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One Fish Is All It Takes

4/12/2019

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The sandpaper-skinned brute writhed furiously in the rock pool with Roy and I observing from a sensible distance. The 8/0 hook had come out easily but the huss was far too angry to be weighed and photographed yet and we wisely elected to give it a minute's downtime before attempting anything of the sort. With confidence replenished by the capture, we began to return to our gear to prepare fresh baits when Roy remarked over his shoulder, 'Funny isn't it, what a difference just one fish makes?' I knew exactly what he meant and I tried to answer with something like, 'Absolutely mate! I often remind myself of that when I'm having a bit of a rough time', but my mind and mouth were out of sync and the words came out in a bit of a jumble. When I tried again it sounded just as awkward and so I abandoned the conversation before things got silly. Roy knew what I was trying to get at.

Roy had brought up an interesting point though. Up until the landing of that fish, the session had been enjoyable from a fishing point of view, but thoroughly middling on the results front. We were fishing a familiar north coast rock mark, one very typical of this area with a healthy section of reef immediately in front and clean sandy ground beyond. Roy had feathered up a few mackerel to begin with and we'd then set about flinging an assortment of baits into the unusually strong run of tide that was steaming laterally across the face of the mark. Roy had been first into the action, reeling in a dogfish along with what looked like a decent flatfish that dropped off just before it broke surface. I got a fair look at it and it appeared for all the world like a very nice dab. A pity. We'd noticed a female seal knocking around but not long after the loss of the flattie, an enormous bull seal appeared from the bay to our right and made his way a few hundred yards out to sea before disappearing. We caught sight of him again five minutes later, swimming back towards the rocks with what was clearly a fish of some sort in his mouth. Zooming in with my camera, I could see that our blubbery friend
had caught himself a small ray and was now in the process of devouring it at his leisure. I think we were half-encouraged at the knowledge that at least there were probably some ray out there, although this was tempered by the worry that if we were to hook one, it stood a good chance of being snaffled by a seal on the way in.

We never hooked any ray. Nor did we catch any smoothhounds, which is what we were really there for. We caught a few more dogfish (naturally), but as darkness fell, we both flicked big mackerel baits in short with huss in mind. It wasn't long before Roy's rod jagged down and he winched up a small strap, whereas my first cast resulted in the mackerel head being removed from my hook without me seeing anything. I spotted a good take on my next lob however, and a hard strike bent the Century C Curve into something more substantial than the murgys we'd been catching. As usual, the Century rod and Shimano fixed spool made short work of the fight and soon a decent huss was lying on the surface below us. This would need to be walked around to the left to be landed, and it was during the process of doing this that the huss decided it didn't feel like being caught and spat out the bait that it had clearly just been holding in its jaws. This is so typical of my experience of huss and my relationship with the species that it didn't bother me that much, although I did make a mental note to give the next fish some slack line and some more time.

Luckily, the next cast was met with a good aggressive bite that I instantly gave a few feet of slack to. The fish started to make off with the bait and the strike was met with the same firm resistance of what was clearly another sizable unit. Again I horsed it in quickly to the side, steering it round to the sloping rock where Roy was waiting. This time the hookhold was good and we soon landed a nicely-proportioned fish on the wrack-dotted surface. After its cooling-off time, the huss made 13lbs 4oz on my scales; a nice fish for this mark, and was followed up on the next cast by a smaller example of perhaps 8lbs that I released quickly. We both packed up soon after, Roy having work early in the morning. The huss had seemingly not come across his baits, although my positioning on the mark meant that I had a lot more of the reef to play with and this was almost certainly why things had played out more in my favour. If the hounds had showed up, prior experience of this place indicates that Roy would have been better positioned for them, and so it goes.

I do believe that you don't necessarily need to catch fish to find value in fishing... but it certainly helps! It can be disheartening when things don't necessarily play out as we anticipate, but it's important to block out negativity and remember that just one bite can be the difference between a session that is forgotten by the end of the drive home, and a memory that lasts a lifetime. Although this session probably won't make it into my more treasured fishing flashbacks, it did leave me fulfilled and full of hope for a better year on my native north coast than the last one. The signs are mostly positive so far and I'm excited to see how the rest of the year unfolds.

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Reflections

12/31/2018

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I think that in years to come, I'll look back on 2018 as one of the oddest years of shore fishing I've ever experienced. For sure, every individual year has its quirks, but '18 seemed to be characterised by a far more bipolar up-and-down nature than any I have fished through previously. After the lacklustre winter of 2017 where I'd become so disillusioned with my usual winter haunts that I'd chosen to spend the colder months mostly fishing rough ground, the early spring of '18 had been something that I'd looked forward to. As the ocean surrounding my native north coast began to settle after its winter upheaval, my first trips out on to the open shore were met by this unsettling feeling that something was very wrong. Usually I associate spring with a feeling of freshness and opportunity; a change of weather and a new influx of hungry fish. This past spring, however, it felt as if very little had moved in to replace what little had been there in the winter. Despite catching the odd fish, the vibe of the ocean and the way it made me feel to be beside it was... empty. It was as if the sea had fallen into some strange state of depression, losing its vibrancy and becoming a barely-living shadow of its former self. The fish just weren't there as they should have been.

Although the year started poor and fished really badly for some species, the 2018 shore season was definitely characterised for me by some of the high points being particularly good. I had a healthy slice of good fortune in February when I caught a ling on my first attempt of the year, following it up with new PBs for spotted ray, golden grey mullet and bull huss in later months. I also had my first tangle with what I would call 'proper' tope from the shore through July also, and seeing as the ling and tope captures haven't been documented in any of my writing throughout 2018, it's these I'm going to describe in detail for this piece. It seems only fitting to start with the ling.

My first step on the ladder to ling success came some years before when I was passed some delicate information about a couple of marks that I'd be most likely to encounter them from. For some reason during my species hunt in 2016, I never got round to trying any of these places for ling and it wasn't until November of 2017 that I made my first visit to the mark that would end up delivering the goods. After a substantial trek through the fields, I found myself at the top of the cliff looking down at my chosen mark with the tide already well on the way to high and the water carrying some colour from a recent blow. I remember feeling comfortable and confident setting up on this new spot which had a natural flat platform and a big panorama of water with lots of depth variations to explore. Almost instantly I caught a decent pollack of about 6lbs on half a herring but had very little else for the rest of the session. Still, I was intrigued by this promising new mark and it remained in my thoughts as one to visit again soon.

For whatever reason it wasn't until February of 2018 that I eventually made my second visit to the ling mark. The day was crisp with a wind that bit cruelly right through to the bones, even through several heavy layers. This time I had arrived at low tide and I could see well into the clear water, spying a good few submerged rocks and tangles of kelp that had gone unseen on my previous visit. After a few speculative casts, I was soon able to identify where there was a definite deepening of the subsurface terrain into a natural hole, slightly off to my right and at relatively short range. It was here that I decided to concentrate my efforts, lobbing my large fishy offerings into this newly-discovered pit.

What followed throughout the day was a predictable series of rattling bites and the occasional tiny eel that managed the improbable task of choking down an 8/0 Koike Wide Mouth. To be honest, I wasn't expecting much in the way of serious action until dark, but I reasoned that it's always good to get some daytime experience on an unfamiliar mark. As night drew in, the bites slowed to nothing over the high water period, to the point where I began to wonder if there was something big patrolling down there and scaring all the smaller fish back into their hidey holes. I waited... and waited. The thrill of anticipation dwindled as the minutes turned to hours and with the ebb now well underway, I decided that I was going to make the next two casts my last as I had under an hour of fishing time left. These last two casts went back into the pit and I began to tidy away all the bits and pieces that I'd strewn across the rocks.

I'd just cleaned off my chopping board when I happened to look up and notice my left hand rod tap over a few times, accompanied by a couple of clicks from the ratchet of the 535. I stopped what I was doing, paying attention to the now-developing bite, my eyes glued to the luminous tip and the tension in the bright yellow line. The tip shuddered and the line dropped suddenly and I leapt up to grab the rod, feeling down the line for signals with every tactile sense sharpened in readiness. My fingers detected two firm taps and I reeled down hard before lifting into something that was very much dead weight. The fight was completely unremarkable, much like hauling up a large crab, until the fish neared the surface where it nodded a few times. As the head broke the surface, it looked for an instant like that of a cod, until the elongated body that followed gave away the identity of my target species: a decent ling!

What followed was one of the most calamitous attempts at landing a fish that I have ever made. I had borrowed a gaff from my friend Mark Reed for this trip as I had somehow managed to lose mine during the previous month, and it was with this wickedly sharp implement that I made my effort to pluck the beaten fish from the water. The odd wave was coming through and swamping the most obvious rock to stand on so, although it would be awkward, for safety's sake I stayed a bit higher and tried to use the sea to bring the fish to me. A likely swell brought the floating ling up just within range and I stretched out with the gaff, managing to get a tiny hold in the skin. I decided to go with it and began to lift smoothly, only for the fish to instantly flap itself free from the gaff’s point, knocking the gaff clean out of my hands and into the drink. I swore bitterly as my prize clattered onto the rock below, further up than it had been, but still out of reach. With the gaff now floating away, I was forced to go for the lift, grabbing hold of the line and carefully drawing the fish towards me. Luckily, the hook and line held and with a final triumphant heave, I brought the fish to hand and claimed it with a victorious bellow.

