fishybuisness
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2021
- Messages
- 113
- Reaction score
- 814
- Points
- 93
- Location
- Devon
- Favourite Fishing
- Shore
Hi all, the last few months have been quite busy with moving house and working away. With the weather the way its been has put a stop to playing out on the boat or on the beach as much as id have liked. November December is in my opinion the best months for our seas and normally deliver quite a good amount of specimen fish.
Ive tried my hardest not to post anything on sm due to weapons always putting a sad ending to Sharing my experiences.
The big beach is still outputting small codlets on any sort of bait and its great that its been alive all the way through autumn. Normally we see a decline in numbers until December where we start to see a few bigger specimens. Unfortunately its a sight to see at some points with belly up small codling floating all along chesil and ive urged many friends to try their best to not sit on baits too long and do their upmost to revive in a bucket before throwing them into the dump. A well timed return has seen most of my smaller sized fish go back quite healthy. Unlike what happens after a match or when abbo is full! Ive had a few sessions now where im doing my upmost not to target them and to find something else in the same location.
The undulates have been quite good sport with some pretty big girls being slid up the beach and the congers are getting bigger.
My session last week was quite eventful and had everything packed ready to go, only to find on arrival at the beach carpark that i had forgotten my cool bag with crab fresh macks and squid i had caught earlier on in the day! Well there was only one option i could do and that was to “raid the bins at abbotsbury”. I found an unopened pack of pink / purple squid and it was rank!
It was a fairly big tide and a nice following sea so i carried on and gave it ago.
Baiting up this squid that had probably sat a few days in the bin was on another level! I frequently handle chum that’s fermented when sharking but this was singing. Gloves were used and i had 3 1/2 hrs to give it ago.
I must have had over a 100lb of fish in the short session on absolutely foul bait!
I was using very short up and overs made with 130lb momoi and 6.0 pennel setups.
One eel was adamantly not coming in through the dump and i played it by hand with the leader for some time until a wave picked it up to the point i couldnt hand the slack in fast enough and the hook was spat! Id had quite a few over 20lb so far this night but this was a big bit of meat that wasnt happy!
I did get a few slime logs that i had managed to get a quick pick with before sending them on there way. I did bring in a few small codling and whiting and dogs but i was really happy to have caught what my target was “an undulate” and on bait that I wouldn’t of even thought would work. I left for home after quite a short successful session happy with myself and leaving enough time to have a good nights sleep before work the next day.
This last Saturday was a good window in the weather to get out and try some new toys out on gadget. A series of events unfolded from the point i left work friday and left me in a daze for the rest of the weekend.
Boat needed to be moved out of the inner harbour before the cill was raised (5pm) and i rushed home to get to the harbour for 4:40pm to find the cill had automatically raised and the one window of weather was early morning the next day. I simply had to get her out the harbour and over the cill tonight as soon as i had enough water, small tides made things a little odd and my forecasted 11pm to get over turned into 1:30am and handballing her under the bridge and over the cill by grabbing the pillars. Some night folk were watching me probably thinking im stealing the boat! So much for rushing home from work.
I didnt fuel her up or load the gear up before hand to keep her high in the water for the cill crossing so its now 3am and 180lts of super were sloshed into the tank and gear loaded for the next day. I left the harbour in my van and as soon as i turned on to the promenade i had a police car behine me with blues going and signalling for me to pull over, after a nice chat and explaining why i had been hanging around until 3am they let me go free to get some shut eye. 1 1/2hrs sleep was good enough so I set off before first light at around 6am aiming to see what bird activity was happening as the sun poked above the horizon. Auto pilot was engaged and i set about throwing a spread out the back so see what macks were around. After what seamed like an hr of 6knts the engine started to give me a few sounds i didnt like followed by a check engine alarm a couple of mins later. It really does pay to know your boat and systems at points like this and if i didnt i would have been a sitting duck waiting for the big orange taxi!
