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March Disappoints But April & May Start To Deliver.
10th April 2008
March was supposed to be the month that saw Madpolka trying for early season Plaice on the Shambles Bank in Weymouth. Sadly, the weather conspired against us again, and with no back up plan there was nothing to do except wait for another day.
Thursday April 10th saw us plan another trip from Plymouth aboard Sequill, a Beneteau Antares 760. The plan was to fish some of the many inshore wrecks with the hope of finding some fat Spring run Pollack. With the weather jinx we have suffered since launching the site it was with considerable trepidation that we watched the long range weather forecasts worsen with snow and hail added to the high winds for good measure over the preceding weekend. But for once the forecasters didn't get the gloomy outlook quite right and on Thursday morning we had the chance to spend at least a few hours in a reasonably comfortable force 3-4 south westerly before the winds picked up again and the rain closed in.
With only a few hours available to us we had to focus on a couple of small wrecks some three miles from the Plymouth breakwater that we new fished well in the Summer, but at this time of year who knows??
Lonesome Pollack
The first drift we took was over a very small wreck that had yielded a number of very large Mackerel to Skipper Norman "Pops" Parker the week before. But that was before the snow and ice and none were showing on this day.
The sounder was showing fish over the back of the wreck and we tried with both feathers and small blue Tempest rubber sand eels. The first drift produced a Pollack of about 3lbs for the Skipper, whilst the editor failed to get a bite. Subsequent drifts produced no more fish and it was time to move on.
Jumbo Whiting
The second Wreck we fished is a good bit bigger than the first and in the summer can produce a good head of whiting. The Skipper persevered with feathers, baiting the bottom hook with frozen Mackerel. Madpolka used a single hook flowing trace with pink and white attractor beads on the hook length.
 The Skipper showed the way again with a nice whiting of around two and a half pounds coming on the first drift. Several more drifts produced whiting in the 1 - 2 lb range for the skipper and this good size pouting as well.
The editor finally got on the score board with a fairly indifferent whiting before the weather took an ugly turn and we headed back to the Marina for a cup of tea and the chance to sacrifice the remainder of the bait to the poor cod and dog fish (both of which the editor excelled in catching!).
The Belgian Navy
A nice thing about being afloat is that you get to see so many interesting things, whether coast line from a perspective not previously seen, the wild life, or in this case - the Belgian navy.
The photo below shows the Frigate F930 "Leopold I". The vessel circled us for a couple of hours as it executed various training maneuvers before then heading in to Devonport.
If you are an enthusiast for all things naval you can find more information about the ship at the following Wikipedia entry - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F930_Leopold_I .
So there you go, two trips down and still no photo calls with high quality fish - here's hoping May improves!!
May 3rd - Weymouth Magic!!
With a forecast easterly 3 to 4 and the promise of "fair" weather all day it looked like our luck was finally changing. Pops was off throwing flies at Brown Trout on Exmoor so the Editor ventured out of Weymouth solo. The car was packed the night before with rods ready rigged, all the terminal tackle I could need and even my lunch ready made. What could go wrong now in getting the first quality photos of prime quality fish for the site?
Well forgetting the camera was probably not a good start. But given the lack of huge success in the previous trips I have "borrowed" images from all over the web to bring you this entry!
The Venue
The venue for the day was a trip aboard Dave Pitmans' excellent "Atlanta" out of Weymouth. Weymouth is without a doubt my favourite south coats port as it offers a huge variety of quality in shore fishing options as well the chance to do the more typical long haul wrecking trips that are the sole focus of so many other ports.
Weymouth os also very well organised from a fishing perspective with the tackle shop (Weymouth Angling Centre), parking and the many boats in the fleet all within a few hundred yards of each other. Even the Spar serves hot breakfast sandwiches and coffee at 06:30!!
"Atlanta" is a traditional style charter boat with a large and comfortable deck space rivaling many larger boats.
Dave regularly puts together individuals and small groups to make up a charter and publishes his schedule for these types of trips well in advance on the very useful www.deepsea.co.uk web site.
The Atlanta home page can be found at
http://www.deepsea.co.uk/boats/atlanta/index.htm
Beautiful Bream
So the positive side of Global Warming is that the higher water temperatures seem to be bringing the Black Bream in earlier and in greater quantities.
Dave took us to a mark a little east of Lulworth Cove which had been fishing particularly well for the previous couple of weeks. At least a half a dozen of the Weymouth boats also fished this mark on the day.
When we arrived the tide was slack and having anchored we spent the next 25 minutes swinging a little as the wind dominated. During this time there were no bites and you needed to be in touch with your gear to avoid snagging on the rough ground.
As the tide started to ebb however the fish immediatley started to bite. A dog fish was taken followed quickly by an average Ballan Wrasse.
I was fortunate to have a peg on the stern of the boat and was able to bounce back my bait to find the fish. The tackle deployed was a 10lb class solid carbon rod and small multiplier with 14lb Berkley Fireline braid.
On the terminal end I used a flowing trace carrying a size 1 hook baited with a small rag worm tipped with either a whole small party squid or half a calamari head. Above the hook were six attractor beads (yellow & white alternately).
I used no more than 8oz at the peak of the tide dropping to 4oz on the slack (the advantage of light weight braid and the back of the boat!).
My first fish came and it was the target species!! A fish of around 1.25 lbs, but a Bream none the less (and at least it wasn't a poor cod or a pout!).
Fishing was steady and I took another 7 Bream over a 3 hour period as well as a couple of the obligatory dog fish. Three of the Bream were on the small side so were returned.
The other seven anglers also had a number of Bream and dog fish from this mark in the morning session.
At around 13:30 with a reasonable catch of Bream already Dave suggested we try another mark to see if we could locate skate for variety. We traveled back towards Weymouth for about 3 miles and anchored over a clean sand bottom.
 One of the other anglers caught a small spotted ray which was a lovely looking fish. Dave showed us how to do it by catching a small starry smoothound whilst the rest of us caught dog fish! The one surprise was however that we about half a dozen very large spider crabs. One of the anglers caught a dogfish and a spider crab (of around 3lbs) on the same hook at the same time! Dave said that these were about a month early as well.
This was an excellent trip with plenty of variety of species and good numbers of our target fish. Despite a relatively small average size, on light gear Bream take some beating for entertainment value.
Details of Weymouth Angling Centre can be found at the following address;
http://www.deepsea.co.uk/shops/weymouth_angling_centre/index.htm
Check back at www.madpolka.co.uk for future installments, or why not drop me a line at steve@madpolka.co.uk to let me know how you find the site.
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