The fish had gorged the bait right down and, looking into its throat, I was glad I was using 150lb trace as the line had evidently been grating against its impressive array of teeth. I killed the fish quickly and popped it into a rockpool, getting my scales out of my rucksack, eager to see what sort of weight it might go. It was gloriously fat for a ling, evidently this was a fish in breeding condition, and it made 8lbs 8oz on the Reuben Heatons; a fine prize from the shore and one that would go on to make a fantastic meal for my family a couple of nights later.

Five months later and I was making the early morning drive to a mark that I knew had been absolutely living with tope the night before. My friends Mark and Roy had taken a chance on a likely area and hit the jackpot big time, scoring many runs between them and managing to land several tope each in amongst the ones lost through gear failure, breakages and hook pulls. These were fish running from the mid-teens to the mid-twenties in pounds, not large by many people's standards but both Mark and Roy reported that in the deep water and strong tide, they were a stern test for normal beach gear and got the adrenaline pumping harder then they'd felt in some time.

To anglers in other parts of the country where tope run bigger and are a more frequent and predictable catch from the shore, the prospect of putting in many hours for the chance of a few smallish pack tope may seem like small beer, but this is mostly what is on offer to Cornish anglers. Although the waters around our county do attract and hold the species, they are seldom caught from the shore in these times and many good anglers have never had the pleasure. Having already put in a few sessions chasing tope through the early summer with no success, the prospect of a virtually guaranteed shot at my first sizable one (I'd caught a couple around the 5-6lb mark in previous years) was something that I just could not pass up.

I'd made all the necessary preparations, coming tooled up with wire traces, plenty of bait and a huge net but still the reality of what I was doing didn't hit home until the rod arched over and the ratchet sizzled off within 10 minutes of my first bait going out. I let the tope run for a short time before leaning in and setting the hook. The fish pulled powerfully, taking line against the clutch but I soon turned it and was making headway when suddenly everything went light. Reeling in, I discovered that one of the crimps on the bite trace had slipped (I wasn't using a Flemish loop at that point). After getting the pliers on the case and tightening up the crimps on all the other traces, I cast again and this time when the run came I suffered no such mishaps and fought the lively fish into the side before landing it safely. This was a long, lean male pack tope and I carried it in the net up to where I had made my base camp. After photographing and weighing the fish carefully, I slipped it back into the navy blue depths and watched it as it sinuously made its way back out to sea to rejoin its companions.

The rest of the session passed in a frustrating blur of missed runs. I had at least another four good takes that I just did not connect with and unfortunately by the time I thought to change my hooking arrangement, the runs had dried up. Still, there was a valuable lesson to be learned; the single 8/0 hook that had been successful for Mark the previous night and that he had suggested to me in place of my usual 6/0 pennels, was evidently not suiting the way the tope were taking the bait this particular morning. I know that with any shark species you can expect a certain amount of missed bites, but one fish landed out of maybe 6 runs is an unacceptably poor return, particularly when on a normal day you might be fishing for the opportunity of just one pickup. It occurred to me yet again how often it is that different things work for different people too. Some people fish combinations of rigs and hooks for certain species that I would just never choose and vice versa. Part of the fun of fishing is that there's a learning curve that comes with every species and it's the building of a relationship with the target fish and finding out what works for me by trial and error that makes me a better angler for the next time. Ultimately, there is no substitute for first hand experience, something that as far as tope are concerned, I'll definitely be looking for more of in 2019.

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The Power of Pictures

9/1/2018

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I can’t remember the experience in detail now, but I do recall that I had been striking at thin air all morning. My mum’s boyfriend was regularly throwing handfuls of sweetcorn that landed with little plopping noises around the orange-topped waggler, and in my youthful enthusiasm I kept thinking that I had a bite every time the float so much as bobbed on the chop. Then, something different happened. The float went dead still and abruptly disappeared from view and when I struck, there was wriggling life at the end of the line. I don’t remember playing the fish or it being netted, but it was a rainbow trout of probably just under a pound and I recall that I wanted to eat it but for some reason I wasn’t allowed to. I have a picture somewhere of me holding the fish. I was probably about six or seven years old.

Another eight years or so on and I’m stood on the bank of a windswept lake, only small, perhaps an acre or two. The water may not have been big, but it was packed with features including two small islands, multiple reed beds, and a lot of variation in depth. Its proximity to the sea also meant that the scenery to the west in the near distance was dominated by sand dunes; a pretty unique vista for a trout lake! It was early in the year, maybe April, and I’d decided to fix a sinking leader on to my floating fly line to help the weighted fly trundle along the bottom. The fly was a self-made creation, loosely based on something called a Zug Bug: a pattern that features peacock herl as its main ingredient (I am among the many anglers who have found that peacock herl has almost mystical trout-attracting qualities). I remember casting out and leaving the rod lying on the ground for a while whilst I did something else. When I picked it back up and began to retrieve, the fly literally made only a foot or two’s progress before the line drew tight as a bowstring and I was connected to something heavy that slowly began to shake its head. I was fishing off to the side of one of the islands and I remember that the trout powered past me through the narrow channel between the island and the bank I was stood on, and the battle continued on the other side in open water. Thinking back now, my vivid memory of the hissing of the submerged flyline being dragged through the water reminds me of the scene in Jaws when they get the first barrel on the mighty shark and it steams past the stern of the Orca, barrel in tow. The fish stayed deep and I never saw it until right near the end when a big flank sporting a vivid crimson stripe sandwiched between silver and gold surfaced, beaten, and was guided to the net. The rainbow weighed 11lbs 12oz and, although I’ve caught bigger, it was definitely the finest-looking one I ever landed. The lake owner reckoned that by his memory of the stock, and the trout’s perfectly-proportioned muscular body and flawless tail, that it had lived in the lake for a good year or two without being caught. He even asked me if he could keep the fish himself to have it smoked, and I was more than happy to agree as I hated the taste of trout by then. I have only two pictures of me with that fish and, already at the age of fifteen, the ‘smug’ smile that I am sometimes berated for is well in evidence.

Maybe ten years later, I’m stood on my local beach threading a frozen sandeel on to a 3/0 Aberdeen. I’ve got a brand new Penn bass rod and Abu multiplier and I’m about to embark on the first bit of bait fishing for bass that I’ve done in perhaps eight years or so. Sure, I’d fished with lures for them sporadically in that time but I’ve never been that successful with the plug and this, to me, feels more right, like the way that I really want to fish for them, rather than the way that’s currently all the rage. I ping the rig and sandeel about thirty yards into the narrow gully and stand back with the rod held high and the line between my thumb and forefinger, ready for a bite. That bite, when it comes, is unmistakable: jag, jag, and then a solid pull as the bass makes off with its meal. The rod sweeps up and after a short struggle, a schoolie of about a pound nestles in my hands, its dorsal and gills bristling furiously. I feel a sense of wonder, like I did when I caught that first trout. It’s like I have rediscovered fishing again and, in a sense, I have, as this is the start of the rekindling of my love for shore fishing that only strengthens with the passing of time.

A few years further down the line and I’ve left my home under cover of darkness and driven to a north Cornwall surf beach to fish over the low tide for small-eyed ray. The hour’s journey was made to the tune of a ‘90s Motörhead album; either ‘Overnight Sensation’ or ‘1916’, I can’t remember which.  As I rounded the corner and rolled down the hill towards the beach I could see that the surf was not much more than a gentle turnover and the full moon was shining starkly on the water. I drove on to the sand and parked the car at the top of the beach and as I got out, I could feel the light wind coming out of the north. All signs pointed to a poor session, but despite that, there were a good few anglers already fishing as it was the night of an annual bass competition.

I remember little about the first part of the session other than the going was slow and the lack of action meant that I was starting to feel the cold. I can recall being sat there on my seat box, legs and arms crossed, watching the rod tips with the moon shining down like a beacon. I could clearly see the little frothy tables of surf, and although the tide pull was quite strong, I didn’t feel that there was enough life in the sea to encourage fish to come into the shallow water to feed under such bright moonlight. I recall that I had a very modest ray sometime before low water, and evidently the fishing was not great for the other anglers too as by the time the tide slacked at low, there was only one group of anglers remaining on the beach, way off to my left.

It was just after low water that one of my rods arched over and yanked down hard. I was swiftly on to it, feeling the fish drawing away which I responded to by walking back a pace and bending the rod into a hefty presence. The sensation was of something large and ponderous on the other end; at this point, I had no reason to suspect it was anything other than a sizable ray. For the first few seconds, I just stood there with everything locked up as the fish banged powerfully against the rod. Soon, I felt it begin to yield to the pressure and I started walking backwards, easing its bulk landwards. As the fish entered the surf tables, it began to move laterally, swimming left along the beach and this was the first cue for me wonder if maybe I had hooked something other than my target species. The fish switched direction and steamed off to the right before turning and allowing me to draw it into the shallows. I carried on walking backwards, easing the beast further and further in until everything went solid as it beached. By this point, I was a good fifty yards or so back up the beach from where I initially made first contact with the fish so, reeling in all the time and keeping the line tight, I hurried down to where I could see the line ending. The vision that confronted me as I drew close will live with me forever. As I looked down to where I still half expected a ray to be, I was instead met with the sight of a cavernous mouth gasping on the sand, and the reason for the fish’s un-ray-like behaviour became instantly clear – this was no small-eye, this was an absolute brute of a bass! I gazed at it disbelievingly for a few seconds, it’s silver-plated flank seemed pornographically enormous and I could not even begin to put a weight to it as I had never seen a bass anywhere near these proportions before. I stooped to pick the fish up by the jaw and carried it to my seat box in a daze. My good scales had recently met an untimely end courtesy of a Bristol Channel boulder, and the only set of reasonable scales I had left were a small spring balance that weighed to 15lb or so. I expected the fish to go something in the region of 10lbs so I was totally amazed when it bottomed out the little scales and the only thing I could think of to do was walk up to the other anglers some 80 yards away and see if they had a better set. It turned out that these guys were members of Camelford club and had their official club scales with them. The bass made 14lbs 4oz on these and after calling a few mates, I hastily packed up and drove back to Newquay where we all gathered at Mark Reed’s place. The bass made the same weight on another set of scales and over celebratory tinnies and cups of tea, I recounted everything I could remember about the capture. As the post-midnight time flew by, we stood in Mark’s front garden talking about big fish like excited children, before gradually coming back down to earth and heading our separate ways.

