- Joined
- Feb 14, 2019
- Messages
- 591
- Reaction score
- 2,518
- Points
- 98
- Location
- North Wales
- Favourite Fishing
- Boat
Well, since our illustrious Mr Drakeford has slapped another lockdown upon this green and fertile land, Gethyn Owen set up a final trip aboard his boat My Way 2 out of Port Dinorwic for local anglers. Eager to get on this final trip I managed to shift some work meetings into the afternoon and as soon as I had a rescheduled workday, I was all set. A quick message to Geth and my place was booked!
We started the day with a 7 am sail, fishing over the low tide for seven hours heading back in for 2 pm, a full four hours before the rozzers started clamping down!
There is something very cool about fishing from a boat in the dark, as the first hour was spent fishing from darkness into full light. The Straits is a stunning place to fish at the best of times but, from a boat, it takes on a different look altogether and watching the light increase as the tree-lined banks become less silhouette and more picture-like is something to behold...even on a rainy morning such as this.
The rain persisted for much of the morning, finally abating around midday giving us a couple of hours to dry off before we had to head back in.
The first part of the fishing was very much a scratching/species hunt.
For this, I prefer to use my two hook scratching rig, I've also got a 1 up 2 down variant of this. I work for TronixFishing so most of the components and line are from Tronixpro, for full disclose...other brands are available
This is essentially 100cm of 50lb rig body with a Continental Clip to the lead end and a size 4 rolling swivel at the leader end. I favour using glue rigs. I find them stronger and better than using crimps personally. In between, I use two 4 way beads, trapped between a pair of glue tubes that have been glued into place (I use a rig jig for this, which I'll do an article on for the TSF Articles section at some point). Each snood is set at either end of the rig, so there is one bait hard on the deck and the other above. For the snoods. I use 30 to 45cm of 20 or 25lb fluorocarbon, I like the hardness and stiffness of fluorocarbon for snoods, the "invisibility" factor is just an added bonus for me. The fluorocarbon is then passed through the 4-way bead, I then tie and bed down a series of figure of eight knots at the end of the fluorocarbon, this butts up against the 4 way bead. To the other end, I'll slide on a silicone rubber stop and then add the beads of my choice. This could be two yellow, or a small 5mm floating bead or another attractor, depending on my mood. I use the rubber stop to lock the beads in place behind the book. If you've ever watched an underwater video of beads in action, you'll see they can be all over the shop! To the end, I'll then tie in a size 6 Kamasan B940 to finish the snood off.
I'll tie in different sized hooks depending on the situation, species I'm going to target. I find the size 6 Kamasan B940 to be the best around for the type of boat scratching I do though. I'll drop down to 8, 10, 12 and even further down in wormer style patterns, stronger carp/coarse hooks are also good if I'm going for the really small stuff.
I've caught near double-figure Pollack and near Irish specimen sized wrasse on this rig, so I have the utmost confidence in its strength and ability. And as we all know, confidence in your gear is a major factor in catching fish!
Although the Straits can be murky, I've been finding success with coloured leads, could be a confidence thing or there could be something visually appealing that brings out the inquisitive species. So much so that all my leads are now coated in some colour or another. I use jewellery wire, which is cheap as chips, as my weak link. All leads are prepared before a session with a short length of twisted jewellery wire and this just slips into the Continental Clip easy.
Anyway, to the fishing. We had plenty of whiting and pouting to the boat in the first couple of hours. When you just want to get out and fish, catching whatever is there is great fun and there was some decent sized whiting that came aboard during that first few hours. All whiting and pouting'd out, we then moved closer towards Britannia Bridge.
After twenty minutes of scratching, I changed tactics. Changing to a simple one hook rig with a 4/0 Viking pattern and a pink muppet. Putting down a squid mackerel combination, it wasn't long before the huss found the baits and I had four in quick succession, including a decent sized one and at the opposite end...a really very small one too! The rest of the boat were bringing in huss, dogs, whiting and pouting. There was also a nice thornback and a couple of decent smoothhounds landed too. All in all, a great mixed bag!
Moving back closer to Port Dinorwic, the anchor was dropped again in search of a few species. For my efforts, I picked up more whiting and pouting, dropping down to really small hooks (size 16s) resulted in a crab fest, so I went back to fishing with larger 6s again for more whiting and pout. Across the boat though, a few sea scorpions were boated.
Despite the battering rain and squalls at points, it felt good to get out and have a good day fishing with a decent mixed bag of species, knowing that from 6 pm that night, we'd no longer be able to fish for a couple of weeks.
