[unable to retrieve full-text content] If you want to find out more info about sea fishing reels,...

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If you want to find out more info about sea fishing reels, check out www.myseareels.com

Whiting Everywhere

Journeying around the South Devon coastline visiting different venues, the fishing has become pretty tough in the past couple of weeks, typical of this time of year. The weather certainly hasn’t helped matters. East winds have buffeted the coast for nearly two weeks, not a friendly wind direction for most of the open coastline in South Devon. The flounder fishing, always a good option when the coast is rough, has not really kicked into gear either. I have tried my luck a few times but it has been a struggle, here is my latest report from a couple of recent sessions.

Having looked back at my recent set of fishing sessions I noticed that I hadn’t ventured to a venue on the open coast since the end of September. In my last posting I speculated that the East winds might see the bass feeding in the surf. With that firmly in my mind I decided to put the flounder fishing on the back burner for a week to try my luck with the bass. With such a huge range of venues to choose from it was difficult to make a call on where to head to. One mark did spring to mind however, Beesands beach in the South Hams. This beach has become one of the premier beaches in the area in recent years. Huge numbers of plaice have been landed in the spring from this stretch of shingle. Smoothounds, sole, dabs and an increasing number of spotted and small-eyed rays have been showing though the autumn and winter months. I hadn’t fished the beach for years and decided it had to be worth a visit. Joining me for this trip was my good friend Mark. Both of us were concerned that the strength of the wind would make the beach unfishable but as always I had a backup venue in mind. Driving along the road past Slapton the sea state there did not look too bad with swell crunching the shingle. Beesands is the next beach along so our confidence rose. As we pulled into the small car park I was very surprised by how much the beach had changed since my last visit. The huge winter storms of the past few years have completely altered the beach. The shingle bank is vastly reduced from what it once was with the western third now filled with rock sea defences to protect the sea wall. The road along to the East at the back of the beach no longer exists. We surveyed the beach, watching the swells and waves sets in murky conditions. It was rough, very rough but there wasn’t any visible weed in the surf line which would have made it unfishable so, after a chat about it, Mark and I unloaded the gear and got ourselves setup. It was pretty clear it would be a tough session casting into the teeth of a strong, cold wind. When you are prepared to tough it out from the outset I find it easier to put up with the conditions though. We both fished large baits close in feeling that a decent bass would be our primary target. I also used a second rod with small baits to gain a bit more distance. Bites were very tricky to see with the waves breaking over the lines on numerous occasions no matter how high you got the rod tip up in the rest. Fortunately there wasn’t any weed and holding bottom on the flood tide was remarkably easy. Darkness came over the beach an hour before high water and the fish came on the feed. Unfortunately not the bass we were hoping for but a whiting on my small frozen black lugworm bait.                                                                                                                                                    

At around half a pound this is the average size of fish I would expect to see at this time of year. With whiting around I tried a live bait rig on one rod in the hope a bass would pick one up but this didn’t attract the necessary live bait! More whiting followed as the tide started to ebb, with a couple of double shots coming up the beach. As the tide dropped further though the waves increased in size and power and our lines started to get buried under the shingle signalling it was time to pack up. On returning to the car we realised we were both encrusted by salt spray! A brutal session at times but worth a go. It wasn’t a surprise to find the whiting but the lack of any other species was.

With more East winds raging throughout the following week I decided it was best to avoid the coast and continue the flounder campaign. My dad joined me again for a session in the Dart Estuary. Flounders are an elusive target in the Dart Estuary but they are there. I have witnessed cormorants taking decent sized fish every so often. The Dart winds its way through South Devon and is a deep water estuary with many marks to choose from. Most involve a bit of a hike to get to. Our session was to take place on a rising tide at a spot on the main river not too far from Stoke Gabriel, many miles upstream from the river mouth. We arrived in failing light onto a deserted foreshore flanked by high banks of trees providing protection from a cold wind. Conditions on the estuary looked excellent. The fishing had been good to me at this mark previously for bass and eels.