I come to. I’ve been stood in the garage for some time, thinking, not seeing; completely lost in a sequence of indelible memories. The photographs that triggered this reverie are held loosely in my fingers and I glance at them again, fragments of the experiences popping back into my mind’s eye. An hour ago, I had been consumed with frustration after a poor session, but now I feel on the way to being replenished, having relived these fleeting moments of perfect fulfilment. This is part of the power of photographs. They’re not just trophies or evidence of fish that I’ve caught, they’re moments in time, preserved forever and there to remind me of my journey in angling.

I keep many of my pictures pinned up on the wall in my garage. There’s a good few on there, stretching back over the last eight years or so. I don’t tend to contribute to it as often as I used to; only if I catch a really good fish or a photo comes out particularly well. The earlier years, however, are well-represented and are where a lot of my really priceless memories come from. There’s pictures of my ‘firsts’ of many species, photos from my first visit to the Bristol Channel, photos from Chesil etc. Sometimes if I’m feeling negative about something to do with my angling or I’m having a bad run, I like to sit for a while and look at these early pictures. The rush of memories they bring back helps me to get back some perspective on exactly why it is that I follow this path in life. It’s not just about the catching of fish; if it was, I could invest in a boat and a net and I would probably do a whole lot better. The true value of angling is the whole experience, including everything around and leading up to the captures. Something in my subconscious remembers this, even if my conscious mind sometimes forgets. When I revisit these memories, there’s so much more than just the fish; the silence of an early morning estuary, the smell of smoke from a beach fire, the sight of a pod of dolphins passing by on a glassy summer evening. Fishing has given me the opportunity to experience some incredibly precious moments that nothing else would have given me reason to be present for. My photographs serve as a reminder of this when I need them to, and for that reason, they are amongst my most treasured possessions.

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Sessions: Prawn Power

6/8/2018

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In the final issue of Total Sea Fishing magazine, I wrote an article about trialling live prawn (an established frontline bait in Devon estuaries) on thornback ray in the Helford. The result of this venture was that the prawns proved an overwhelming success, with four ray caught on a day when conventional frozen sandeel and peeler crab baits didn’t attract a bite. Since conducting that little experiment, I’ve felt a niggling urge to give the prawn a good crack on the Fal. After all, the Fal typically seems to produce the better doubles and, with my personal best thornback still sitting at 10.14 after some time, this is definitely something I feel that I’m missing on my resume. Perhaps prawn power could be the key to me bagging a monster?

Half the trouble with deciding to go about using live prawn as a bait is actually gathering the things. My first serious effort of the year (using traps) produced a mere dozen, with only a few decent ones. These were then duly wasted on a funereal session at Trefusis. With the wind blowing hard against the slight trickle of tide, the lines hung slack for the entire four hours, with only a solitary doggy succumbing to the juiciest prawn in the bucket. Ditching the traps for the next prawn hunt, I decided to go for volume over quality, and had a good root around a productive estuary site with my push net. This produced prawn in good numbers, but even the biggest examples were in the lower end of what I would consider to be the ‘medium’ bracket, size-wise. Regardless, I reasoned that I could always whip on several to produce a decent bait, and I carted the lot (probably the best part of 100 or so) home.

Part of the reason I wanted so many prawn was to see whether I could keep them for any length of time. I planned to leave them for up to a week in a large container with constant aeration but no artificial cooling. I decided also to try not to change the water at any point, but to keep checking to make sure that there were no major casualties (if there were I would have to change the water). The prawns seemed pretty happy with this arrangement, although the water became noticeably murkier as the week went on. The reason for this didn’t become apparent until the morning of the session, when I decanted the container into the bait bucket and found several dead and half-eaten prawns in among the live ones. This was only a minor proportion of the total occupants, however, and I would say overall that my experiment showed that you can get away with keeping prawns in pretty shabby conditions short-term. I don’t think, however, that this approach would have much mileage for longer periods though, as the prawns were noticeably more sluggish when it came time to bait up with them.

If you are new to using prawns for thornbacks, you might be a bit puzzled as to how to present them so that they survive hard casting. Information on this is freely available across the web, but I’m going to reiterate it here to save you troubling Google. The first thing to do is not worry about keeping the prawn alive as it does not seem to matter in the slightest. This means you have carte blanche to impale the poor creature in whichever way you think best, and to indulge in liberal use of the bait elastic. Last year when I first used them, I trimmed all the little whiskers and tails off to make them more aerodynamic, but lately I’ve reconsidered and left it all on. It’s a macabre thought perhaps, but I figure those feelers and appendages must do a little post-mortem underwater twitching, maybe enough to be picked up by the battery of sensors that ray are equipped with. I don’t worry about bits sticking out now either as the bait is so light and pliable that it doesn’t seem to affect casting performance too much.

Using prawn in this way for the first time calls for a bit of a leap of faith I think, as the bait looks so humdrum that it’s hard to imagine that a serious predator is going to favour it over an XL blast frozen eel or a good helping of crab or mackerel flesh. The proof, however, is in the pudding and, having caught well in the Helford on my goggle-eyed friends, I had high expectations that the prickly sand-shufflers of the Fal were going to find them equally as appetising. The only thing that bothered me slightly was the size of the prawns that I was armed with. I would have felt a good bit happier if they were proper units like I’d had that day on the Helford. Still, beggars can’t be choosers and I was fully committed.

Zero hour arrived and I made my way over to a popular mark on the eastern shore of the Fal, hoping that there were a few ray in residence. Conditions looked pretty good, although the forecasted north-easterly was, in reality a south-easterly when I arrived. Regardless, the water clarity was decent and everything felt ‘right’ for a fish or two. I had purposely picked a neap to tackle this mark, whereas, in the past, I had tended to visit exclusively on big tides. Springs enable you to get longer on the easiest spot to cast from, but the run on these tides is really hard and if there is any weed about, fishing with plain leads (my preferred tactic) becomes much less practical. A year or two ago, my friend Mark Reed had caught well on a small tide and it completely changed the way I thought about the spot. It made so much more sense to pick out these smaller tides where the run would be more manageable but still plenty enough to get the fish feeding. You still get some time on the ‘easy’ rock and there seems to be a longer window in which the current runs at a fishy pace.

I fished for perhaps an hour with two rods devoted to the prawn. With nothing happening, I lazily put together my spare rod, baited it with frozen sandeel and dispatched it off to the left. I propped this rod against the rocks, leaving it to sort itself out. Concentrating most of my attention on the prawn rods, I kept only half-an-eye on the one fishing eel, so it came as a bit of a surprise when, on one of these, glances, I noticed signs of interest. A few taps and a bit of slack later and I was stood on the edge of the rocks, tight into a fish. It certainly resisted like a reasonable ray and, even as it came in close, it was still down deep and diving hard for the bottom. I felt like I’d got something in the 8lb+ category on, maybe even a double, so it came as a bit of a surprise when a male thornie in the 5-6lb class surfaced. Not for the first time, I was duly impressed at how well these little male thornbacks can go when they feel like it. What I wasn’t so impressed with, however, was the fact that the sandeel was now 1-0 up on the prawn. Having gone to a lot of trouble to collect the little blighters and being so sure that they would make the difference in me finding a better class of Fal thornback than I have gotten used to catching on frozen eel, it was a bit of a kick to the head that they had fallen behind to the old staple bait. Still, the session was far from over and I reassured myself that the prawns had plenty of time left to prove their worth. I also reasoned that the eel rod had been the furthest uptide and perhaps the ray had simply happened to find and accept that bait before it was aware of the prawns.

After returning the spirited little thornie, I continued on with my routine, aiming to rebait about every 40 minutes or so. There wasn’t much crab action out there at all, but there was a fair amount of weed on the deck smothering the end gear. There wasn’t a whole lot I could do to combat this and I just had to be happy that the natural staggering of my rebaiting and recasting should mean that at least one of my baits would be reasonably weed free at any one time. Nothing happened for several hours and gradually, the wind changed direction to the forecasted north-easterly, freshening quite considerably as it did. This coincided with a period of cloud cover and, despite the fact that just a few hours earlier I had been shirtless and sweating buckets in the sun, things became chilly enough that I had to put my coat on. I was starting to think about wrapping things up by this time, gradually increasing the size of my helpings of prawn in a conscious bid to attract a last gasp fish. I was casting into the teeth of the breeze by now and struggling to reach the range that I had been fishing at earlier in the session.