For me, my fishing is done now until mid-November. My local carp and coarse fishery which I could walk to is closed and the Straits is just a bit too far to walk loaded with kit. So, it's a good two weeks of getting on top of work and sorting out kit ready to hit it hard again come the end of the lockdown.
I'll see you on the other side, fishes and fishers!
We started the day with a 7 am sail, fishing over the low tide for seven hours heading back in for 2 pm, a full four hours before the rozzers started clamping down!
There is something very cool about fishing from a boat in the dark, as the first hour was spent fishing from darkness into full light. The Straits is a stunning place to fish at the best of times but, from a boat, it takes on a different look altogether and watching the light increase as the tree-lined banks become less silhouette and more picture-like is something to behold...even on a rainy morning such as this.
The rain persisted for much of the morning, finally abating around midday giving us a couple of hours to dry off before we had to head back in.
The first part of the fishing was very much a scratching/species hunt.
For this, I prefer to use my two hook scratching rig, I've also got a 1 up 2 down variant of this. I work for TronixFishing so most of the components and line are from Tronixpro, for full disclose...other brands are available
This is essentially 100cm of 50lb rig body with a Continental Clip to the lead end and a size 4 rolling swivel at the leader end. I favour using glue rigs. I find them stronger and better than using crimps personally. In between, I use two 4 way beads, trapped between a pair of glue tubes that have been glued into place (I use a rig jig for this, which I'll do an article on for the TSF Articles section at some point). Each snood is set at either end of the rig, so there is one bait hard on the deck and the other above. For the snoods. I use 30 to 45cm of 20 or 25lb fluorocarbon, I like the hardness and stiffness of fluorocarbon for snoods, the "invisibility" factor is just an added bonus for me. The fluorocarbon is then passed through the 4-way bead, I then tie and bed down a series of figure of eight knots at the end of the fluorocarbon, this butts up against the 4 way bead. To the other end, I'll slide on a silicone rubber stop and then add the beads of my choice. This could be two yellow, or a small 5mm floating bead or another attractor, depending on my mood. I use the rubber stop to lock the beads in place behind the book. If you've ever watched an underwater video of beads in action, you'll see they can be all over the shop! To the end, I'll then tie in a size 6 Kamasan B940 to finish the snood off.
I'll tie in different sized hooks depending on the situation, species I'm going to target. I find the size 6 Kamasan B940 to be the best around for the type of boat scratching I do though. I'll drop down to 8, 10, 12 and even further down in wormer style patterns, stronger carp/coarse hooks are also good if I'm going for the really small stuff.
I've caught near double-figure Pollack and near Irish specimen sized wrasse on this rig, so I have the utmost confidence in its strength and ability. And as we all know, confidence in your gear is a major factor in catching fish!
Although the Straits can be murky, I've been finding success with coloured leads, could be a confidence thing or there could be something visually appealing that brings out the inquisitive species. So much so that all my leads are now coated in some colour or another. I use jewellery wire, which is cheap as chips, as my weak link. All leads are prepared before a session with a short length of twisted jewellery wire and this just slips into the Continental Clip easy.
Anyway, to the fishing. We had plenty of whiting and pouting to the boat in the first couple of hours. When you just want to get out and fish, catching whatever is there is great fun and there was some decent sized whiting that came aboard during that first few hours. All whiting and pouting'd out, we then moved closer towards Britannia Bridge.
After twenty minutes of scratching, I changed tactics. Changing to a simple one hook rig with a 4/0 Viking pattern and a pink muppet. Putting down a squid mackerel combination, it wasn't long before the huss found the baits and I had four in quick succession, including a decent sized one and at the opposite end...a really very small one too! The rest of the boat were bringing in huss, dogs, whiting and pouting. There was also a nice thornback and a couple of decent smoothhounds landed too. All in all, a great mixed bag!
Moving back closer to Port Dinorwic, the anchor was dropped again in search of a few species. For my efforts, I picked up more whiting and pouting, dropping down to really small hooks (size 16s) resulted in a crab fest, so I went back to fishing with larger 6s again for more whiting and pout. Across the boat though, a few sea scorpions were boated.
Despite the battering rain and squalls at points, it felt good to get out and have a good day fishing with a decent mixed bag of species, knowing that from 6 pm that night, we'd no longer be able to fish for a couple of weeks.
For me, my fishing is done now until mid-November. My local carp and coarse fishery which I could walk to is closed and the Straits is just a bit too far to walk loaded with kit. So, it's a good two weeks of getting on top of work and sorting out kit ready to hit it hard again come the end of the lockdown.
I'll see you on the other side, fishes and fishers!
