19th june, solent.

[geejayy]

with crabs and bait to spare from fridays escapade & hartley champing at the bit to break his smooth hound blank this year i resigned myself to another blank- he's a jinks , no fish come within 50 mile of him,or any one with him usually.
by 8pm we were at the beach,



it was low tide , and i think the spot has potential , we had a bit of a scout around but the ever keen hartley wanted to set up and fish somewhere a little deeper.
so it was off to lee on solent we went.

high tide was for about 2am, the weather was clear high cloud , dry with a light southerly breeze, the sea was flat calm and clear once the tide started to creep up the shingle.

bait wise we had squid, h/bcrab, rag, and freshouts(lug).
we were set up in no time with rods nodding lazily to the tune of a little weed
passing through with the tide,
with the prospect of not much doing , and the pressure off because i'd already caught both starrey & commons for the hunt i was happy to just chill and watch hartley blank

as darkness fell, i saw a knock on my crab rod over hartleys shoulder , who had come to bait up.
stepping to my rod it had slacklined a little wound down to it and struck then all hell broke loose with the fish running left and stripping 20 yards or so , then slacklined again and by the time i'd caught up with it was running
away slightly right stripping line again, i managed to turn it and pump it in .
in the bag the scales pulled around to 9lb , but the scales were knacked reading 3lb light with the adjuster damaged so it looks like i need new scales



while rebaiting, the worm rod went over on its rest and a smaller but just as spirited turbostarreyhound gave me the runaround for a while. didn't bother with the scales any more



just had time to recast this one and was nattering to hartley when his rod got dragged clean off its stand, no hook up , no cigar.

by this time the rain had settled in but we were still buzzing and i think hartley would have lynched me if i made him pack up for home with this many fish showing.

the bites dryed up , we sat in the rain and got drowned. hartley was in next with a small bass, while i missed 2 more bites that were def hounds.
i thought i'd caught one in reply a short while later when i was retrieving a fish that was giveing some head shake, but was surprised by a sizeable bream , a black un , i think.



the picture like a few others were getting a little blurred coz i kept forgetting to wipe the rain off the lens i guess.

finally hartleys rod with worm baits hoops over and he's in, reconing he's got a better bass , but i could see no head shakes and predicted a smut
hartley flashed a toothless grin and i was eventually proven right when he beached a pb , est at 5-7lb,



just one last run for be before dawn, one that felt like a pb, the runs were just long and unstoppable , the fish was going just where it wanted to till it tired and i managed to get it to the groynes, but one last bid for freedom and it shed the hook leaving me hooked up with one ov hartleys rods ,

a wet miserable drive home where 'h' snored all the way
but deff one of the best sessions i can remember.

[gullyworm]

Cracking report mate and very well done on a great session.

[pingu]

nice one gordon , cracking session

dave

[scottish_and_mental]

I look at that spot all the time but personally dont think theres enough water there - its one of my favourite digging beds and oddly have an almost identical photo on my phone



nice result considering the crappy weather tho

[fishypaul]

sort of session we all dream about, well done gord

[MRG2000]

Nice fishing chaps .......