Well into the second hour of the flood, the tide was whistling through and a fair amount of drifting weed had begun to gather on all of my lines. The far right rod had moved a long way downtide from where I had cast it and, on beginning to retrieve it, I was met with a pretty hefty weight. Having not seen a bite of any sort, I naturally assumed this was weed (perhaps with a spider crab for good luck), but on the weight coming within 30 yards or so of me, I felt a few fishy bumps and I wondered if perhaps I had a dogfish or something like that in the mix as well. I kept hauling and soon enough, the weight began to appear through the water column. A pair of pale white undersides winked from the depths and I was staggered to see that I had attracted not one, but two thornbacks intertwined with each other. I knew that ray are occasionally caught together in the process of procreating but it was never something that I had seriously considered would happen to me. Anyhow, I plucked the amorous pair from the water, noting that the female was the one who had taken the bait and the male was tangled with her and my rig. They were both nothing special size-wise but the female had a lot of thickness and it was hard to put a weight to her visually. A date with the scales revealed that she weighed 8lbs 12oz; not a bad fish and one I was pretty pleased with, considering how slow the day had been! The only thing that marred her capture somewhat was noticing that she had some of her tail missing, although the wound had long-healed into a neat little stump. I took a few snaps of both fish before returning them to carry on their business.

I had another cast or two just in case there were a few more fish in the area, but with nothing doing, I packed away leisurely and began the journey back to the car. By now the wind had dropped right down again and the unruffled surface of the Fal looked almost oily in the evening light. I would have to say that I love my open coast rock fishing above most other types that I do, but I am still mesmerised by fishing the Fal, probably because it seems to me like it’s almost its own little world. I think this feeling has grown stronger over time, probably because I fish there less than I used to and I appreciate it more when I do. Having caught those two ray on the prawns also, I felt vindicated that this was the way to go for me from now on. For a while now I haven’t had much interest in putting in time for a proper paving slab of a thornback, but I think now the fire is starting to be rekindled. I have to be honest and say that I’ve never done well with the live eels that many Cornish anglers swear by for their estuary raying, and I felt like I’d hammered away with the frozen eels for long enough without bagging a real beast. Prawns, however, represent a new path for me and one that I’ve had instantly encouraging results on. I’m excited for the future to see where this road will lead, particularly if there are some big prickly brutes to come along the way!

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Sessions: Hunting the Hounds

4/25/2018

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The last month or so has been frustrating for me. With our Cornish coastline typically starting to raise its sleepy head sometime in April, the persistent swell and dodgy winds have made getting out to my usual spring haunts very tricky. It seems like every time there’s been a decent tide, weather or work has ruined my plans. Normally by this time of year, I would have had a few decent outings and a few tidy fish to my name. As it is, I’ve fished a handful of times in 2018 and caught only one or two fish worth talking about. Things are starting to look up though, the weather gradually seems to be changing for the better and there has been numbers of mackerel and launce inshore. After a lacklustre winter and a long wait for 2018 to get out of first gear, things appear to finally be heading in the right direction.

Seeing as the shore fishing is due to start waking up, I thought I’d introduce a change of focus here and start writing more about my actual fishing trips. If I get on an interesting roll with anything, I might combine a few sessions into one post, but the general vibe is going to be more about trying to put my experiences into words and (hopefully) these will be things that you readers can enjoy and relate to. My latest trip was a significant one for me as it marked the real start of, what I consider to be, one of the most fun parts of the year. As the sea begins to calm down from its winter fury, the rock marks on the north coast of Cornwall become safely fishable, and I can seriously start to think about testing out the mood of the area and getting an idea about what kind of year it’s going to be.

It isn’t a well-kept secret that the St. Agnes to Perranporth area can be particularly productive for early-season smoothhounds. Generally, these are smaller fish than the rest of the country can look forward to, running from around 5-10lbs, but they are still thrilling sport and well worth the investment in crab bait. My experience over the last couple of years, however, is that this particular area seems to have lost a little of its lustre when it comes to attracting hounds, with other stretches of the north Cornwall coast seemingly producing better results. It’s a fact of fishing that marks can slip in and out of form over successive years, and with that in mind, I decided to gamble on revisiting one of my favourite spots to see whether with the changing of the year, the grey dogs had swarmed back to their old haunt with a vengeance.

Joining me on this session would be my new Century J Curve, making its second trip out with me. Again, this rod would be mixed in with a couple of AFAW Match Rod models, which hopefully would give me more of an idea about where the J sat in relation to my older rods power-wise. Bait-wise, I had a bucket of prime peelers to tempt the gummy sharks and a few worms to try for a bonus flattie. After a brief drive, I parked up and made my way across the familiar clifftop path to the point where a little offshoot path began to wind its way down the steep grass bank. I carefully picked my way down the trail which runs in a series of stages down to the rocks below. Having been fishing here for a few years now, there was a comforting familiarity in setting up in my usual spot, climbing up to my rock-of-choice to make a cast, and seeing the line gradually pull tight as the mid-tide draw caught hold of it.

To add a bit of spice to this session, I decided to make a bit of a change to my usual hound tactics, exchanging my familiar pulley-rig-and-grip-lead set up for a pulley dropper rig and a plain 6oz bomb. I also elected to try slightly bigger lumps of crab than I would usually bait up with and I upped my hook size from 2/0 to 3/0 accordingly. These tactical alterations were all based on an article I read not long ago that described big hounds as much more cautious biters than their smaller counterparts. Before reading this, I’d tended to assume that hounds of all sizes mostly just picked baits up and quickly made off with them, but this new food for thought did make me remember several times when better fish had given much less-pronounced bites. I wanted to maximise my chances that a good hound picking up the bait and testing it out wouldn’t be spooked by the grip lead, and so I opted for an unwired one. My idea to up the size of the crab baits a little was just to put out a bigger scent trail and to get me a slightly longer soak time on my casts, barring interference from other pest fish or crabs.

An hour passed without event and I went through a couple of cycles of casting the J Curve and then the two AFAWs. What was most noticeable to me was that I seemed to easily get through the Century and I could clearly feel the energy of the rod bending and releasing in my bottom hand. The tip appeared to whip round and recover immediately, with no noticeable wobble at all. I came to the conclusion that the J Curve was definitely a nicer rod to cast than my MK 2 Match rod, and I felt like I was getting a tad more range. I think the fact that the Century is that bit thinner and lighter meant that I was getting a quicker finish too, and I felt comfortable and in charge of the cast using it.

Darkness drew closer and with nothing on the rod fishing worm baits other than a rogue dogfish, I decided to pack that rod away and concentrate on the two fishing crab. It was not long before it became apparent that the dogfish were very much out in force, with the tips twanging away soon after the rigs touching bottom. The upside of this was that it gave me a good chance to see how the tip of the J Curve (which, like the AFAW MK 2 Match, is actually quite stiff for a ‘match’ type rod) reacted to bites. What was really pleasing for me is that the J is pretty sensitive, and I found that it was similar enough to my old rods that I could read the signals intuitively. At one point just after high water, the dogs slowed down for a spell and I did manage to attract a particularly small example of my target species. I was initially hopeful that this was a sign that some of its larger brethren had swarmed into the area, but this was to prove the session’s only grey dog.

Soon after catching the dinky hound, I had a bite of a different kind. The AFAW fishing on the left nodded a couple of times and then dropped very slack and after feeling for developments, I reeled into an impressively solid weight. My first thought was that this definitely wasn’t a hound, and the pattern of resistance felt very much like that of a ray. As I coaxed the fish closer to shore, I could feel the occasional twanging of a tail on the line and the fish was staying right down, causing me to wonder if I might even have hooked something like a rogue cod. Close in, the fish was still deep and I was beginning to get concerned about how much clearance there was between my prize and the reef. I piled on the pressure and the leader knot finally appeared, soon followed by a familiar brown shape: a huss. Although a substantial size, this fish didn’t look anything too special, and it was not until I landed the disgruntled huss on a rock and went down to grab it that I realised why it had put up such stern resistance; both hooks had lodged outside the mouth and I had been dragging the fish in sideways. A couple of years ago, whilst in college, I read some detailed research on the feeding behaviour of catsharks. One of the key observations was that that these fish often rub their bodies along food items (presumably to further immobilise their prey) before eating them. Whether this huss had been doing that and been unlucky enough to get pricked, or whether it had been actively searching for the bait and flopped onto the hooks by accident, I would never know. Still, it was a quality fish on an otherwise unremarkable outing and I was well pleased to have caught it.

After the huss, the dogs seemed to come on thick again, with both tips doing merry little dances soon after each bait settled. It had also started to rain, spurring me to begin rounding up my scattered kit and packing down. I left shortly before ten, making the steep ascent as the light shower started to intensify and arriving back at the car soaked to the skin. On the whole, however, I was well happy with my evening. I hadn’t had much business with my target species, but I had snagged a nice bonus fish and I was pleased with the way the J Curve had handled the session. A few days later, I closed a deal on a second Excalibur J to pair the other up with. This rod has now been fitted with a decent reel seat and is raring to go for my next session. Hopefully this will be something worth reporting back here, but if not, there are some good months soon to come and I expect to get at least a few stories out of them. ‘Til next time!

