The Bull Nose - Preston Docks

Thursday 14th May 2015

This blog post has taken a while to get out there compared to some recently but I'll be honest up front now and say that it has taken me this long to get over the shame of being beat by my mate Novice Dez. Now, nearly a week later, I have gotten over myself and am ready to spill the beans. 

A voyage of re-discovery, that is what sea fishing has become for me over the last 12 months as I look to get back into this side of the sport that I had been on a long hiatus from. With my good pal Danny, as you may have read, we recently fished Rossall beach near the 5 bar gate. It was on the way home from that session we were talking about the options of fishing Preston docks as we had read about on the Internet.

Good fortune saw Danny be able to fish the docks for the first time shortly after the rossall session and then fish it again on the Monday night preceding my visit. He told me that he had fished from high tide down to low water and had around 8 decent sized flounder. So my plan on this Thursday was to fish the tide up to high water and do a kind of comparison to help better plan future visits. A quick text chat with Novice Dez and we had agreed for a Thursday night session and I was picking him up from the docks McDonald's (him and a couple of Big Mac meals) ready for the evenings session.

When we arrived, we were the only anglers on the bullnose so pretty much had our pick of areas. As we had never been there before we had no previous  experience to guide us so I decided we would fish from the wall near a bin, the lid of which had clearly been used as a bait table many times before so if nothing else, I knew folk had fished this area. 

I set both of us up pretty quickly and as a bit of an experiment to see what is the better options, I set Dez up with a paternoster rig where as I had a running leger set up. I figured we could compare the 2 and see which is best. As the water was quite low at this stage, there wasn't much pull on rigs so we could get away with relatively light 4 oz plain weights. Nice and easy. What transpired though was a quiet  session as we approached high tide. No bites registering and the only sign was Dez who had somehow managed to hook through the eye of a swivel on somebody else's lost rig, he reeled that in and the attached Flounder that came with it. I had to make it quite clear to Dez that in our usual mini-competition that I like to have, that this fish didn't count as he didn't hook it - but I did claim the free grip lead that came with it.

As the tide rose, a few other anglers turned up and these guys seemed to know what they were doing. Figuring they were regulars, I watched them set up and they were all using paternoster rigs with heavier grip leads. I changed my rig to a paternoster rig after this but I did wonder why they felt the need for a grip lead - I didn't have to wonder for long though as the pull of the tide seemed to increase dramatically and I was no longer able to hold bottom. I quickly switched both me and Dez onto 6oz grip leads and we were soon back in business but I was surprised by how much the tide pulled here.

About half an hour before high tide the water slackened off and as if by magic we started getting bites. Dez managed to land a better flounder before I got off the mark with a mini one. I missed many bites though, either from being too keen and hitting them too quick or I left them too long - either way it was getting frustrating. Dez made matters worse for me as he added 2 more flounder to his tally before the end of the night. Novice Dez had beaten me 3-1 or 4-1 if you could the snagged rig fish.

So as the session drew to close, I had a think about how it had gone. It was clear from this one session that the flounder seemed to feed better when the water wasn't pulling as much. So with this in mind, the next session I try down there will be planned to start about an hour to half hour before high tide and fish it out. Hopefully that will see a better return. I'm also hoping that I can get some better bait for next time, this session was using up bait that I had in the freezer and had been defrosted and refroze a few times, so it wasn't the best. Interestingly, Danny had mentioned to me that he had taken fish on isomes when he went, the sandy coloured ones in particular. I tried this myself and had no joy, in fact the one fish I had was caught in a 2 hook flapper rig, the top hook using black lug and the bottom using an isome and it was the lug that took the fish. 

Anyway, that was that for Preston docks first outing. I will be returning as it is an easy place to fish with only short chucks and the relative comfort of being able to fish out of the boot of your car as well. I just hope the fish are more obliging next time I go.

Heronbrook Fishery - Meadow Pool

Heronbrook Fishery - Meadow Pool

Saturday 9th May 2015

www.heronbrookfisheries.co.uk

Back on Match duty this weekend as I make the trip down to Heronbrook Fisheries. Quite a long trip for a club based in Wigan but over the years this has proved to be one of the fairest match venues we fish. We don't always get huge weights, but what we get is consistent weights across the field. This fact makes me look forward to this fixture on the match calendar and this week was no different. 

I must say though that as I was sat at home drafting the introduction to this blog entry on Friday afternoon, the constant rain that had been falling in Wigan since lunch time was filling me with dread for a washout, in fact I am sure the last time I fished Heronbrook we had really heavy rain as well. Fingers crossed for a dry day on Saturday.

Well, Saturday was far from dry but there were odd breaks in the weather and dry spells. What was dominant though was the wind and as I found myself on peg 18 of meadow pool, the wind was coming straight across me from my right. This made fishing the long pole tight across near enough impossible. Sadly this day will not live long in the memory as I consider it to be my worse day ever on this normally very consistent water. In fact, the day was so bad for me personally, I am struggling to write about it - so to avoid a highly negative blog, I'm just going to summarise the events of the day and move on.

