Langstone trip friday 16th - great weather, no fish

[Lookfar]

Hi folks,
I thought I was going to be the only boat out on this run but at the last minute John opted to come along with Moby, to my delight. In winter especially, I like some company. We got launched for 9am with barely a breath of wind under a steel blue sky. Not too much gravel on the slip on the Hayling side, unlike Eastney, and even at dead low water we still had concrete under the car wheels. My crew had only one pair of wellies
between two of them, but John stepped in to hold SeaMouse while I parked
the trailer and when I legged it back down, they'd even got the engine
warming up. It didn't help much, within 50 yards the 'no oil' light was
up and the engine management dumped us down to tick-over. This is an annoying trait of the e-tec's at low temperatures, even with the winter grade oil fitted. Over on Moby they had warmed up longer and faster than SeaMouse and had no problems, a lesson for next time out. I'd fitted trim tabs earlier in the month and with them adjusted to the middle settings, I was pleased to see that we came onto the plane much cleaner, ran flatter yet had apparently lost little or no top end speed.
Once the engine oil had finally warmed up, we cruised out to the Spoils. A big fleet right on the spot we were aiming for suggested that we'd got our plans right and I eased back to let John past. He anchored in on his usual position, downtide of the Cuba. I hung around until he'd swung into the
tide then dropped anchor to hopefully land up beside him. I got it hopelessly wrong, ending up just feet away. That left me recovering the anchor from the 'wrong' side of the boat, which had to be aborted on the first attempt when the warp got down near the prop. We promptly drifted down into Moby's bows, with John good-humouredly fending us off. All that faffing about then put the warp around the skeg and I completed my humiliation with a session in the transom well waving a boathook. Second attempt was cleaner and I reset us to his other side and settled down to nurse my injured pride.
We'd ended up in 140ft with the tide racing through, so it was
no surprise to find we needed well over 1lb of lead to touch bottom. It
was dead down there, no rattles or bumps, until finally Malcolm bent
into a dead weight that turned out, unsurprisingly, to be a dogfish. At
2lb it was a cracker for the area and came home with him to be turned
into curry. Another dogfish to Malcolm and a small spider crab for me was the full extent of things, with the tide easing very slowly and the VHF chatter making it plain that no-one else was doing much better. In the end, I got twitchy and moved us uptide of the Cuba to try for an eel. The two boats already near the wreck turned out to be well uptide and off to either side of it, so I was able to settle over the metalwork without crowding anyone. That resulted in something very odd. I lifted into a solid weight that just occasionally thumped and pulled back. I was gaining a foot or two at a time on full lift, with John beside me also bent hard into something. When my
hookhold failed, so did John's. The mangled baits on my rig suggested
I'd been hooked up while he'd been wrapped round my gear. Whatever it
was, it had been holding bottom against the combined lifting power of
two 30lb class rods - a decent ray or a huge rock being bumped uptide?
When the tide dropped away to nothing an hour early, I headed
inshore to the Nab area and settled in very near the Elford. We at least
were getting bites here. The tide was only just turned and two ounce
weights and baited feathers picked up the odd small pout. As the tide
got going a larger pout or two showed but things were very slow still. I
put an uptider out to port with a 3 hook paternoster and the result was
instant, rattle-bang and in came a 'proper' winter pout, in open ground
colours and 1lb 12oz on the scales. Next cast, a pair of them to 1lb.
After that, Malcolm adopted the rod and proceeded to run up a decent
tally. We were parked beside a real hotspot. Nothing was coming downtide
or to starboard but anything cast well to port got monstered. By the
time the light was starting to fail we'd put 20 aboard and the fishbox
was pleasingly full (I was eating and enjoying pout long before Hugh FW outed them).
Heading in was great, still a little warmth left in the day and the sun going down across the island. I'd let the crew have the helm and could sit and admire the view for a change. I decided to drop some feathers into the pout wreck as we passed by then try for a pollack on Dean Tail. First pass arriving at the pout wreck hit it spot on, with fish all over it, and I thought we were on to a winner. Could I hit that drift again?? No chance. In five attempts I crossed decent structure just once, though when I did all three of us loaded up and we put 8 decent pout aboard between us in the one drop. Dean Tail was disappointing, just the one pout in exchange for two sets of feathers lost in the superstructure. By now, it was twilight and the temperature was nose-diving. Moby had opted to anchor the Dean Tail hole rather than help us feed tackle to the wreck so I radio'ed in that we were homebound and got a head start on them. I was not happy to find that both my running and anchor lights had packed up, then the slow run
up the harbour confirmed what I'd thought throughout the day in that I
seem to have a misfire at low revs. The engine just 'knocks' every now
and then as a cylinder misfires. Time for some maintenance.
Back ashore, recovery was a breeze and we were waiting to assist Moby as she came in. They'd had just dogs and small whiting, plus a spotted ray. A hell of a day for weather but where are the fish?? The VHF was a litany of gloom all day. We gutted and scaled in the light from the ferry pier then finished off the job, and skinned the doggie, back at home. At least my crew got a few fish suppers for the freezer

Steve

[tommy a]

Bloody good read Steve - may not have had many monsters but at least a few decent pout made for a nice supper - and you must get back out there for that large conger - if thats what it was !

[Lookfar]

Originally Posted by tommy a

Bloody good read Steve - may not have had many monsters but at least a few decent pout made for a nice supper - and you must get back out there for that large conger - if thats what it was !

Hi Tommy,
Not a conger, I think. Too sluggish. It would hold solid, then either come in a foot or two or heave back and take a yard of line then stop. We worked it up towards the boat a good few yards but it never got up off the deck. I'm pretty sure it was a big blonde ray but it just could have been something silly, like a heavy section of lost cable. If it WAS a ray, it was taking both rods locked solid to drag it uptide. I'd struck into a decent bite and my squid was chewed up, hence I think it was a poorly hooked ray. Guess I'll never know

Where are the cod and conger though? There were plenty of boats out there and the VHF chat was all the same thing, dogs and pout in small numbers. I'm thinking to head for the east coast and hope for a bag of codling instead.

Steve

[Fishing Forum Admin]

Cracking Post

[pingu]

great read as ever there steve

dave

[tommy a]

Dont know where the cod and conger are mate - it seems to me that the ever changing climate and the food they feed on is a critical cause of the changes. Up here the cod arent around in great numbers yet but then again in mid November weve been wearing shorts !!!

Maybe it will all mean a few new species heading our way in the next decade - nice marlin or something eh !

[Norfolkboy]

Nice one Steve

[BaggieRich]

Pity about the fishing but a good day and a really good read. Well done mate.