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Weapon of Choice

3/25/2018

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Entering the market for a new clean/mixed ground rod can be a stressful experience. With so much choice out there and so many different peoples’ opinions on what’s good and what isn’t, it’s easy to get confused. From my point of view, my criteria for a rod is pretty exact and helps me quickly narrow down my choices. I like a rod to be not much more than 13’6’’ long, slim, light, and with a fast action. I don’t tend to like too soft a tip; sensitive, yes, but nothing soggy. This rod needs to have a pretty rigid butt section and to be comfortable casting 6oz, with the potential to step up to a 7oz if the situation calls for it. Having said that, I also want the rod to be user-friendly and not a field weapon with a glass tip stuck on the end. Ultimately, I want a rod to be comfortable with everything from fishing for flatties on a shingle beach to fishing a popped-up sandeel alongside a reef for pollack.

For some years now, these bases have been ably covered by a pair of 13’ 4’’ Anyfish Anywhere MK 2 Match rods that I bought in 2013 and have used for 99% of my 5oz + fishing since. I paid about £275 each for these and I reckon that I’ve had pretty good return on my investment, as these rods have stood up to a lot of careless treatment and done everything that I’ve asked of them. Unfortunately, I noticed a couple of weeks ago that one of my rods had broken just under the tip eye. To be fair, the spigot on this rod is practically worn out and it is ripe for replacement anyway, but I had figured to get maybe another year out of it. Realising that I was faced with the choice between trying to patch up the broken rod, or writing it off and taking the loss as a cue to update my weaponry, I’ve opted for the latter.

Looking around for an immediate replacement for my current rods left me feeling a bit nonplussed. The obvious choice would be the Anyfish Anywhere Match Pro. The catch here is that this rod costs around £380 new, which, for me, is too much money for a rod made overseas. Of course, there is always the option to buy second-hand, and I have looked into that, but I’ve also been actively looking at what else is out there. Ideally, whatever new rods I end up with need to be capable of covering all the bases that my MK 2 Matches did for me. The beauty of the AFAW 13’ 4’’ MK 2 Match model was that it wasn’t a typical glass-tipped match-type rod at all, rather a fast action fishing rod that was sensitive enough to be used for match fishing. The blank is pretty light and well-balanced in the hands and locks up and feeds back positively on a long cast, or with a good fish on the end. Until now, the only other rod that I’ve cast and thought felt similar was the Century Tip Tornado Match, although I’ve dismissed the TTM as a potential replacement as this is an older model in the Century line and I would prefer something more up-to-date.

As well as the Tip Tornado Match, I’ve looked pretty hard at the rest of the Century range, and also briefly considered some Zziplex options. I must admit, of all the rods of various brands that I’ve tried, the AFAWs have tended to feel the most ‘at home’ in my hands as there is a familiar feel to most of their rods, but I’ve had the chance to handle some of the more recent Century models and the more I’ve gotten used to them, the more I’ve been impressed. The Eliminator T900 seems to be THE rod to have at the moment and, when you get hold of one, it’s easy to see why. This rod combines power in spades with great bite detection, whilst still feeling friendly enough to cast and tolerating a wide range of leads. The downside of the T900 for me is that it is a lengthy beast and not the lightest rod around. Ideally, I want a fishing rod to be in the 13’4’’ to 13’ 8’’ range – any longer feels unwieldy to me, at least for fishing purposes. This is just a personal preference thing, but it is strong enough that if I was given a T900, I might well feel compelled to cut 10 inches off the bottom of it. Of course, there is also the T800. I’ve been fortunate enough to have a few casts with a T800 and I have to say, it is probably the sweetest Century I’ve ever handled. The blank is incredibly light and slim, with a supple tip and power blending in further down the length of the rod. Beautiful as this blank undoubtedly is, however, I feel that this particular model I feel is a little short of steeliness in the tip section for some of my fishing. If I had money to burn though, I would definitely be tempted by a pair of the T800s as they would be a dream to use over clean ground in the more settled months of the year.

Slightly older than the Eliminator range is Century’s Excalibur line. Recently, I’ve had the opportunity to use a friend’s C Curve for field casting. This rod is a dream to cast with the more exaggerated styles; powerful yet forgiving, and with lightning recovery. As excellent a casting rod as the C Curve is, however, it’s a slightly longer and heavier weapon than I would want to use for general fishing. It would certainly be overkill (in my opinion) for most flatfish situations, for example, and definitely more suited to places like the Bristol Channel. The J Curve, however, I first tried years ago and I was smitten by its sleek yet powerful feel. The J shares the C’s instant recovery but feels that bit lighter in the hands, and capable of being equally as pleasant to use for plaice and dabs as ray and cod.

Having narrowed down my list of choices to two solid contenders; the AFAW Match Pro and the Century Excalibur J Curve, I first put out some Facebook feelers to see if there were a pair of second-hand Match Pros out there and what they might cost me. A few days passed and with no real response to my inquiry, I noticed that there was a J Curve for sale at the right price in South Devon. I thought about it for a few hours before pulling the trigger and arranging to go up the same night and pick it up. I was not disappointed; the rod was in great condition and the price was right! Taking the J Curve out for a cast the next day, I was delighted by the familiar light and lively feel of the blank. The rod seemed happiest with 6oz, which is the lead I tend to use for most of my fishing. It perhaps didn’t handle the 200g with quite as much authority as my old AFAW rods, but it did send it out without a complaint. My maiden fishing trip with the J Curve took place at a familiar spot in the Helford estuary. Here the rod was given a decent workout, pelting out crab baits and 6oz leads for the duration of the session. The J Curve ate this up, although it was noticeable to me that the Century didn’t feel quite as quick through the midsection as my AFAW MK 2 Match rod, which I fished it alongside.

I do suspect, long-term, that the J Curve may be a little less comfortable with the heavier trauma that I’ve grown used to putting my AFAWs through. This, however, is just a feeling and remains untested as yet. The bottom line is that I am happy enough with the J to be closing a deal on a second to make a pair. The rod feels responsive in the cast and sits well in the tide. Unfortunately, I’ve not yet felt what it’s like with a fish on, but I’m sure it will handle more or less anything I’m likely to hook. I’m looking forward to testing the J Curves out on some of the quality mixed fishing that is usually on offer on the north coast of Cornwall through the spring and early summer, as I’m expecting them to really excel in these sorts of situations. I’ll report back with my thoughts once I’ve properly put the new rods through their paces.
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Strictly Come Casting

12/17/2017

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It’s been nearly a year now since I first stepped up to the oche at Westward and attempted to propel my sinker into the great green yonder. Since then, I’ve managed to get back most months and, with a good bit of practice here and there, gradually forged my way from a best cast of 191 yards at my first event to a PB of 245 yards at my most recent one. The road to this point has had a few little twists and turns as I’ve messed around with different casts and, at times, neglected to practice in favour of fishing. On the whole, however, I’ve stuck with it, and as an improving caster, I have some bits and pieces to share that will hopefully be of use to anyone interested in taking up casting themselves.

The first thing to say is that casting needn’t be a costly pastime, at least not at the lower levels. I haven’t bought any mega high-end rods, the rod I’ve been using since March is a mate’s Harrison P2; the sort of thing you’d use for fishing the Bristol Channel and certainly not a full-on field launcher. The reels I’ve got are nothing special either, just two Abu 6500s and a 5500, all with cheap monomags, and I’m still using the same spools of line that I started with (the trick is to just replace the line that’s lost or damaged rather than the whole reelful). I think one thing that I’ve done right is to continue to learn with kit that is basic and user-friendly, and to concentrate more on trying to get the technique together. I’ve seen guys struggle with rods and reels that are too much for them and I’ve resisted the urge to tread that path myself.

Another realisation is that, to some extent, casters are stuck with the bodies that they have and what works for one will not necessarily work for another. I have spent a lot of practice hours trying to emulate what better casters are doing and just not been able to make their styles work for me. Whether this is because I haven’t got the same timing, or maybe because I have gangly chimpanzee-like arms, I can’t say for sure, but the fact is that I’ve tried to emulate a lot of the casts that I’ve seen other people using without much success. Ultimately, the only style that I’ve made real progress with is more or less the same cast as I started with, just with a few tweaks here and there. The positions and timing of ‘my’ cast are what are natural and comfortable for me. The gradual increase in yards seem to come from little adjustments to what I’m doing and even changes in how I’m thinking when I’m casting.

The third thing that I’ve found is that even when I feel like I’m casting pretty well, there’s a lot of variation in distance from cast-to-cast. At a recent event, my distances varied from just over 200 yards to a best cast of 237 yards. My second best casts were in the mid-220s. I’ve found that this is a really typical pattern, over a day where you might throw 25 casts or so, there will be one or two really outstanding ones that go way past the rest, there will be lots around the middle, and there will be a few runts that you’d rather forget about. Often those better casts that go absolutely sizzling off and land 10 yards clear of all the others will leave me shaking my head as I have no idea what I did differently and how to repeat it. Whether I managed to apply force to the lead at a better moment or whether it got picked out the sky and carried on further by an invisible flying monkey, I honestly couldn’t tell you. One thing I can tell you though is that something changes psychologically every time after a new personal best; there’s this new knowledge of what I am capable of doing and an unspoken demand on myself to exceed it.

Those are just a few observations about the practical side of casting, but there’s a couple of other things that I think are important to emphasise about the social aspect. Plenty of anglers talk about being interested in coming to casting events, but never do. Sometimes, some will admit to being worried about being watched and judged. This is a natural reaction to situations that put us under pressure, and I’ve definitely felt these kinds of jitters before when faced with other intimidating scenarios. The truth is, however, that I’ve never felt this sort of pressure when I’ve been casting. When I go up to cast I’m so focused on what I’m trying to do, it’s like the other casters might as well not even be there. Sure, people watch you when it’s your turn but it’s absolutely not like they are watching so that they can pick out something to criticise or make fun of. Throughout my first year, the only things people have ever said to me about my casting have been pieces of well-meant advice, and encouragement when I’m doing better. In other words, if you are a beginner, people will not be nasty to you or try to embarrass you when you mess up.

