Slow Going In The Late Summer Sunshine

Whilst looking for a trip at the end of September I came across a request on the Deep Sea web site for additional Anglers to make up numbers on a trip on Channel Chieftan out of Weymouth with a club from Stoke-on-Trent. I contacted Mark Bates who had made the post and was deligthed to join Mark, Dave Simcock and some of the other guys from Tittensor Deep Sea Angling Club.

As you will see from the pictures below, this was a rare calm and sunny day of the type that have been so few and far between this summer.

The only detracting factor was that the wind was set to strengthen through the day to reach a force 5 and would remain resolutely easterly all day.

On this day Pat Carlin, Skipper of Channel Chieftan, was undertaking some commercial work further up the coast and we were taken out by Richard, Pat's number 2, on his other boat Meridian Express (another large catamaran I have fished on before and which is an excellent angling platform). Richard had planned a day fishing for Bream and Bass and we headed straight out to the mussel beds to drift for Bream whilst we waited for the tide to pick up and the "race" to start producing bass.

As we left the harbour it was like stepping back in time 200 years as this fine 3 masted tall ship emerged from the early morning mist looking alot like the Marie Celeste!

I must invest in a better camera than my point and shoot ,and get a decent telefoto lens as there are so many good photo opportunties when out at sea that do not translate well to pictures when snapped at 3 miles distant!

But anyway - the fishing. As the title suggests the fishing was slow all day. It was one of those days where we seemed to find fish initially but the they were just the odd fish with the sport quickly dropping off. That said, the fish we did catch were a reasonable quality and we caught very few dog fish.

An initial drift on the Mussel Beds produced a few nice Black Bream averaging a little over 2lbs in weight. A further couple of drifts however produced no fish at all and with the tide picking up Richard told us to switch to Shads and we headed in to the "race" with what seemed like most of the angling boats on the south coast!

The first drift produced 3 Bass with a nice 5lb 'er falling to a young lad from Reading who had joined the trip with his dad. As is always the case, the youngster (around 9 or 10 years old) was one of the top rods on the boat for the day.

On this first drift I registered a number of sharp pulls at the end of the drift but failed to hook a fish. When we reeled in to return for the next drift I couldn't believe my stupidity. I had left the plastic hook guard on the Shad and had obviously missed my chance to catch a bass for my tea. Now I have to confess here that I do this probably two times out of every three when I go fishing, it seems to be some sort of mental block for me!

We then did another 3 or 4 drifts but couldn't contact any bass (even more depressing that I had missed my chance on the first drift).

It was easy to see by watching the boats around that no-one else was fairing much better. We headed back to the Mussel beds to chase the Bream again. Now I had captured a Bream in the first session and now followed this up quickly with a second. Apologies for the lousy photo but I was hiding out at the front of the boat and had to try and hold the fish and the camera at the same time.

The last time I had gone in search of Bream it was the August 15th competition on Flamer and I had failed miserably. But armed with my new super small hooks (sizes 4 and 2 short shank carp hooks as advised by Dave Pitman of Atlanta) I found my conversion rate of bites to fish, on a day that was tough, was much higher.

As we had also picked up a number of mackerel whilst we were drifting, and as the Bream fishing remained intermittent at best, Richard took us out to the west of Portland Bill and we anchored on a reef / bank where there would be a chance of a larger fish such as a conger or a huss. As the boat swung around at anchor one of the anglers on board caught a Pollack of around 5 pounds but we failed to contact any eels or sharks.

I managed another 3 Bream in the afternoon and the occasional Mackerel. I was fishing at the bow of the boat and Richard gave me a handly tip of casting away from the boat as I couldn't trot my bait back directly without tangling the other anglers. This proved effective and it was with this method that I managed to locate the fish I caught. There is something quite satisfying about working out how to catch a fish when things are slow, possibly more so than catching dozens when fishing is easy.

So there we go, another day on the water and the sport was very different again. The old adage that this is why the sport is called "fishing" and not "cacthing" holds true!

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