We chose to set up on a small rock promontory with the deeper part of the channel almost below our feet and mudflats either side. My dad was using large ragworm baits and I had some lovely peeler crabs, both top flounder baits. We lost the light soon after setting up. The peace and tranquillity of the location was only occasionally broken by the hoot of an unseen tawny owl. Bites were few and far between initially. Crabs stripped the hooks bare. As more water flooded into the area the fish did come on the feed. The bites were strange rattling affairs which didn’t look like either school bass, eels or flounder. We both failed to hook the first few. I left one a bit longer to develop but nothing further happened. A reel in to change the bait revealed the fish behind the bites – a whiting of about 6oz! I knew that we had had very little fresh water in the estuaries for a few weeks but I never expected to hook into whiting so far up the river! More of these mini whiting followed. The bites were only interrupted by finger long school bass hitting the baits.

We enjoyed a calm evening out of the wind. However once the ebb tide began we had to call it a night. The tide run on the ebb was fierce and our lightweight rods and leads were not able to cope. With the main channel less than thirty yards from the foreshore even a bait cast in close was being swept along at a rate of knots! Another tough session but great for the learning curve on how far upriver the sea species will venture given the right salinity in the water. The whiting certainly are everywhere! This is a mark that will be worth a try again in the future to see what else the deep water might hold, it certainly looked a great spot to find some larger bass in the warmer months.

With the East winds blowing the fishing has been patchy for many people along the coast. The whiting are out in force at the moment with large bags of fish up to 1lb available from most of the beaches, the average size being 8-12oz. These were accompanied by the odd dogfish and pout.

The wind has now switched back to its prevailing South Westerly which will calm the seas down quickly. Flounders will be the target for many in the lead up to Christmas. Mild weather will mean the crabs will be feeding in the estuaries making it tough to get through them to find the fish though. However the mild weather will also mean that conger eels, large bass and occasional mackerel and garfish will all be viable targets from many of the open coast venues. There is always an very outside chance of codling showing at the deep water rock marks in Torbay but getting through the whiting shoals can be an issue.

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Cod fishing has gone flat

Well what can I say? Another weekend with very few codling on Chesil and the few that were caught were all pretty small. I would love to know what happened to all those fish we had for the past two years . I expected to see a good number of Cod in the 8-10lb range this year. Instead it has been one of the worst cod seasons I can remember.

One of the big factors that has affected the Cod fishing, has been the almost constant easterly wind. This has kept Chesil unusually calm for long periods. There is however a positive note to this and that is the number of good flat fish that are still around. Trev Fox managed a lovely late season Plaice from the western end of Chesil, proving that the Plaice stay until well into December.

Regular contributor Ben Stockley, has also been amongst the flat fish, with a good haul of dabs, including this stunning 1lb 6oz fish

Sea Conditions: Water temperature 10.8°c

Chesil Beach: Calm with clear water

Portland: Calm with clear water

Portland Harbour: wavelets clear water

Weymouth Bay: 1m surf extending out to 50m with lightly coloured water

Chesil Beach forecast:  there has been a large drop in the water temperature over the past week. This should bring the Whiting in close, especially at night. I prefer fishing at Cogden and West Bexington for them.

daylight s still proving good for Garfish, Plaice and Dabs. sprats are starting to show. This is never a good sign for the Cod, but the Bass will chase them in. Lure fishing off the beach during December can produce some good hits of Bass. A sprat immatation lure always seems to work well.

Portland: perfect conditions for a big Wrasse and some Pollock. This is probably the best time of year for a shot at a big Wrasse. The suddden drop in temperature will have pushed the smaller ones off into deeper water. This means that the bigger ones actually get a chance to find the bait. Hardback or Hermit crab are the top baits.

clear and settled water, make for perfect lure fishing conditions for Pollock. It is also one of the better times for Bass around the island.

Portland Harbour: still lots of baitfish in the harbour and that will keep the Garfish and Bass in there as well. As usual it is lures for me, but large Squid baits can be deadly for the Bass especially at night.

Weymouth Bay: whilst the wind continues  to below from the east the beach will still have a lot of surf running. This is great for a late bass and Flounder.

The Piers will continue to provide good sport on lite tackle. The squid  should definitely be around in numbers now.