The boat had sat in the harbour with 1/4 of a tank since cornwall 2-3months back. This had caused condensation to build up and the water to sit at the bottom of the tank. I have 3 water separators on board and it had managed to get through all 3! I drained 2 of them as I couldn’t remove the one on the engine and repeated this until i had discarded 15-20lts of fuel that looked like milk! I always have used super unleaded as ive wanted to avoid this situation at all costs but forgot that not leaving a tank full can and would cause issues as half a tank has all that room for condensation to occur.
After finally getting clear fuel through i still had the alarm and it was due to the 3rd separator on the side of the engine that i couldnt open to clear. The only way i could do this was to charge at full throttle 35knts at 70lts per hr to purge it! A couple of minutes later and i was in the green with no faults on the dash. Feeling tired and a bit set back i thought to catch a few bass on some wrecks, the tide was small and not alot was happening apart from a few bass up to 5-6lb to give some sport on the lures.
A friend rang and said hes heading to chesil and would i want to meet him, i was apprehensive but thought it could be a nice thing to do after my events of this morning. The plan was set but i was still 20 odd miles offshore with swells about 1m, on the way in the activity started with gannets hitting the surface and dolphins and other things jumping infront of me. So ———- happened and the rush to get in clean off gear and head to the beach started. When i was cleaning down i realised i had 2 prime bass in the tanks still alive and with the change of plan they should go back. So i put them both in the inner harbour so if you see a few bass playing around in there its because they come from offshore wrecks!
I was so so tired and i really shouldn’t have decided on the beach really as once there and meeting my mate at 9pm i was fading!
He had hooked up to a nice 7-8lb bass on whole mack in the gutter and i was greeted by a pirate
With a mighty big grin on his face. I had crab and macks i had caught that day and sent out a one of each that quickly returned a strap and a small codlet. Then hell broke loose on the beach with the weather. 30mph onshore and solid rain just made this horrific. I curled up in my extreme weather bag and had some well earned sleep. I really shouldn’t have gone to beach and felt like a zombie. Sometimes its just not worth it if the effort you put in deprives yourself of actually functioning.
Its not always as easy as some people make it look!
Holding off for the big beach until the big tides in mid December now.
Thanks for reading my series of unfortunate events!
Ive tried my hardest not to post anything on sm due to weapons always putting a sad ending to Sharing my experiences.
The big beach is still outputting small codlets on any sort of bait and its great that its been alive all the way through autumn. Normally we see a decline in numbers until December where we start to see a few bigger specimens. Unfortunately its a sight to see at some points with belly up small codling floating all along chesil and ive urged many friends to try their best to not sit on baits too long and do their upmost to revive in a bucket before throwing them into the dump. A well timed return has seen most of my smaller sized fish go back quite healthy. Unlike what happens after a match or when abbo is full! Ive had a few sessions now where im doing my upmost not to target them and to find something else in the same location.
The undulates have been quite good sport with some pretty big girls being slid up the beach and the congers are getting bigger.
My session last week was quite eventful and had everything packed ready to go, only to find on arrival at the beach carpark that i had forgotten my cool bag with crab fresh macks and squid i had caught earlier on in the day! Well there was only one option i could do and that was to “raid the bins at abbotsbury”. I found an unopened pack of pink / purple squid and it was rank!
It was a fairly big tide and a nice following sea so i carried on and gave it ago.
Baiting up this squid that had probably sat a few days in the bin was on another level! I frequently handle chum that’s fermented when sharking but this was singing. Gloves were used and i had 3 1/2 hrs to give it ago.
I must have had over a 100lb of fish in the short session on absolutely foul bait!
I was using very short up and overs made with 130lb momoi and 6.0 pennel setups.
One eel was adamantly not coming in through the dump and i played it by hand with the leader for some time until a wave picked it up to the point i couldnt hand the slack in fast enough and the hook was spat! Id had quite a few over 20lb so far this night but this was a big bit of meat that wasnt happy!
