Late Catch Report! Boat Trip out of Burry Port

[JuanPablo]

hey guys sorry this catch report is real late coming! BY about 4wks.lol
Booked a trip on 'Panther' out of Burry Port which is skippered by Peter Nicholas who used to skipper 'Lady Helen' many years back when she operated outta Swansea.
Brilliant bloke and a stunning boat.

Anyway we booked the entire boat and told Pete to fish aswell because there were only the three of us!
We started just off the foul ground in the worms head area and the day started with Pete catching the biggest mackerel I have ever seen - we didnt weigh it and I was tempted to turn it into a flapper for tope later in the day but dont think a 6/0 viking would have been big enough!
I truly believe it was pushing 3lb - probably a welsh record! lol

We were fishing with live sandeel on the drift and it wasnt long before the bass came on the feed as the tide picked up on the ebb.
My father had the biggest bass of the day at 4lb you can see it on the 'Panther' website if you are interested, my dads name has been saved as my name - John Ellis - he was well chuffed about that as you can imagine! hehe

We caught approximately 25 fish between the three of us in about 2.5hrs before the ebb died down and the doggies came on the feed!! The bass were interspersed with a few pollack, red gurnard, tub gurnard and of course the odd mackerel if we lowered the eels to the reef too slowly!

We then headed offshore to feather a load of mackerel and then off to a tope mark ready for the flood tide.
Fishing flappers the session started well with me securing my first tope on the uptider - just a small one and then we had two more to the downtiders. Plenty of dogfish hanging onto the flappers and then letting go at the surface...grrr
i then had a cracking tope run near the end of the day, she stripped about 15yds but i think i struck a little too soon and missed it. Flapper came back well and truly munched.

Was a beautiful day - caught a nice tan and had a nice bass fillet for supper!

[pingu]

sounds a nice day ther

well done juan

dave

[cuckoo]

sounds like a great trip john ,
well done ,

lee.

[fishypaul]

a lovely days fishing jp,well done

[Norfolkboy]

Sounds a good trip John, well done.

[charlie the cod]

sounds like you had a great day on the water and bass are tasty to.
I thought the lady helen many years ago was owned and skippered by paul radford.

This is when fishing off swansea was excellent.

charlie....

[JuanPablo]

peter never owned 'lady helen' but he did skipper it for a number of years. i think it was after paul rather than prior but im not sure if he skippered it with paul as the owner or someone else?
you are right - back then i was really young but always remember seeing some of the catch reports for swansea frequently consisting of monster cod and the south coast boats getting as many double figure coalfish as they were pollack over the wrecks. back when the eddystone reef held dozens of british records and was full of double figure bass!
anyway - back to reality.....peter is now owner / skipper of 'panther' and will be selling it at the end of this season and upgrading to a cat - not sure what hull he said but it sounded massive!