Guiding: The new guiding season is underway once again. Although we can only keep one Bass, we can certainly catch more. I am hoping that the winter fishing ban and the new commercial quotas, combined with an increase in the minimum landing size, will make for some great Bass fishing. I specialize in lure fishing and I am offering Fly fishing this year as well. I am still more than happy to go after the multitude of species in this area with bait, whether that is big Wrasse, explosive Smoothound fishing or targeting the tastier fish such as Plaice and Bream. If you want to book a session or find out more information drop me an email at [email protected]

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It’s time for Flounder

In South Devon the first frosty days of Autumn stir many anglers minds towards digging out the light rods and making their way down to one of the local estuaries in search of a big flounder. The British record flounder was caught in the River Teign in the 1990s, a monster of 5lb 7oz. Each year many fish over 3lb and a few over 4lb are caught from a number of different estuaries along this stretch of coastline. The numbers of larger specimens has dwindled over the years but each estuary contains a reasonably healthy stock of fish.

The first frost of this Autumn occurred over the Bonfire Weekend at the beginning of November. This coincided with the National Flounder Championship being fished over two days on the River Teign. Decent numbers of flounders were caught but the big specimens were elusive, the winning fish a lovely 2lb 12oz specimen. This got me thinking about having a go myself for a couple of sessions.

My first trip was a couple of weeks ago on the set of really big tides which is not ideal in the estuaries as space can become limited to a few marks over high water. The tide brings extra debris on the ebb and many spots dry out completely over low water. My fishing time is limited by work so I make the most of the weekend chance to wet a line and as I stated in my first article, I like to see what might happen. I chose a small creek on the Kingsbridge Estuary system for my first winter flounder foray.  The Kingsbridge system has a massive range of marks but does in general require a bit of walking to get to many of them. I crossed a few fields on public rights of way before descending onto the foreshore and walked a few miles to my spot, a new one for me on the northern bank of the creek close to where it widened into the main estuary waters. The weather was stunning, not a breath of wind to ruffle the waters. The mark seemed ideal with the main tidal channel within easy casting distance and a nice bay just off that tide run to cast into. I cast one bait into the channel and another off to where I could see the crease of the tide run alongside the bay. Small school bass were on to the baits in a flash, giving some fun sport on my light outfits with plenty of slackline bites.

If the bass didn’t get to the bait then unfortunately the crabs did. They would strip the hooks in minutes, not uncommon in fishing the estuaries, particularly the Kingsbridge system. The cold weather usually puts them off the feed but following the frosty weekend the temperatures warmed back up again, meaning the crabs remained on the feed. Fishing at this mark was tough going and I didn’t even get a flounder bite. I was treated to a very relaxing session in the still conditions and a beautiful sunset made the day. Talking to other anglers along the stretch they were also suffering with the crabs and there were many comments about it being ‘too mild’.

Not one to be put off too easily I planned another flounder session for the following weekend. The idea was to head to one of our other estuaries to see if I could tempt a flounder there. My dad again chose to join me. What wasn’t in the plan was Storm Angus hitting our coast with some brutality on the Saturday evening. Over two inches of rain were recorded in Exeter and the resultant floodwater running into the rivers would’ve made the Exe, Teign and Dart virtually unfishable and a waste of time. So we went back to the Kingsbridge area. Without a main river running into the system, the Kingsbridge estuary suffers less from flood water than other systems. Trying to think of a spot ‘on the hoof’ at six in the morning I plumped for an easy access mark not too far from Kingsbridge itself. Even in the gloom of our pre-dawn arrival we could see that the waters were mucky but not the raging torrent one of the main rivers would’ve been and certainly fishable. I figured we would at least be in with a chance of a few more school bass if we could avoid the crabs. We setup in near darkness and cast our first baits out just as light was filtering across the tree tops. The flounder of the Kingsbridge estuary love ragworm over other baits and I showed my dad how to load up his hook. He commented on the size of the bait, a big bunch of wriggling worms and tails, in disbelief that a small bait wouldn’t work better. He flicked his bait some twenty five yards out in front of us and my baits were placed further out and to another spot close in. Straight away we had bites. The tips of my rods rattled with the bites of small bass, my dad’s rod pulled over in a more deliberate manner. To me it was clearly a flounder. I advised that he ignore these initial tugs and allow the fish plenty of time to  chew on his large worm bait. We had a coffee and packed the head torches away as the sun rose. A few more bites on my rod tip made me spring into action but I missed the culprit. A stronger pull on my dad’s rod tip showed the flounder was still interested. He lifted the rod tip and the bend showed he had something. After a bit of gentle pumping and winding he was disappointed to find a clump of weed on his line. This was just caught on the top swivel of his trace though and below that, in the murky shallows was our target species. A flounder on his first cast and first attempt at fishing for them!

