A Day at Sea With Spot On! Charters - The Highlight of a Successful Start to the Year

Right, let me see if I can remember how to write a blog post! It's been a long time since I last told you all what I've been up to. It's been a busy start to 2015, with moving house taking up a lot of my time. I've managed to get out fishing too though and I've enjoyed success with both freshwater and saltwater species. Roach, dace, grayling, chub, barbel, carp, tench, bream and pike have all found their way on to the bank and in to my hands. Places I've fished have included the River Chew, the River Wye and a few local stillwaters. Sea fishing in the Bristol Channel and from the South Devon coast has been productive too. Codling, whiting and wrasse have made up some good catches. It was however, my trip out with Ross Parham, aboard his Brixham based charter boat Spot On! that produced the best days fishing of the year so far. Fishing some thirty miles offshore, all on board had a great day. Plenty of ling, decent pollock, some cod and a few whiting were all keen to take lures or fresh pouting baits dropped down to the wrecks littering the seabed below. My best ling weighed 15lb, the biggest caught that day went over 20lb. Pollock to low doubles were caught by all and one lucky chap slipped the net under a cod of 14lb. I can't recommend Ross and Spot On! Charters highly enough. Visit www.spot-on-charters.co.uk to book yourself a trip. The rest of the year promises to remain busy with further boat trips booked, holidays to Norway and Spain and the usual days out a little closer to home. So with all that to look forward to you should find that I write on here a little more regularly than I have been doing recently!





Catching hard fighting ling is tiring -
I can't even stay awake for the photo!






 

Tench Fishing in the Cotswolds

With the weather finally on the turn my thoughts turn to Tench fishing, I am no longer a member of Somerford AA so a new venue needed to be found.

Asking around a  Lake in Fairford seemed to fit the bill, a 20 acre gravel pit in the Cotswolds, So Tuesday morning gear loaded I set off to explore a new water.

I arrived at the lake late morning after making a small detour to purchase a day ticket.

And did a quick circuit of the lake, it’s a crystal clear lake with marginal tree cover and weed beds, being a bright sunny day with a slight northerly wing blowing I opted to fish into  the wind and soon found a swim with a gravel bar showing at around 20 metres.

My approach was to be two rods on ledgered feeders, one with maggots the other corn, these I cast out to the gravel bar and spoded a mixture of dead maggots, caster corn and hemp over the top.

Bringing in the rods every half hour to top up the feeders , this continued until 4 o clock just as began to have thoughts of blanking or moving swims , when the right hand maggot rod screamed off at last ,this run produced a small Tench of 2 ½ lb small but very welcome.

Soon to be followed by 3 more 2 of around 4lb and the biggest of the day at 5 1/2lb, all on the maggots.

All of which fought well above their weight in the deep clear water, so a very successful day in all I will defiantly return.

 

5 1/2lb the days biggest