For One Day Only! A chance to get afloat showed up on the forecast early in the week and for once, as the day approached the forecast actually improved. So I carried out the usual “pre-flight” checks; wheel bearings checked and one adjusted, fuel tanks filled, tackle assembled and loaded, grub prepared and I was ready for the road. Crew today would be Martinc and he arrived at the slip just in time for launching. Conditions were even better than I had expected, no wind, sunshine, little or no swell (I had been expecting 0.7-0.9m according to surf/swell reports). We made good speed to our first stop where we picked up enough fresh mackerel for the day and then headed for the sand; I was hoping for a few rays, in particular some of the painted variety. The boat was drifting nicely though a little slower than I would have preferred. The fishing was a lot slower than I would have preferred; first bite was to Martin, a tentative affair which after a couple of stops and starts resulted in a very small spotted ray. Still, it was a start. It was also pretty much the finish; we tried a few drifts over different areas but a single dogfish to Martin was all we managed. The water was very heavily peat-stained after recent heavy rain, I concluded that the large amount of freshwater had put the rays off the feed. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it! We headed off to another sandy mark to see if it was any better, the only difference was a bigger swell and some weed on the hooks. Time to give up on the sand and head to deeper water and rocky bottom. The booms, attractor spoons, beads and flowing traces were exchanged for 2 hook flappers and bait and we started hitting fish almost at once. Martin switched to soft plastic lures to try for pollack while I persevered with mackerel strip and small squid or ragworm. I got mostly cuckoo wrasse, the best at 33cm, lots of males and just 2 females, pouting and a couple of ballan wrasse, one of which surprisingly took mackerel strip in preference to rag. Martin had a number of pollack to 3.5lb and a bonus small ling on soft plastics. I usually prefer bait to artificial but Martin was having way more fun with the pollack than I was with much smaller wrasse so I switched to a bright orange storm shad. I managed a couple of pollack to about 3lb but by now the fish were going off the feed. There were plenty of fish down there, so the fish finder told me, but they weren’t exactly in a feeding frenzy. They were also sitting tight on just one area of the reef so we shortened the drift to concentrate on that area. At one point Martin hauled in an odd looking creature, it consisted of a series of gelatinous blobs with a pair of long frilly tentacles presumably bearing stinging cells to collect food. Is it a Salp, any ideas out there? Despite the slow fishing, the day had passed quickly and by heading in now, I would be home by the midnight hour. This year’s boat season looks like being my worst for years unless September can throw me a safety line…..
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