Weighing in at 1lb 2oz it was no monster but I don’t think that mattered to him. He was chuffed; I was chuffed too. He debated keeping it for the table but decided to return it. Being only lightly hooked it swam away strongly. Massively enthused that there were flounder to be caught we fished hard as the tide rose, but apart from school bass and baits being stripped by crabs we only had one more flounder bite which resulted in a bare hook. It was a glorious day to be out though after the horrific storm of the night before and we basked in warm sunshine with no wind at all. My dad thoroughly enjoyed the morning, drinking coffee, talking fishing and sending me back to the car to check on the cricket score on a regular basis. We ran out of worms quite quickly due to crab activity and made our way home for lunch.

I am sure we will be out fishing together again soon. We need a cold snap for the crabs to stop feeding so hard and to allow the flounder a chance to home in on the baits, but the fish are there and a number of 3 to 4lb fish will be caught this winter I’m sure.

Elsewhere the usual whiting and dogfish are making up the majority of catches on the open coastline. The weather has remained mostly mild and a number of summer species are still being caught, including smoothounds and gilt-head bream. The mackerel and garfish are still present as well. Now is the time to target a large bass from the open coast with all of the beaches along South Devon worth trying. North East winds are forecast for most of the week which will give a decent surf on most of the beaches for the bass to feed in. Conger eels will also be feeding hard now before the winter really sets in and can be found at most deep water rock and pier venues.

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Calling all Sea Anglers

If like us you are fed up with getting the rough end of the stick when it comes to fishing restrictions and bans, here is an opportunity to fight back and help show quite how important sea angling is to the UK.

Seaangling.org is has launched a project called Sea Angling 2017 which aims to collect catch and spend data from a 1000 sea anglers throughout 2017. If you are a regular or even occasional sea angler they need you to record your catches, releases and spending throughout the year to help get a better understanding of the current state of sea angling in the UK. Once compiled this data will be published and made freely available  to local and national  policy makers as well as the sea angling community.

Even if this was all they were doing we think this a project that all responsible sea anglers should be supporting but there is more!

Free Stuff – 

All anglers selected for the project will get access to a unique Online Catch Diary Tool to record fishing trips, catches, releases and spending. You will also receive a sea fish identification booklet and catch recording kit (including bespoke waterproof catch recording notebook and tape measure)

Still not convinced it’s worth your time and effort to take part in this important project? Shame on you, but perhaps this will tip the balance, as well as feeling good about your contribution to sea angling in the UK, all participants who take the initial survey are entered into a free draw with a chance to win  2x£50 tackle vouchers from Fishing Megastore. If you are selected to take part in the Diary project you will have further opportunities to win more vouchers throughout the year.

Give it a go we think it will help to collect some real data from real fishermen!  http://www.seaangling.org/

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[unable to retrieve full-text content] If you want to find out more info about sea fishing reels,...

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If you want to find out more info about sea fishing reels, check out www.myseareels.com

South Devon Tails

Hello from South Devon! My name is Tom Sheffield and I have been fishing the coastline around this area for the past 16 years. After talking to Sean recently I agreed to become a contributor for Fishing Tails reporting my exploits from this wonderful section of coastline. We are truly blessed in South Devon to be able to fish a huge variety of different types of ground for a myriad of species throughout the year. I personally enjoy catching flatfish and usually have a bait out to target one of the flatfish species during most sessions. My passion in angling involves getting out to different venues and trying various tactics and baits on different states of tide to see what works. This often results in some surprise captures along the way, as you will see from my first report below! I will endeavour to keep you up to date with my fishing trips, give an overview of what is being caught locally and what to realistically target from South Devon in the near future.

