Death of a fishing legend

It is with great sadness that I hear the news this morning, of the sudden death of John Wilson, who died after suffering a stroke in his home in Thailand. John was a fishing legend that inspired so many people, myself included. I was lucky enough to meet him once and I was awed by his passion and knowledge of angling. He crossed all the fishing disciplines and his videos and TV shows enlightened millions of anglers over the years. You will be missed John.

So many people tell me that the Bass fishing finishes in September and they can’t wait until they return again in May. I tell tell them that they are missing out on the best months, especially if you want to catch a big Bass. Most of my larger Bass have come during November and looking back through my diaries, this month has been the best for numbers on the lure, as long as it doesn’t blow for too long.

As predicted, Chesil was very rough over the weekend. Several anglers decided to try fishing for Bass in Portland harbour. Once again lures out fished bait for the Bass. Kevin Webb was lucky enough to have his rod to hand, when he spotted birds hitting a shoal of baitfish close to the shore. What ensued was a frantic short period in which he landed 11 Bass, three of them over 3lb including this one at just over 4lb

It was caught on a Westin Sandy Andy, this isn’t a lure I have used in the past, but it is pretty similar to a Savage Gear Sandeel

I want to say a big thank you to all those that sent me positive comments and feedback after my first post for a long time. It has given me great encouragement to bring the site back up and provide you with the most up to date reports and reviews. I promised that I would try and make it even better than before, with that in mind I am delighted to say that I have a number of new writers on board. We will be covering even more areas and disciplines that ever.  We will be starting with a series of articles on Shark fishing and another series shore fishing from Morocco, which is an up and coming shore venue, with some amazing fishing.

Unfortunately I didn’t get to go fishing on Monday, but I hope to get out tomorrow evening. I am pretty excited as I have a new rod and reel to try out. I am going to be targeting my nemesis fish, an Undulate Ray as well as Cod. I will of course post any positive reports through here and on my Facebook page.

Conditions:

Chesil Beach: 1.5m swell with waves occasionally exceeding 2m. Wind is currently SW backing to SSE and dropping over the next couple of days. Water is fairly heavily coloured at present.

Portland: 1.5m swell with coloured water that should clear by Friday

Portland Harbour: Wavelets with clear water

Weymouth Bay: light surf with good water clarity

Chesil Beach forecast: The beach should fish well for species such as Cod, Whiting, Dogfish and Pout for the next day or so. As the colour drops from the water and the swell subsides you can expect to catch plenty of Garfish during the day.

Night tides should produce a few Codling and some Rays. I have seen a picture of a nice Turbot caught over the weekend and a few Codling, but at present I don’t have permission to share those. The area around Chesil Cove often has a lot of Squid at this time of year. I have yet to work out how to target them from the shore in this area. If anyone has successfully done so, I would love to hear from you.

Portland Harbour: As the tides become smaller the Bass seem to be harder to catch in the harbour, but you can still target Garfish, Flounder and Pollock, with a few Wrasse showing on the reefs around Sandsfoot and in the deeper channels at Ferrybridge.

Portland: Wrasse fishing should be good once more around the Island. November is the month to target the big Wrasse. Expect to lose gear and fish hard on the bottom with rotten bottom rigs, but if you bait up with half a hardback velvet swimmer crab, you are in with a chance of a big fish.

Bass, Mackerel, Pollock and Garfish are still around the Bill and Church Ope Cove

Weymouth Bay: The big question everyone is asking at the moment is will the piers be any good for Squid. With the weather settling over the next couple of days and the water clarity improving, the squid should be around in decent numbers.

Flounder, Bass, Rays, Dogfish and Pout are always on the cards around the Sealife Centre are of the beach, especially on a night tide.

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Whats happened to Fishing Tails? We are back!

I am delighted to say that Fishing Tails is back and will be even better than ever. I won’t bore you with the details as to why I haven’t been around, but I would like to say thank you to those who have supported me over the past few months and have persuaded me to get the site back up and running.

