliance with regulations, then, there is no recourse from Agencies such as the MCA, but still no excuse for blatant bad protocol from this skipper. Food for thought. Rich.............Trainee Anchor Monkey, Proffesional Tea Maker, Cuckoo Hauler, and generally all round good egg.

Welcome aboard Steve, I doubt that you could have stumbled across a better band of fellows than this lotm and indeed, post remark regarding speed of answers is spot on. You'll very soon be steaming out to your fave marks on fave tides, enjoying the banter on Channel six, when it appears that all others around you in the club are "Hauling them in!", whilst you are in fact, a complete blanker........I know that feeling well!!!!!! Tight lines mate, look forward to meeting you. Rich

Get in touch with the mag ASAP then Adam, as when this was talked about in front of the Editor of TSF, his little eyes widened and his ears pricked.......he may have even joined this forum now under a psuedonym, to watch whats happening down here. Rich

For a relatively new mag, its hard to compete with the likes of Sea dangler and total smurf fishing..............if you look back through the years, each month carries generally the same articles, and they seem to jet off around the world to try and spice up otherwise boring glossies. Ive noticed the growing sections of ads, but I'm afraid that mags wouldnt sell without pics of huge fish with snarly gribblet teeth showing, hence foreign articles. I wish they would look at local variants of fishing techniques, such as Wedgers Trout livebits, and run these, proving that the fishing wheel is still evolving, and not turning backwards. After doing an article a couple of weeks ago on the Shambles with TSF, with Colin Pennys Flamer, it was clear to see that all they wanted pictures of plaice. I had a very small fish on the first drift, and it was photographed to death, before I was allowed to release it, all becuase plaice have been hard to find this season, and they wanted at least one pic of a spotty for their article. They even spent ages taking pics of those ghastly steel coffin bait droppers.......pile of poo if you ask me, give me a tesco bag anyday.......cheap, and works just as well!!!! Horses for courses I guess, I still buy the mags, if only to see my ugly mug in them tho!!!!!!!! Rich

Hiya Mike, welcome aboard chap.......you cant really beat the Solent for smoothies, top marks all along the frontage East of Lymo. Tuck in close also for Stingers, triggers have been taken along the remnants of Sowley Boom, and small bream are found here too. For larger bream, hit the ledge, marks here also produce good Bass, and James can point you in the direction of good conger marks in this vicinity. Did you fish our first comp today, if so, I hopr you did better than me!!! Rich

Dont hold out hopes for multiple species out of weymouth lads, it has been dire!! I'm seriously thinking that a launch from Poole r Christchurch will scoop more species. Saying that, Rocky and I will be launching out of Weymouth early o clock, so prob see you down there guys. Tight lines lads. Rich

I'm glad that you had a smile on your face on the way out, AND the way home Gordon, well done matey.....................spit. Our day was less grand, Colin decided to venture west, we had a few stops to see if we could find mackeral or launce, no go on that one, so went west to the M2 wreck for a few drifts, producing monster pout, plenty of them, Poor cod......not quite pulling the scales to 17lb though, 17 drams maybe!!!! A few small Pollack, one decent sized pollack, and not a lot else. Another change of mark to Stennis Ledges, brought little more luck, the fish were truly hard to find! Back across to the M2 grounds, anchor down, and fish came slowly. Grimbsy Ted found plenty of doggies and a bonus Thorny, well deserved for the man that travels from Grimbsy to fish our Friday Fishers league.........and heres me thinking I'm mad driving from Southampton. All in all, a poor showing for a group of good anglers, on fresh grounds, with Pout, Poor cod, Dogfish, Ballan Wrasse, and a Thornback making a show, very very different to this day last year, when we had 11 species on the boat! On a higher note, steaming back at just past four, heading round the Bill, we saw a flock of seagulls working a Whitebait shoal, so something was there pushing them up, I guess we should have stopped and had a feather to investigate further, but we steamed home regardless. Weather looks set fair for Sundays comp, see you guys at the slip, I'll use it as a practice Day for the Flamer V Top Cat annual flattie comp, Im fishing for Ivans Team on Top Cat, against my old Buddy Billy Short, who blagged his seat with Flamer. Lets hope the fish are there. Rich

Excellent report Adam, two great fish, nice one. On a sadder note, Colin Penny, our skipper for yesterday, reported a local boat had been netting two good inshore wrecks last week, possibly the cause of your crap spell earlier?? Apparently these wrecks are usually untouched by trawers, but not this plonker!! Not many boats out yesterday, so not much info gleaned for Sundays comp. I'll write up our day out under Gordons post. Rich

Go by the old addage......Bullsh*t Baffles Brains Tom, always works!!! Well, almost. Rich

Sam, some of us in our forties wish they too sat exams at school!!! I was far too busy bunking of to go fishing..........Listen to Martins wise words, I'm pretty sure they will echo mum and dads advice too...........everything comes to he who waits! Rich PS...................I'll try and nab a big flattie for you

