Rough Bank Holiday weekend out of Langstone

Lookfar · #1 05-29-2007, 03:28 PM

Hi folks,
I was booked into Langstone for a weekend with the IAC internet club on our annual get-together. Got there late on friday after some traffic and work hassle to find the lads had been out and obligingly caught shed loads of mackerel and hardbacks, so I worked into dusk getting some groundbait made up while the mozzies ate me alive. A warm but sleepless night in the tent, trying not to scratch, saw me awake at 6am feeling decidely unwell. Breakfast didn't help matters at all but I had little choice but to head for the slip where my crewman Dave was waiting. The mackerel are invading Langstone on the flood tide at the moment, a spectacular sight as they herd fry onto the surface and decimate them. We had a quick feather for them but they didn't want such big lures, although the sheer number of fish meant you could feel them bumping the line even when there were no takes. Then we shot off after the other three Langstone boats. It was lumpy offshore but with Dave at the helm we slowly caught them up. At Utopia we dropped the pick down and I did some hanging on to the rail waiting for my stomach to stop doing back-flips while Dave busied himself dumping chopped mackerel into the depths. Then the hound and tope baits went out and we settled to wait in a nasty wind across tide that had SeaMouse rolling drunkenly. Bites were hard to spot and I bounced a couple of fish before losing a good one when the leader knot failed. Next bite wasn't messing around, a couple of twitches then a screaming run on squid. The fish came in steadily up the tide, obviously not really aware that it was hooked, so when it hit the net it went berserk. Just under 11lb of common hound and by the time I'd tagged and released it I was an even nastier shade of green. I stuck another half hour or so for just one mackerel and then with our competition hopes fading fast with the lack of fish and my breakfast likely to reappear at any moment, I called for a tactical retreat to Brake Ledge.
The run down to Brake was interesting, right into the teeth of the northerly force 4 and driving rain. The half canopy did a good job of keeping us dry, especially when I buried the nose over a monster swell and put a gallon or two of water right over the cuddy

Down on Brake we were getting some shelter from the land and my rebellious innards finally came back under control and I could start to fish properly again. The fish fed well and we started to run up a tally of reef species - ballans, pout, bream and poor cod, plus a doggie. One of the pout was a monster for a summer inshore fish, well over 1lb. There were cuttles around too, with Dave hauling in a headless pout. The bream were disappointingly small though. Our tactics called for 4 of each species, so with full bags of most of the expected we went on the drift to add a pollack and a gar before moving offshore to Boulder in hope of a ray from the gully. That bombed out, with more small bream but also a top-up on our wrasse and mackerel scores.
With the weather marginally more settled, I risked a run out onto the hound grounds. We had a few problems there getting the anchor to bite, as usual, but only one common hound showed plus some bonus mackerel and gar. When the anchor slipped again I gave it best and called a halt. The plan now was to bash our way down hard inshore and come back up the coast in the sheltered water. Along the way we drifted a reef to add some more pollack. The mackerel were going nuts again in Langstone so we knocked out a couple for next day's bait. A fantastic sight, when the shoal ran towards the boat all you could see was thousands of open mouths.
An easy recovery with so many folk around and down the pub for some well earned food and a good social. The talk was all of sunday's grim forecast, and with a northerly 6-8 promised later in the day it was clear we'd be working close to or within harbour.
Back to the tent and out like a light. It was apparently raining all night and damn cold but I was done for and slept through it. Six am was piddling down and it stayed that way all day, apart from when it chucked it down instead. It was a calm morning though, despite the predicted 4-5SE, and we had hopes of a quick session. Just three boats this time from Langstone. The plan was to look at conditions out of harbour (after playing among the mackerel shoals yet again with Valkyrie there too, absolutely dwarfing the little Warriors). It was kinda flat just offshore so we went for a cautious look at Bullocks Patch with the seas steadily lumping up on us. I went onto the base of the reef to maximise our chances of a bonus hound or ray, but that didn't work. We had fish though, pout, pollack, mackerel, corkwing wrasse and gar tearing into the small baits. The wind had risen fast though, and we could hear our Chichester boats on Medmery packing up and heading in. It was blowing a good 5 plus now, the seas were getting serious and Mark over on Lady Christine radio'd to call a halt just as the pitching broke our anchor trip and sent us off downtide anyway. We cut and run, surfing back on a following sea with the speeds shooting up from 13knots on the crests to nearly 20knots in the trough. Back onto land and we headed in like drowned rats to drop our tents and pack up. Changed into the last dry clothes I had and headed for the presentation evening and barbeque. Got outside some very nice steak and burgers, had a damn good natter and by 11pm I was following Moby up the A3 into the teeth of the gale. At which point my wipers failed and I discovered I'd left the torch on the roof of the car when I set off

Not a great weekend for fish, but certainly a memorable one. Bring on those baking, airless August heatwaves!

Steve