I will start off with some bad news for me. I had almost all of my fishing tackle stolen from a lock up in Dorchester. I don’t know how long ago it was taken, as I hadn’t been over there for a couple of months. Yes that is how long its been since I have done any sea fishing. I am now going to have to replace my beach, boat and fly fishing gear. One thing that you don’t realise until you have to buy it all again, is how much all the little bits of terminal tackle cost. If there is a silver lining to this story, then it is that I will be replacing my gear with mostly new stuff. As I replace it I will write a review on most bits that I buy. This is where you get a bit of a say, as I am always happy to hear recommendations. I am currently in the market for a new head torch for night fishing. I have just bought a new Majorcraft Triplecross lure rod and I have one of the new Fladden Maxximus beach caster on the way. Feel free to drop me an email at [email protected] for any recommendations or any suggestions of tackle that you would like to see reviewed. I would also love to have your catch reports.

One of the most notable changes in shore fishing over the past couple of years, is the switch from the traditional fairly stiff UK rods, that mostly perform better with a multiplier, to the much longer, lighter and slimmer European style fix spool rods. I will be testing both extensively and will give you my opinion on which is the better style.

So the big question for this weekend is, will Chesil be fishable? The simple answer is no. There will always be the small minority that think they know better and will try and win against Mother Nature. Don’t be stupid, all you will do is put your own life in danger and more importantly the lives of the rescue services.

Looking at the wind forecast, it would seem that there is a window opening up on Monday. The sea will be rough and coloured, but the wind should drop enough, to allow us to get a cast far enough behind the breakers, to prevent your line being buried under the shingle. Expect to catch Bass, Cod, Whiting and Dogfish, with the chance of a large Conger.

Danny Hardwick and a couple of his mates, took advantage of just that type of conditions on Wednesday evening a couple of years back. They managed to land some nice sized Codling.

The fish fell to black legwork, tipped with peeler crab.

I am certainly looking forward to Monday, where I will give live updates via Instagram and Facebook. If you are desperate for a fix over the weekend, you could do worse than Preston Beach. Conditions look good for a Bass in the surf.

Conditions:

Chesil Beach: Very rough, bordering on unfishable

Portland: Rough on the West side and around Portland Bill, with poor water clarity. The clarity on the East side is also poor, but it will be a lot calmer, with waves around 1m.

Portland Harbour: Wavelets with clear water

Weymouth Bay: Surf up to 1m with good water clarity

Chesil Beach forecast: Not much more to be said about Chesil, other than avoid it until Monday, unless the wind does drop significantly over the weekend.

Portland Harbour: Plenty of Bass can still be caught in the harbour on lures and bait. If my memory serves me well, November used to be the best time for the large Bass in the harbour. If you don’t want to try my favoured method of lure fishing, then go big and put on a whole squid. It will last a lot longer against the crabs than worms.

Garfish and Pollock can all be caught around Ferrybridge and Castle Cove on float fished Mackerel or small lures. Hamm Beach can often produce Flounder as well as Pout.

Portland: The coloured water will make lure fishing almost impossible around the Portland Bill, but it may work on the East side, if you are prepared for a bit of a walk. It will certainly be more sheltered and fishing with bait during the day should produce Wrasse. Night tides and large fish baits may tempt Conger or Bull Huss.

Weymouth Bay: Weymouth always provides a safe haven and a reasonable mark to fish, when we have a big SW gale. The piers also offer good marks for anglers of all abilities. I have seen reports of numerous squid being caught, but windy conditions and not great water clarity, normally put put the squid off. However you can catch plenty of small Pollock, Wrasse and Garfish from both piers.

As I mentioned earlier the beach towards Preston and Bowleaze looks very good for a Bass. Expect Flounder and Dab to show, as well as Whiting and Dogfish after dark

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2018 Update – Minimum Landing Sizes (MLS) and protection status for common UK Marine fish

We have updated the MLS page to reflect the new Bass rules for 2018.

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The dust has now settled over the new Minimum Landing Size (MLS.) for Bass so we thought it might be interesting to test your knowledge of the MLS. and protection status of some of our most common UK Marine fish. No cheating this is not a test of your Googling skills we genuinely want to see how knowledgeable you all are!

As a bonus everyone who finishes the Quiz will get priority access to our new MLS reference  page where you can see all the size restrictions we know of!

The quiz is now over – results will be posted soon

See our new MLS page here

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Salmon & the Carp Angler

John Gierach once wrote

“…. how often do you have a chance to get skunked while casting a fourteen-foot spey rod in the shadow of a castle built two hundred years before the American Revolution?”

You’ll be thinking that I quite like John Gierach. Well, I think I do. I like his writing and his attitude in his writing; and I get the feeling that I’d kinda like to meet the guy and share a beer with him. Although I’m rather afraid we’d discover that we’re both grumpy old buzzards with not very much to say to each other. A bit like going down the pub with your best mate, but without the comforting warmth of familiarity to fill the silence.