Another reason for some anglers’ reservations about going to casting events seems to be that they are troubled by the prospect of their casts being measured. My thoughts on this are that everyone has to start somewhere and it is worth having to eat any humble pie to start the process of improving - the benefits are too great to ignore. If you take up casting and begin adding yards, there will be a significant crossover effect to your fishing distances. This was certainly the case for me. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that I’ve enjoyed a fair bit of success at the upper end of my range this year, and have been able to chuck heavier leads and bigger baits further and easier than I ever could before. Of course, there is also the possibility that you may go to an event and surprise yourself at just how far you actually can cast. Either way, it’s all win-win.

The last thing I want to say is that there really is no substitute for seeing great casting in real life. You can watch all the Youtube videos going but I’ve yet to see one that really captures the sense of what massive casts look and sound like when they happen before your eyes. The second event I went to was a real eye-opener for me, being very well-attended and with quite a few big casters present. The power and precision of their casts and the sound of the air being literally torn apart as they sent their sinkers screaming down the field left a huge impression on me. I challenge anyone with even the slightest interest in casting to see it going down at that awe-inspiring level in front of them and not think, ‘I want to do that’.

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Get Off My Land!

11/26/2017

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I know I promised last time to write about something more positive, but the theme this time is about another negative aspect of sea angling, although more of a cultural one, rather than a practical one. So please bear with me whilst I rattle through this and I promise next time I will write about something more upbeat. As some of you may or may not know, I’ve started writing pieces for Total Sea Fishing magazine. I was approached by them to do this and I decided that it would be a good thing for me, both from the perspective that I could make up monetarily for some of my fishing excesses and that it would be fun for me to think of and write stories that people would find interesting. My first article appeared in the December issue and I aim to continue to submit pieces every month for the foreseeable future. This first piece was all about a trip to the spot where I caught the 22lb blonde in 2016. I deliberately tried to keep any identifying scenery out of the shots and I didn’t even identify which area of Cornwall the mark is located in. There are a few details about the physical nature of the place, but they would only ring bells with people that had already been there. All in all, I handled it as well as I could, given the sensitive nature of the area and the particular mark.

I did wonder if I might get some sort of backlash from the Cornish sea angling community, but nothing really came my way until I received this message the other day:








My first thoughts were that, from what they are saying, this person obviously doesn’t know me very well, and they have also decided not to leave any way for me to reply to them. Obviously they are not interested in what I have to say in return. So I thought I would answer this message on here in public, as there may be others that have a similar opinion and I could address them all in one sitting.

 
You were obviously told about the mark, as you’d never have discovered it on your own
 

The first thing to say is that, yes, I was told about the mark on quite a few occasions before I even went to look at it for the first time four years ago. Up until fairly recently, there was even open information about it on a Facebook page. It’s true that I wouldn’t have discovered it on my own as it’s some way out of my local area but then, there are very few good places to fish in Cornwall that weren’t discovered and named long before I started fishing. Unless you yourself discovered the mark or were the first to fish it or whatever, I don’t see why you feel like this is even a relevant point.

 
Now, you have seen fit to broadcast it to the world, for a few quid

 
I don’t agree that I have broadcast the mark to the world. There is nothing identifying in any of my pictures and I haven’t remotely pointed to which area of Cornwall the spot is located in. Another point is that I have kept very quiet about this spot myself; I’ve talked about it with one person who may not have already known about it, as they were a competent angler who was interested in doing more ray fishing. In truth, very few people have even asked me where either these fish or others I’ve had from there previously were caught… because they already know. When my friend Mark caught his 27lb blonde from there in 2015, an angler from Plymouth congratulated him and guessed straight away where he’d caught it. It’s not as if Cornwall is over-burdened with marks where you can catch big blonde rays from the shore. The day after Mark caught his ray, he went back to fish there again and there were nine other top Cornish anglers all rubbing shoulders on there.

It’s true that I’ve earnt a few quid from writing the article, but after three years of writing continuously on here for absolutely nothing, I think I’m entitled to make a tiny proportion of the money I’ve spent on my fishing back. Also, knowing that I can recoup some of my costs will enable me to make more exciting trips further afield in the future.

 
Like the other idiots who have started turning up at this once quiet venue, you’re just a fish chaser, who lacks the skills to find your own fish
 

Maybe the venue was quiet once but I think it is unlikely that it will be for the foreseeable future. An unfortunate fact about Cornish sea angling in general is that the number of marks that are capable of producing really good fish are dwindling. As once-amazing spots fall into decline, there will be increased pressure on those marks that are still blowing hot. Unless the situation with our fish stocks (and their food supplies) inshore changes, it is unlikely that this trend will reverse.

As far as being a fish chaser goes, if you mean that I try to go where the fish are, you’re absolutely right! I do have ideas of what I want to catch, whether they are particular species, or fish of a certain size, and I absolutely will go where I think they might be. If what you’re trying to call me is a ‘shadow chaser’, then I’ll admit, I do a bit of that (virtually all anglers do, even if they like to pour scorn on others for doing it), but I don’t think this occasion qualifies. The whole theme of the piece is about the spot having been unfishable for ages and me spotting a gap for a session and going there. Up until that point, I had heard of no fish from there since August, and no blondes at that. I don’t think I lack the skills to find my own fish either. I routinely find my own giltheads on the north coast every spring. Finding marks in Cornwall where you can catch blondes from the shore is a different thing altogether.
 

I hope the next time you go there, you’ll suffer the gang (your Facebook mates) who’ll ignore the fact that there are already anglers there fishing and set up their three(!!) rods and proceed to cast over you.

The ignorant lot also turn up at 6am and park on the farm, waking the guests in his holiday cottages.

 
People who are on my ‘friends’ list on Facebook are not necessarily my ‘friends’ or even people I actually know. I would estimate about 80% of the anglers who I’m friends with on Facebook, I’ve never met. This seems bizarre but it is the nature of social media and I’m happy to go along with it. In real life, I only routinely fish with two or three people and it is rare for me to fish with anyone else. Probably 70-80% of my fishing is done on my own. I don’t know who the people are that you’re referring to but they almost certainly have nothing to do with me and they certainly wouldn’t have heard about the mark from me.

As far as I’m aware, using three rods is not a crime, I do it myself all the time when I have the space. Casting over other people’s lines, however, is a behaviour that I do not endorse and do my best to avoid. I have, in the past, squeezed in on marks but these days, if I somewhere is fully occupied, I’ll fish somewhere else. I doubt anyone is whiter than white when it comes to etiquette on fishing marks, but I certainly try not to mess with anyone else’s fishing and I will sometimes make myself move to accommodate other anglers in the spirit of goodwill.

Ultimately, I am not responsible for other peoples’ behaviour, especially those that are almost certainly nothing to do with me. Some anglers have no qualms about jostling for space and even bullying other anglers off marks, but that is not my game at all and I prefer peace and solitude. Both times I’ve fished that mark this year I have been entirely on my own. Might I suggest that if you want the place to yourself that you get more creative about when you time your session? There are very few good marks in Cornwall that will be deserted on a Saturday afternoon under ideal conditions. As far as 6am goes, I have heard of people turning up and/or leaving at far crazier hours than that with apparently no trouble. I think as long as people are as quiet as they can be when entering and leaving the field, things should be fine. It is a working farm after all.

In conclusion, I think you are blaming the wrong person for your frustration. The people you encountered would not have been mates of mine and would not have heard about the mark from me. True, the fact that I publicised my catches hasn’t helped and I do accept some responsibility for that. This is something that I decided that I had to do to get myself out there more. For the last three years, I’ve run this blog quietly hoping that things would get going organically. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened and I’ve had to make a bit more noise to get on the path to where I want to be. One thing that I want to make clear is that I will keep trying to make the right judgment calls as regards how much and how little info I put in all my writing, magazine or otherwise. I realise that Cornwall is a sensitive region, with a lot of dangerous marks that are vulnerable to overcrowding. My writing for the magazine is aimed more at the ‘adventure’ aspect of shore angling and trying a different spin on things than it is about highlighting marks and specific information.

……………….

As a footnote, I hope this message and my reply to it clarifies a few things for a few people. I’m not trying to sell-out all Cornwall’s shore angling juiciest secrets in a national magazine, I’m interested more in trying to craft gripping stories that get people thinking and excited to go fishing. I do appreciate that some anglers’ are obsessed with secrecy and that any attention is to be discouraged. I expect this attitude is born out of bitter experience and I do respect it as a viewpoint, but I do not think that it is helpful to the sport as a whole (which is not in a good state, as far as newcomers and young people coming in is concerned). My experience of anglers in Cornwall is that most experienced ones are a lot more moderate and, once they see that someone is keen and serious, are happy to share at least some moderately useful information to help encourage youngsters or the less experienced. Those with the attitude that shore angling in Cornwall is just for them are firmly in the minority. I’m not sure if the person that sent me this message is one of these diehard types, but their attitude certainly reflects this outlook.

This will be the last time I defend myself publicly on this issue, as I think I’ve said everything that I need to say here and more. Of course, if someone has a grievance, they are more than welcome to send me a message, but please include a contact email or something that I can reply to. If I receive any more off-key outbursts with no return contact details, I will not read them and delete them immediately.