I did get a few slime logs that i had managed to get a quick pick with before sending them on there way. I did bring in a few small codling and whiting and dogs but i was really happy to have caught what my target was “an undulate” and on bait that I wouldn’t of even thought would work. I left for home after quite a short successful session happy with myself and leaving enough time to have a good nights sleep before work the next day.
This last Saturday was a good window in the weather to get out and try some new toys out on gadget. A series of events unfolded from the point i left work friday and left me in a daze for the rest of the weekend.
Boat needed to be moved out of the inner harbour before the cill was raised (5pm) and i rushed home to get to the harbour for 4:40pm to find the cill had automatically raised and the one window of weather was early morning the next day. I simply had to get her out the harbour and over the cill tonight as soon as i had enough water, small tides made things a little odd and my forecasted 11pm to get over turned into 1:30am and handballing her under the bridge and over the cill by grabbing the pillars. Some night folk were watching me probably thinking im stealing the boat! So much for rushing home from work.
I didnt fuel her up or load the gear up before hand to keep her high in the water for the cill crossing so its now 3am and 180lts of super were sloshed into the tank and gear loaded for the next day. I left the harbour in my van and as soon as i turned on to the promenade i had a police car behine me with blues going and signalling for me to pull over, after a nice chat and explaining why i had been hanging around until 3am they let me go free to get some shut eye. 1 1/2hrs sleep was good enough so I set off before first light at around 6am aiming to see what bird activity was happening as the sun poked above the horizon. Auto pilot was engaged and i set about throwing a spread out the back so see what macks were around. After what seamed like an hr of 6knts the engine started to give me a few sounds i didnt like followed by a check engine alarm a couple of mins later. It really does pay to know your boat and systems at points like this and if i didnt i would have been a sitting duck waiting for the big orange taxi!
The boat had sat in the harbour with 1/4 of a tank since cornwall 2-3months back. This had caused condensation to build up and the water to sit at the bottom of the tank. I have 3 water separators on board and it had managed to get through all 3! I drained 2 of them as I couldn’t remove the one on the engine and repeated this until i had discarded 15-20lts of fuel that looked like milk! I always have used super unleaded as ive wanted to avoid this situation at all costs but forgot that not leaving a tank full can and would cause issues as half a tank has all that room for condensation to occur.
After finally getting clear fuel through i still had the alarm and it was due to the 3rd separator on the side of the engine that i couldnt open to clear. The only way i could do this was to charge at full throttle 35knts at 70lts per hr to purge it! A couple of minutes later and i was in the green with no faults on the dash. Feeling tired and a bit set back i thought to catch a few bass on some wrecks, the tide was small and not alot was happening apart from a few bass up to 5-6lb to give some sport on the lures.
A friend rang and said hes heading to chesil and would i want to meet him, i was apprehensive but thought it could be a nice thing to do after my events of this morning. The plan was set but i was still 20 odd miles offshore with swells about 1m, on the way in the activity started with gannets hitting the surface and dolphins and other things jumping infront of me. So ———- happened and the rush to get in clean off gear and head to the beach started. When i was cleaning down i realised i had 2 prime bass in the tanks still alive and with the change of plan they should go back. So i put them both in the inner harbour so if you see a few bass playing around in there its because they come from offshore wrecks!
I was so so tired and i really shouldn’t have decided on the beach really as once there and meeting my mate at 9pm i was fading!
He had hooked up to a nice 7-8lb bass on whole mack in the gutter and i was greeted by a pirate
With a mighty big grin on his face. I had crab and macks i had caught that day and sent out a one of each that quickly returned a strap and a small codlet. Then hell broke loose on the beach with the weather. 30mph onshore and solid rain just made this horrific. I curled up in my extreme weather bag and had some well earned sleep. I really shouldn’t have gone to beach and felt like a zombie. Sometimes its just not worth it if the effort you put in deprives yourself of actually functioning.Its not always as easy as some people make it look!
Holding off for the big beach until the big tides in mid December now.
Thanks for reading my series of unfortunate events!
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