With my first session planned Monday 10th Aug after work, my plan was to hit up St Catherine's Breakwater. I saw the tides looked perfect for a chance of an Undulate Ray with the possible Smooth Hound to target also. I picked up UK fresh water match angler Tom Downing from his campsite where he is staying for a holiday for 2 weeks and of we went.
With not shore fishing in 30 days from Jersey...Yes 30 days wow I was pretty keen to get the rods in the water. We went near the end of the Breakwater on the lower wall and I wacked out two whole squid baits as far as I could on single hooked running ledger rigs.
I made up a bread shirvy and started to ground bait for a Mullet at the same time, my left rod had a bite and I left it for a good 10 minutes to see if anything progressed. Well luckily it started to bend right over on the railings. I picked my rod up and waited for a strong pull down and gave it a good strike. Fish on straight away I guessed Undulate Ray and after a nice fight it was easily netted by Tom. I said "we are in the right place mate your turn next" so after weighing pictured and released it went back in the water to live another day
8lb 11oz Undulate Ray
I got my rod back in the water with my 2nd rod still out on its first cast. Half way through setting up some mackerel feathers on my 3rd rod my rachet went on my 2nd rod! Ohhh this looks like a Ray bite also, again picked up waiting for a good strong pull down and strike FISH ON! This rod is a bit lighter than the previous rod I had caught my last fish. One was 4-8oz Anyfishanywhere 6&bait and the one I have just hooked the 2nd fish on is a Penn PTT Viper 4-8oz, this fish was diving a little harder and stayed deeper during the whole fight. I guessed it was going to be a double figure fish and it surfaced I could tell it was close or it was indeed a 10lb+ fish. After a little struggle getting it in the net because it got a bit twisted we soon sorted it out and got straight in :)
10lb 4oz Undulate Ray
I re-baited the rod up after returning the fish and then started feeding up some mullet with the help of local angler Steve Mullins, he knows a thing or two about mullet he was helping me ground bait as I started targeting them with bread flake under a float. After 10 minutes of missing bites I was into one I managed to sight hook around 3lb 8oz with the tide being so slow it was a struggle to fight and play the fish into a position I could get the net under the fish. So after a couple of minutes fighting and me trying to bully it a bit to much the hook popped out the mouth :(
I passed the rod over to Tom let him get frustrated for a bit well 30 minutes of missing bites and darkness coming in making seeing the float hard work we returned to focus on the big baits. Steve Mullins had caught us a few scad for bait on my 3rd rod, moaning that the rod was too heavy for him he still did a fine job. Tom had caught a few mackerel also so that is his breakfast sorted as well as some bait we moved onto the back wall. I put out a Conger Rod and 1 Ray rod out. It went very quiet and time started to go quicker it was 10.30pm and I had a bite on my Ray Rod, I struck into it what I thought was a small dogfish not fighting with a lump of weed on also. Coming over the wall I soon realized it was no dogfish and it was a small Starry Smooth Hound YAY my first for the year.
Packed up the rods and called it a day.
Wednesday 12th August I met up with Alex Plaster for a quick session on the Lures after work, only planned to fish till 6pm from 5pm so had to try and get a few fish in on Jersey's South Coast.
We headed down to a new mark for Alex, I know that Bass, Wrasse & Pollock can be targetted on lures here aswell as Garfish and Mackerel. Started off very quiet with not much action on the 42g Savage Gear Sandeels. We changed over tactics in a gully out of the strong winds, and we both hit into some Ballan Wrasse. So we did not blank and we called it a day and got some good cardio in on the walk back up the steep cliff.
Cheers for reading :)
No comments:
Post a Comment