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When Things Go Wrong

11/1/2017

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I was fuming. It must have taken close to ten minutes to pick all the balled-up tangles of weed off the rig, the leader link and the leader knot. That was ten minutes I was stood there at the water’s edge, with one rod out of action and another I was paying no attention to. My hands were lagged in sand and weed slime and I had managed to accidentally dunk the reel in the sea. At last, I tore the final piece of tangled kelp fronds from my leader knot, washed my hands in a tiny wavelet, and trudged back to my tripod to rebait. In an effort to make up for the wasted last cast, I picked out my juiciest sandeel and made an extra nice job of presenting it on my hooks. I went down to the water’s edge and tried to remember where I had placed the last cast. I was sure that it had gone somewhere near straight in front of where the tripod was, so I took ten paces to the right, teed up the cast and threw it out into the night. I walked back to the rest and set the rod down, adjusting the ratchet so that a pretty firm pull was needed to take line. As I fiddled with the reel, I could feel a wave of tension travelling down the rod blank to my hands, and I looked up to see the tip bending into the mid-section as heavy pressure was exerted down the line. I realised instantly what had happened and began to spontaneously shout the most obscene insults I could imagine to the deserted beach. I had cast straight into another underwater weed thicket and now I had to go through the whole trauma of winching it in and extracting my gear from it all over again. This time the hauling process was even more protracted, with the drag from the backwash so strong that I was deadlocked with the lifeless adversary for minutes at a time. My arms were burning and I was still shouting the ugliest things I could think of through gritted teeth. Finally, after what seemed like an age, the gear came into the shallows and to a point where I could drag it no further with the rod. I waded ankle deep into the sea and shined my light down at the biggest lump of weed I had seen in a long time. It was massive, easily the size of a fully-grown Newfoundland. I had to wrestle with the beast just to get it ashore, and the extraction of the line and rig was even more painstaking than before. I have rarely cried as an adult but the frustration of this two-in-two-casts weed hell made me feel as if, in that instant, I could have bawled like a child who has just been told that Christmas has been cancelled.

It occurred to me the other day that most of the stuff that I put together and post is based on successful trips. I hardly ever write about times when I have made a complete turd of a venue choice or I’ve gone somewhere anticipating one thing and getting another. When I do look back negatively at something, it’s usually because I haven’t done as well as I would have liked, rather than because I haven’t caught anything. To be honest, I’ve not seriously thought about writing about my proper catastrophes before, maybe because I assumed that people would find them boring. Although it’s true that these ‘epic fails’ are getting fewer as the years go on, I still have my fair share of them, and I’ve begun to wonder if maybe some of my stories are things that other anglers can relate to and might like to read about... so I’ll share!

There’s plenty of ways that things can go sour in shore fishing; in the interests of keeping things manageable, I’m just going to cover three of my ‘favourites’ here for now. The first way and the one that worries me the most is making a dangerous misjudgement of the conditions. I like to think that I’m a shrewd angler as far as reading the sea goes, I used to surf when I was younger and I think that’s made me reasonably savvy to the nature of waves. That still hasn’t stopped me getting caught out from time to time, luckily without disastrous consequences, but I’ve had at least one experience that was too close for comfort. It was early in the year and I was absolutely frothing to get out and do some plaice fishing locally. As the sea was reasonably calm, I didn’t think twice about heading out to a mark a short distance from home to try my hand. This is a well-known spot that consists of a spit of rock pointing out into the belly of a middling-size bay. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t touch this mark in anything over 2-3 foot and I prefer to fish it flat if possible. On this particular afternoon, I had fished up and over the top of the tide without incident, although the sea was a bit bigger than I had hoped for and the water too coloured to make plaice fishing much use. As the sea dropped to around the half tide mark, I began to notice that the swells were increasing in size and that the period appeared to be lengthening. Thinking that I was pretty safe as I was a decent height off the water by now, I decided to have a few more casts to see if I could salvage something from the session. This proved to be so nearly a costly mistake, as I turned my back to bait up, a wave hit the base of the rocks and the angle of the rebounding white water carried it right up and onto the platform I was fishing on. In the blink of an eye, the whole rock was awash and time seemed to slow down as I watched my bag toppling over and being washed away (luckily it settled in a rock pool) and my tripod and rods being dragged sideways over the edge. It was only good fortune that stopped the whole lot going into the drink; the rod tips caught on the rocks below and the reels jammed face down on a crag, allowing me to quickly gather them up and carry them up to the top platform. I quickly rescued my bag and bait box from the rock pool and stepped back to assess the damage. Unbelievably, I had lost nothing, but I could so nearly have lost everything and even been dragged in myself. I was soaked to the waist where previously I had been standing on a bone-dry rock. I think that experience taught me a valuable lesson and I’ve treated that spot and others like it with much more respect ever since.

The second way, and a really classic one for me that crops up in my fishing over and over again, is when I spend my time trying for fish that I ‘hope’ are there, rather than being pretty sure that they are. I don’t mean so much the kind of speculative fishing you might do if you were fishing a typical mixed species mark and chucked out a bait for a conger, I mean more gambling on places that used to be good for a certain species but have little (if any) recent form for them. I can think of no better illustration of this than my attempts to catch a red mullet last year during my species hunt. As I recall, it took me around ten trips visiting different venues in different conditions to get this species on the list. What seemed like an ironic twist of fate was that when I finally caught some, it was from the mark I had first tried for them. I think if I’d just done two or three consecutive trips to that spot, I probably would have saved myself a lot of effort and money. I say ‘money’ because red mullet aren’t a cheap fish to target and it pains me to think what all those trips cost in total. If I averaged, say, £10 in bait every trip, along with perhaps £6 in fuel, the figure quickly becomes pretty substantial. What sticks out as a bad slip-up on reflection was me choosing to put so much effort into marks that I knew well but had never caught any reds from before (yet had been told were sound choices for them). All the time I was doing sessions at these places where, for all I knew, no-one had caught one that year, the spot that I did eventually catch them from had been quietly throwing them out. The smart move, particularly with me having pretty limited experience with the species, would have been to stick to the area that was producing the reds and put the other suggestions to one side to explore at a less pressing time. Lesson learnt.

The last way to go wrong that I want to talk about is one of the pitfalls that has commonly caught me out on the first trip to an unknown venue. An easy mistake to make, particularly when using tools like Google Earth to scope out marks, is misidentifying the patches of rough and clean ground. I remember my first trip to one particular spot on the Lizard some years back; I spent all day casting out to sea, losing the odd set of gear, and pulling in wrasse on what was supposed to be a clean ground flatfish mark. It was not until I talked to other people who knew the mark well that I realised I had been fishing right on the verge of where the clean ground began and that angling my casts straight across or to the right would have seen me on squeaky clean sand. Conversely, I have had a few sessions on new venues that were supposed to be made up of tackle-hungry rough ground that I didn’t lose a single lead at. My interest in ‘collecting’ new marks has produced quite a few of these odd experiences, although as time has gone on, I’m not as easily caught out as I used to be.

So, these are just a few of the things that have consistently rained on my parade. There’s lots more (I could write a whole other post just about bait), but I don’t want to get stuck on negative stuff for too long. How people deal with their own low points is up to them, but I would humbly suggest that it is better to try and get something constructive out of horrible experiences or dismiss them altogether, than it is to dwell too long on their unpleasantness. After all, negativity seems to be such a big killer in all forms of angling that I don’t think it is worth the risk of carrying it over into future sessions.

Next time: something a little more upbeat!


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Friends in High Places

10/5/2017

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Cornish anglers do have a bit of a reputation for being less-than-forthcoming when it comes to sharing information about the fishing in their home county. There are a few reasons for this, most notably that many anglers subscribe to the ‘loose lips sink ships’ way of thinking, but also the fact that many marks and areas are not safe for those who do not know them, and that most rock marks will only accommodate a small number of anglers and get crowded easily. There are, however, a few places out there that are well-known – I’ve already covered one: Loe Bar, which I wrote about at the beginning of this blog’s life. To hopefully go some way to dispelling the belief that Cornish anglers are all take and no give, I’ve decided to cover another equally-famous location in this piece. My hope is that some of the info might help people who are visiting north Cornwall and want a decent place to fish, or those who are already aware of the venue and its reputation, but not necessarily what’s on offer there in current times. I’ve also produced a short video that identifies the main marks I’m going to be detailing, as well as a couple of bonus ones that I’ve not covered. You can find the video at the end of the post.

When it comes to venues that enjoy legendary status in Cornish sea angling history, there is arguably one that stands out as top dog, a place capable of churning out specimen fish of a variety of species and always having the potential to surprise. I am of course talking about Newquay Headland. Universally lauded as awesome in its heyday, this particular area was as desirable a place to be of a rough winter’s night as the Playboy mansion (RIP Heff), to the point that when I first started sea fishing, I never even got to fish the premier marks – there were always people already on them. Of course, these days the sewer pipe is no longer churning out gourmet mullet food and the glorious era of donkey plaice and stacks of cod are just a fond memory, but there are still fish to be caught and the better marks still retain a mysterious magnetism that sees the occasional cracking fish caught from them. In fact, I would go so far to say that if more good anglers visited the Headland more frequently, there would be some real surprises caught from there. As it is, the place has fallen into a bit of a downward spiral, dominated by shockleader-less mackerel maniacs and the kind of anglers who just go to drink beer and leave their cans strewn all over the rocks. These factors are as much a turn-off for serious anglers as the plagues of dogfish and thieving seals that can ruin the fishing here. However, the fact remains, the place can throw up quality fish and is still deserving of your time.