Adam, check with Slam Dunc.....I'm not sure if these are for the Okuma reel he mentioned, or indedd the charter special. Whip your side plate off, to reveal the bearing in the handle area, this will have a small code stamped on the side. Do the same for the main spindle bearings, most multipliers have at least three to four bearings, and I must admit, they do look a common size, with handle bearings being slightly smaller. If they are the same size, I nabbed four of each size, so as long as Duncan doesnt mind, I'll bring the other two sizes to you on Sunday....if the sizes correspond of course. Failing that, get the codes off the bearing, ring SCH, and speak to the nice blokey on the other end, he found mine off the shelf, and I collected in 15 mins, great service!!!! They are open saturdays..I'm sorry, I cant collect today, as I'm comping out of Weymouth with Short Stuff. I can nab them tomorrow for you. The number for SCH is posted above somewhere. Cheers chap, Rich

The T140 and T150's were awesome machines, but reliability let down these true Brit bikes. With the reliability of the Jap engine and gearbox, this should be a good bike. Rich......fresh back from the Thruxton British Superbike meet..........now that was AWESOME!!!!!!

Duncan, further to our telephone conv. earlier, I have purchased said bearings, four of each, then you have spares in case of emergency. They come in at

Tom, I havent tried the one ounce ball lead out on rigs for the Brill/Turbot, but will try it out over in Alderney. Duncan, spooling, I just let out a few yards of line on that initial bite, to give the fish time to truly engulf the bait. It works well for flounder and Plaice, and worked for me last year when I did connect with turbot and brill, although all my fish were small, the best Brill went 7lbs, best Turbot was just over 9lb. Martin and Adam had good success I recall on the larger flatties, perhaps he is better placed to comment. Tom, are you fishing out of Weymouth this sunday? If you are, I think we are launching around 0730 ish, so see you down there. Rich

Welcome aboard Scott, nice to see you posting mate. Tight lines for the forthcoming year.......are you fishing our first comp this sunday????? Rich

Kam, all flatfish are voracious feeders when hungry, and lie in wait to ambush prey as it drifts over them in tide. Flounders and Plaice seem to be more inquisitive than Turbot and Brill, hence beads and spoons, but my view on this is purely down to size, the larger the predator, the more aggressive it feeds. A typical Turbot rig is a longer flowing trace, as you say, without beads, but a spoon incorporated in the rig may give that flash that induces the target to feed. What you are looking for, is a bait that drifts over the target as naturally as poss, hence mackeral fillet strips, whole Launce, or Launce fillets, depending on tide. Personally, I think a 10' trace is huge, but thats my personal view, and I haven't caught huge amounts of Turbot or Brill to qualify my thoughts. I'd hate to drop a 10' trace to the seabed, for it to tangle to buggery, drift the length of the bank and pass over the target missing the chance of a fish. Its an expensive mistake when you are paying for a three dayer across to the C I in search of that elusive 20lb turby. My choice would be a trace of about six to seven feet, a 5/0 needle sharp hook, with a decent sized bait, of either a fresh macky fillet halved, a launce whole, launce fillet or launce flapper. If you arent catching on this rig, and others on the boat are, look at trace length and be flexible. Spooling is also an important aspect of flattie fishing, so dont forget this. Good luck on your trip. Rich

PJ, can you get a price for Adams spec, and I'll get one from SCH, just to see if the price differs much. It will be easy to get a price for Shimano parts, then compare. Then we can get an idea of best supplier. Rich

Tom......monkey whatsit...is that a technical term?? Rich

I think we have a Friday Fishers league match that day Adam, see you at the slip. If not, have you crew???? Rich

Duncan, if you take a bearing out and send it to me, or mail me the casing number, I'll grab some for you. Pennies, old chap, pennies!!!! Rich

Maybe I'll be bringing a few pounds of Rag with me!!!!! Hopefully meet up with you in a few weeks time Bassman. Rich

Adam, when I did my Penn, I replaced the twp bearings either side of the spindle, and ny others that came out easilly. Have a look at the bearing, and get the number on the side casing, then take it to a bearing maunfacturer.....I used SCH Bearings in Budds Lane Industrial estate, Romsey. They were offf the shelf bearings, and cost a couple of squid. If you cant see the number on the casing, take the bearing to the desk, as I did with mine,and they take the measurements, and got them off the shelf. Hope this helps. Rich SCH Bearings and Transmissions 01794 830377

I may be wrong......in fact probably am, but dont the plaice frequently get caught in the bays and coves all around Alderney? I've read a few reports of fish being landed, especially from the beach below where we were Wrasse fishing two trips ago. Rich

Is it just water temp that induces the moult, or is it phototropic as well?? I know that most species of bird are triggerred into moult by day length AND a critical weight being attained, which also induces egg laying, especially in all of our resident Mustilidae which are all induced ovulators, more daylight hours meaning more time hunting and foraging to feed the impending multiple births of these mammals. Also, I appreciate that we gather shore crabs, so they are not residing in deep water, so may benefit from daylight, but do deep water variants wander into shallower water to moult, as I know that crustaceans like lobster and crab do migrate to different grounds. (I need to get out more!). Rich