But to return to his quote, for me the answer is well, every feckin’ day to be honest.

And frankly, after a while it becomes rather tedious getting skunked, eaten half to death by ravenous midges and invariably ending up “drookit”, to use the Scottish term. This last being a rather onomatopoeic description of one’s status after a classic spring or autumn day exposed to the vicissitudes of our local climate. Of course it’s not always as bad as this. The summers can be even worse.

Having said all this, it is actually possible to catch a salmon, once in a while. I know this because I’ve caught one. Just the one, mind. And therein lies the rub. You can wait an awfully long time for a salmon, even if you live on the banks of one of the most hallowed salmon rivers in the world.

Our local newspaper, which labours under the somewhat grandiose title of the Strathspey & Badenoch Herald, carries a not-so-weekly fishing column which tells you pretty much everything you need to know on this score; provided you know how to read the signs. Firstly, there is very little comment or even any sense of passion from the columnist, and this is your first clue. It’s as if a lifetime of recording, and presumably experiencing, essentially quite mediocre catches has stripped the author of any enthusiasm he may have once held for his subject. That’s assuming that you even manage to spot it due to either its complete absence (a very bad sign), or its brevity; in which case you’d be forgiven for confusing it with the local camanachd or bridge club scores. If you don’t know what camanachd is, by the way, do look it up. It’s far more interesting than the fishing report although maybe not quite as enlightening.

It’s been reduced over the years to a (very short) list of the barest facts and figures:

“12/5/15 Mr Brown (visiting angler) 9 ½ lb grilse, Tarric Mor on a spinner. Returned.”

This in itself is pretty telling, but it’s on the rare occasions that some sort of detail is recorded that you get a real feeling for just how truly depressing this whole salmon fishing business can be. A fairly typical report would read as follows:

“The Smith party took their usual week and landed a fine cock fish of 15lb”

Read that again, in case you missed it. Yep, one measly (okay, pretty decent) fish for a whole week of effort. For the entire party!

If you thought that was bad, reading further would be enough for even the most patient fisherman to question the sanity of the enterprise:

“This was X’s first salmon, having been returning to the area for 23 years”

And I can assure you that this is by no means an exaggeration.

However, each to their own, and as John Gierach cheerfully points out, it’s not every day you get to blank in such glorious surroundings, steeped in history. Unless you happen to be a local of course, in which case as I’ve stated earlier, it sucks.

The only decent salmon I’ve ever caught came about by, as I now know it, sheer good fortune and the ignorant bliss of the neophyte. I’d got this classic cane rod, paired up with a nice Youngs Beaudex and an equally classic double taper line. I’d been frequenting a little pool on the Dulnain, not far from home, casting various white concoctions in the hope of fooling a sea-trout. On the evening in question I’d bullied a few parr who should’ve known better (and certainly did afterwards) not much bigger than my fly, and had let my last cast drift on the dangle towards the near bank. Bang! A thumping great weight caused the rod to arch over and tore off upstream. It was a merry tussle, not the least because the fish then decided to return downstream, causing me to have to pass the rod around two intervening bushes. It was all very exciting and, to use a hackneyed phrase, the tackle was tested to its limits. I don’t think the rod ever recovered, to be honest. Anyways, eventually I had banked a beautiful, fresh run fish of around 7 or 8 pounds. Not bad going, especially on antique tackle with a 4lb tippet. As I said, I can’t claim any real expertise on my part; I was convinced I’d landed a sea trout and proudly displayed the photos to anyone and everyone I could accost.

One of my mates finally broke the spell:

“That’s a nice grilse”

“What’s a grilse?”, I said……

I’ve still to hook a sea-trout from the Dulnain, incidentally

At this point you’re probably thinking you’ve done a hell of a lot of reading for just one fish story. Hey! Welcome to the world of the salmon fisher, bozo! You could maybe console yourself with the thought that you’ve invested far less time in reading this than you might have to for a salmon of your own. You might even come to the conclusion that, for all the pomp & mystique that surrounds it, this salmon fishing malarkey isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Well, that’s not for me to say.

“Never knock another man’s hobbies”, is one of my mottos and, as J.G. suggests, where else can you wet a line…..?

I would suggest Spain, for a start……

p.s. a friend has suggested that I may have made a typo with regards to the word “carp” in the title….

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