For those unfamiliar with the area, Newquay Headland is home to a fair few named marks but undoubtedly the most famous are the outer pair: the imaginatively entitled high place and low place. Low place is the easier of the two to tackle and can be fished on the flood or ebb. A lot of people choose to fish right down on the bottom rock but I tend to opt for the grass bank above, both for the sake of safety (you are well clear of the water up here) and the fact that it prevents other people setting up on the grass bank whilst you are on the bottom rock and potentially casting over you. It sounds cynical, but it is best not to trust that other anglers fishing the Headland at the same time as you will fish with consideration and not repeatedly cross your lines. I can tolerate people who are inexperienced doing this, but people who are wilfully ignorant and should know better are a different story. I tend to only fish the Headland in such a way and at such times as I can to avoid this particular breed of angler.

Compared to low place, high place is a slightly trickier proposition, being situated at the most seaward point of the peninsula and subject to a powerful run of tide that sweeps across the face of the mark. High place is much easier to fish on the flood than the ebb, with it being practically impossible to hold on a backing spring tide with virtually any lead. Whether the sand is too tightly packed for grip wires to get a steady purchase in I can’t say, but on the ebb, no matter whereabouts you cast on to the clean ground, the current will inevitably carry your end gear towards and into the reef on your left. Despite these challenges, high place is definitely my favourite of the Headland marks as its turbulent waters do seem to attract the better quality fish, particularly those that are lovers of strong currents such as cod and smoothhounds. There is also a cool ‘end of the world’ feeling about fishing off high place, particularly on a rough night.

The main problem with high place through the warmer months is the fact that it is a very good mark for catching mackerel. This makes it a magnet for those anglers who have little interest in anything else and also our fat whiskery friends who like to pinch the fish off our lines. Daytime sessions at high place at any time during mackerel season can be very challenging indeed. I have tried to fish for plaice a few times off here and ended up having my sessions cut short by the inability and/or reluctance of the tinsel brigade to fish around me rather than over the top of me. Coupled to this, the constant presence of seals means that any decent fish you might catch off the bottom is likely to be snaffled on the way in. I’ve seen the anguish in the eyes of anglers who’ve told me stories of losing good fish to seals and it’s not an ordeal I want to put myself through. For these reasons, high place is usually a spot that I fish at night or in the depths of winter in rough weather. I must admit that I do use the mark for gathering mackerel also, but again, the seal factor often makes me turn to other spots for this.

The hordes of mackerel bashers and seals aren’t the only things that are unpleasant about the Headland; the place is absolutely infested with rats. Fishing off the grass bank at low place can become as much about trying to keep the vermin away from your bait as watching for bites. I am not fond of rats at all and it can sometimes put me on edge when I turn my head and see a pair of rodent eyes reflecting in the light of my head torch. Adding to the unpleasantness of the rat problem, a lot of the time when you visit one of the more popular marks, the place will be absolutely covered in bait wrappers, and food and drink waste. Although the sewer pipe is no more, the general vibe of the Headland is still best described as ‘dirty’.

So far, I have painted a bit of a grim portrait of Newquay Headland (and I haven’t quite finished yet), so I think it’s time that I talked a bit about some of the good things that the venue has to offer. To start with, the history of the place and the stories that you can hear if you ask the right people are absolutely fascinating. Because the area has been fished for so long by so many people, you often hear lots of different peoples’ experiences of the same phenomenon, like the winters when the Headland produced as many 5lb+ coalfish as you wanted to catch or the group of huge red mullet that used to live on the reef below the grass bank at low place. Much of this historical stuff relates to the time when the Headland was a functioning sewer outfall, with the brown cloud of poopy goodness and various floating delights surrounding the outer marks and serving as the most extraordinary attractant to mullet, as well as feeding the mussels, which in turn fed the plaice. Large mullet and plaice used to be a real feature here, and it’s common to hear people say that the general fishiness of the area as a whole was far superior when the ‘shitpipe’ was working. I remember fishing the mark known as Lenard’s Rock when I was a teenager, kidding myself that as it looked like I was on the edge of the brown water, the fish that I caught would be less contaminated and better to eat than the ones the anglers on low place were pulling in. I also remember talking to a woman at a party once who happily told me that she’d caught a nice mullet out in front of the sewer pipe that afternoon and it was now sitting in her fridge with all her food. Note to self: never accept an invitation to dinner at that lady’s house.

The Headland also enjoys a reputation as being, historically, the most amazing fish-producing factory; being a top spot for many of the most desirable species as well as throwing out a wide array of others. Many anglers will talk about the once-brilliant cod fishing, particularly from high place. More than once, I’ve heard a story about anglers from a particular club taking it in turns to sit on high place in groups every night while the cod were in, working in a rota to keep other anglers off the mark. Although big cod were reportedly never a feature from high place or the Headland in general (the best fish being in the teens of pounds rather than the twenties), the volume of codling and cod that could be caught meant that anglers from around the county coveted the venue (along with Loe Bar) as the crown jewel of Cornish cod fishing.

Other, slightly less glamourous, species also used to show from the Headland. Packs of spurdogs, large rays, big congers, triggerfish… the list goes on. What is notable now is that this list has dwindled considerably; you can forget about spurdogs and any species of ray is now a rare capture. Congers are still present, but don’t expect them to even 20lbs, never mind larger beasts. Triggers may still be realistic, although I have tried a couple of times and haven’t caught any. The species that has come to dominate is the same one that has slithered its way to prominence throughout the south of the UK as the larger predatory fish have declined: the dogfish. High place in particular can rapidly turn into dog hell after dark, and I’ve got to the point now where my heart breaks a little if I catch one before the light has gone as it is a sure sign of torment to come. That said, one of the real wins about the fishing in current times is that, on the right night, the dogs can be pushed out by a much more desirable member of the shark family. High place can fish well for hounds and seems to be one spot where you stand a chance of a rare Cornish double, although I’ve only had them to 9lbs or so here. Cod also still frequent the venue in years when there are a few inshore. Only last February I was lucky enough to catch one of 7.7 from high place in a spur-of-the-moment session. Even the plaice have not gone and some decent quality fish can be caught in the right conditions.

Other species that are still realistic targets from the Headland (in season of course) would be things like bass, gurnards, black bream, ballan wrasse, rockling and whiting. Every now and then, the Headland will produce a very nice bass, usually to someone fishing over low water in rough conditions. Good whiting to 2lb or so can also show, and there are still some sizable ballans resident over the rougher patches. One of my favourite spots is the little gully behind high place. I have had some nice sessions here catching wrasse on soft plastics. Starting at the mouth of this gully and running immediately below the grass bank at low place is a small patch of boulders, which is easily visible at low water on a clear day. This is worth fishing for congers and rockling in rough conditions and I often knock a spare rod out into this ground with a mackerel bait.

As far as tactics go for fishing high and low place, I tend to think about fishing close to either the structures, or in terms of whether I want to have the bait in, close to, or well out of the main run of tide. The main reef at high place runs out nearly at a right angle on the left and then cuts back inside to just below the ledge that you fish off, before running out to a small point on your right and turning back into the bay. Personally, I’ve found it tricky to fish to the reef on the left as the perspective makes it difficult for me to judge where the reef edge is and how close I can get to it. I’ve had better luck casting short to the section of reef on the right. This is easy even at night as you can aim at the lights from Porth/Watergate Bay and feel out the range until you are happy. I’ve had my best fish from this mark doing exactly this. Alternatively, you can cast long out into the flow of water that moves laterally across the mark. The universal advice here is to aim the cast out due right as this will put you uptide and well clear of the tackle-grabbing main reef. If you are casting medium length, say around 50-60 yards, then you can get away with straightening up a bit. I seldom bother casting long from high place any more unless I am trying for something like a plaice or a gurnard and wanting to drift the tackle over the sea bed.

Low place is different again, to reach the strongest part of the current, a longer cast is definitely favoured here. This seems to be the winning tactic if you want codling or cod. Shorter range is often better for whiting and school bass, with shorter still good for the rough ground species. In the event that high and low place are occupied, the third best option would probably be Lenard’s rock. Some people even choose Lenard’s over high and low place, maybe because it picks up less swell and is much easier to fish. You can still catch good fish here though; a long cast puts you out into some current and potential cod territory. This mark is also particularly noted for plaice, which can be caught from very short range out to as far as you can throw it.

The final words about fishing the Headland should be cautionary ones; you might have noticed that I’ve mentioned fishing in rough weather quite a few times through this piece and that ought to give you a clue as to when the place fishes at is best. Whilst calm daylight conditions can produce in the warmer months, in the winter the Headland is best fished after dark with a good sea running. Being sheltered from the prevailing south westerlies and with many marks giving shelter from westerlies, the wind conditions are not such a big factor here, and you can often fish in pretty severe storms in relative comfort. The sea, however, should be given your full attention and the standard advice of fishing high off the water, taking no risks and never turning your back on the ocean is absolutely spot on. I would strongly recommend some sort of studded footwear, particularly for those less experienced in rock fishing - all the marks can be slippery in the wet and even well-seasoned anglers have had nasty falls out here. A long handled gaff may also be something that proves useful, if not for actually plucking the fish from the sea, then definitely as a means of dragging the fish to safety once it has been grounded on a rock.

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