May 2006

Written and posted 29th May 2006

May's Fishing Report

As May progressed we managed to find a few Cod - we had to go a bit further afield than usual but this paid dividends! Boats that made the effort found plenty of fish - the biggest on our boat topped 16lbs. Although this may not sound huge in terms of Cod sizes, the fish we were actually catching were on average between 4lb and that 16lb mark. It is hard to remember the last time we caught Cod in these numbers. It made quite a nice change not to be going out trying to find the Bass at the start of the season. I can safely say that we lost track of the amount of good days that we had with catches of Cod - we were also catching Pollack up to 9lbs and on light gear these fish will actually fight harder than a Bass of equal size.

With regards to the Bass - I'd already said to myself that I wanted to leave them alone as long as possible to give them a chance to colonize on all of our wrecks instead of being slaughtered as soon as they arrived in the area. This wasn't to be anyway - the boats from Boulogne turned up in droves and in all shapes and sizes fishing with live sand eels for the bass. I think this year all records were broken when on one day there were 17 boats on a single wreck - 15 of which were French. Something has to be done to sustain our fish stocks by our government. I spoke to DEFRA, I left messages and not one of them was answered. It would be so good if they were to make a closed season at the beginning of the year around certain wrecks in the Dover straights - if this was done it would safeguard our fishing throughout the Summer months and through to Christmas.

Anyway, moving on... we had a nice run of good weather which brought lots of enjoyable fishing with good catches being had by all. Unfortunately the weather broke at the end of May and we have lost the last couple of weeks. We did manage to get Sunday and Bank Holiday Monday out fishing but Tuesday doesn't look so good with forecasts of up to gale force 7 ...but the weathermen are saying that by the end of the week we should be seeing some better weather...finger's crossed!

The water is warming up nicely at the moment but unfortunately this has meant that the May weed is also growing well! At different times of the tide you can find clear water enabling you to fish the wrecks for the bass. I think the biggest problem this year will be catching the sand eels, although the French seem to be turning up with a ready supply of them leaving us at a disadvantage. I am considering contacting a supplier to see what would be involved in having sand eels delivered to us so that we are ready to fish the same as the French.

A couple of fish species that we seem to forget at the start of the Bass season are the Skate and Smoothhounds - they can still be caught within 5 or 6 miles of our shores in good numbers, providing that the right baits are used. A little later on we will also get a run of Tope that start to appear and the Blond Rays will appear in greater numbers. A lot of the inshore wrecks have started producing catches of Cod at the same time that you're trying to catch the Bass which is a great sign of, perhaps, the Cod making a come back.

Take a browse through the latest photos on the gallery pages - there's lots more to put on and we will be publishing these in the near future. It's been a long, dragged out winter although we've been working really hard in conjunction with FOX Sea and there are lots of new sea fishing equipment coming on-line this year which is definitely worth a look. Lots of new rig-ups and great ideas with a new range of Multi-tip rods, bass rods, braids and blue-steel mono. Not forgetting our Illusion fluoro-carbon fishing line which is brilliant for main line but also makes really good hook lengths and is what we use all the time now on our traces especially when rigging for bass fishing.

June being the highlight of the season for Marlin fishing in Madeira, we have decided to squeeze in a mad 4 days fishing out of Funchal. We shall be flying out Sunday night (18th), fishing through the week and flying back home ready for fishing in Britain on the Friday. Hopefully we'll be able to get you some pictures and post some information on Fishing in Madeira...

May 2006