My first report below is of a session I had back in the middle of October.

My father has recently retired and in an odd reversal of the usual story he asked me to take him out and start showing him the ropes when it comes to sea fishing. We’ve had a couple of trips together and he is starting to get the hang of casting, baiting up and the general basics, but the previous sessions had been slow affairs with only a couple of fish showing to my rods and nothing for my dad. Keen to find him his first fish I took him out again yesterday to a beautiful venue in the South Hams area of Devon, East Portlemouth. This tidal inlet at the mouth of the Salcombe estuary is made up of golden sandy bays broken by rocky outcrops. There are a huge number of different marks to try all along the waterfront from North to South and a large variety of species available, but the area is famous locally for flatfish (flounder, plaice, dabs, turbot and sole can all be caught here) and thornback rays (the British shore record was caught here). The plan was to fish from low water to the top of the tide from one of the sandy coves near the mouth of the inlet and try to catch a few flatfish. I was certain my dad would run into a school bass at some point during the tide. This original plan was scuppered somewhat by the strong Southerly gusts funnelling through the craggy cliffs that line the estuary mouth, making casting a challenge for the beginner and also bringing with them a lot of weed. I managed a small school bass from this location but it was clear conditions would be too tough to properly enjoy the session, so we upped sticks and trekked down the coast path towards the open sea to a small rock mark. From here we could find a bit of shelter from the wind and also avoid the weed once the tide rose. From our new platform we would be casting onto clean ground, into a decent swell and a bit of tide run. It’s a good spot to find flatfish as they wait to ambush food being dragged over the outer estuary sand bars, which we could still see slightly exposed. We soon had lines in the water again and sat back to enjoy the wall to wall sunshine on yet another surprisingly warm October day. Bites were difficult to distinguish with the breeze buffeting the rod tips but the fish were feeding hard. I was into another school bass almost immediately, quickly followed by a third. They were ravenously taking my blow lugworm baits. Then the highlight of my day came. Having watched my dad bait up and cast out without any assistance (the baiting needle is his new favourite tool), I watched intently as a rattling bite developed on the tip of his rod. He kept looking at me, anxious to wind in to see if he’d got his quarry but I told him to hold fire until I was sure the fish had taken his bait. It wasn’t long to wait and a more positive pull on the rod tip signalled the fish was on and he lifted into the fish without striking hard. He played a superbly healthy school bass to the shore. I was over the moon to have been able to share this moment with him and also to have been there to guide him to that success. His happiness made the day and he was grinning away as he slipped the fish back into the water.

A few more school bass followed and then the bites from them seemed to stop and a slightly different indication of fish activity started to show on my rod tip. I lifted into a fish which fought differently and stayed deeper in the water as it came towards our rocky base camp. It kicked hard as I got it to the surface and I was surprised to find a small gilt-head bream had snaffled my lugworm; the Salcombe area is famous for this species. The British shore record of over 10lb was caught further up the estuary system last year in late October/early November but I had never come across any in my time fishing down close to the mouth. I slipped it back and then over the next hour and a half managed to land 3 more, losing another as it slipped the hook right before landing. The biggest weighed in at 1lb 13oz (picture attached) and was my biggest of any bream species I’ve caught.

These fish fight hard and really punch above their weight. I can see myself having another go at catching these on lighter gear someday. As the sun dipped below the cliffs opposite our location and the light began to fade the bites dropped away. With the last of the dying Autumn sunlight we packed up the gear and made our way home. The flatfish didn’t come out but that was surely down to there being a lot of suspended sand in the water, churned up by the swells rolling up the inlet channel. However, the day had been busy with nearly a fish a cast once we moved location and a memory made to cherish seeing my father catch his first fish. He talked about doing some solo trips as we drove back through the maze of lanes to reach the main roads. I hope to report of more success for him in the future.

I look forward to being a regular contributor and hope you enjoy reading about South Devon’s fishing.

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