My setup on the day consisted of a track line at about 10m, plus 2 lines down the edge to my left, one at 13m and the other at about 4m. My plan was to feed meat on my track line and corn down the edge.  I decided that with the rain that had gone in the night before, the fishing would be tough so rather than put a full pot in at the start, I would feed the track line with the kinder pot and periodically feed corn by hand down the edge. As it happened, I had 3 fish in quick succession on the track line and by half 10, I was feeling quite positive however this is where the fun ended for me as following the last of the 3 on that initial run, my float was just sat lifeless. I did my best to make it work, I tried changing my shorting pattern, changing my depth, I even changed hook to a different size but nothing could produce another bite. Just before 12 I managed to fluke a fish as I lifted my rig to ship back and refeed, I felt a heavy lump. I quickly landed my 4th fish which was firmly hooked in the top lip - I would have sworn it would be foul hooked given the way I hooked it. That 4th fished signalled the end of any action I had on this day and as I sat for 3 hours, totally bite less, my frustration levels were rising dramatically. I'm sad to say that eventually the frustration got the better of me and half an hour before the end of the match, I packed up.  As the club also fish for team points, I was obligated to weigh in so the nets stayed in for now and I got the gear ready for the weigh in.

The weigh in proved to be a real mix bag with a much greater spread of weights than we are used to here. Top of the shop was Dave Leonard with a very respectable 79lb off peg 42, 3 more weights over 70lb made the top 4 with Jay Berry, Matty Ruddy and John Ruddy weighing in 74lb, 72-8 and 71-8 respectively. There were 3 weights in the 50's. The rest were spread out with 40's, 30's and 20's being placed on the scales. My 4 fish went 15-8 and even with Frank Aspinall making it a joint 15th place for me by placing the same weight from peg 21, I wasn't last as poor old Mark Anglesea - not normally used to being down this end of the results - weighed in just 11lb.

So with the 3 matches I have/am due to miss, the 11 points I gained from this visit (once visitor placing a are discounted) has pretty much seen off any chance of getting up to the top of the league this year. So it looks like I am playing for pride on a match by match basis now for the rest of the year.

Rossall Beach

Sunday 3rd May 2015

Rossall Beach - 5 Bar Gate

High Tide: approx 11:30 (8.3m) (www.tidetimes.org.uk)

With no match scheduled over the long weekend, a pleasure session was on the cards and for this sesson I had decided that I shall turn my attention to the sea for a spot of beach casting. A quick chat with my pal Danny Lancaster and we had agreed the day would be Sunday but now needed to decide just where to fish.  We are still getting to grips with the venues available to us in the North West so after a bit of research on line and  some advice seeking on the 'Lancashire Sea Fishing' Facebook group, we finally decided we would fish Rossall Beach at the 5 Bar Gate.

As we had never been there we decided to arrive a bit early to have a scout around and then settle down to fish the tide up for a couple of hours before fishing it back it down - this was following advice from helpful folks on the internet who advised that the tide can catch you off guard here if you are not familiar with it, so fishing this way in daylight will allow us to see where it comes in for future reference.

Following a cheeky breakfast, we arrived at the mark and noticed a group of anglers unloading in the car park. We had a quick chat with these guys and found out they were fishing a match so we decided to stay out their way and settled further up the beach. There are permanent peg numbers marked on the wall here so for reference we fished between peg 95 and 96.

Already we could see some obvious gulleys that would create a target area and also where these will fill up with the incoming tide and potentially cut you off if not careful. 

We settled initially just on the edge of the shingle area and set up stall. My set up was a straight forward single hook clipped rig using a 150g weight. Bait for the first a cast was a single frozen lug worm. Danny's set up was very similar.  It didn't take us long to be ready to go and agree the obligatory pound bets for first fish and biggest fish (we are match anglers at heart).

Due to me not beach casting on a regular basis, I always find my first cast on any session to be a bit tentative and this was no different as my initial cast went off to my right and fell a little shorter than I would have liked but I decided it was good enough and left it.

Its fair to say that me and Danny are quite keen to get this beach casting lark sussed and so far we haven't blanked.....so add to that the unknown of having never fished here before and we found ourselves full of optimistic anticipation.

As the session went on, I found myself getting much more comfortable with my casting again and after a bit of chopping and changing with rigs, I eventually settled on a 2 hook clipped rig using a 170g weight. I found this weight seemed to give me a better cast and the 2 hook maximised my chances of hooking a fish. The session itself was slow though with only Danny having signs of a bite as we hit high tide. At this stage in a beach casting session, without fish or bites to show for my efforts, I tend to find myself doubting the rigs that I am using, doubting the area I am fishing, etc etc and this all results in rapidly diminishing confidence.

We stuck to our guns however and it wasn't long before Danny was reeling in a small Dab to take first blood and the first quid.

I am sure Danny won't mind admitting though that he didn't see this fish bite and it was during a change of bait that he reeled in this welcome prize.  This fish was well hooked so it's possible it could have been on the hook for a while so with this in mind we thought it prudent to reel in and change bait more frequently in case we couldn't see the bites. As I did this, I was rewarded with the same thing, a small Dab on the hook. Whilst not in the ideal way, this did mean that I had managed to avoid the blank.  Unfortunately for me, this fish was also smaller than Danny's so he was winning the race for the biggest fish as well!

As we fished the tide down, the fish were notable by their absence.  Danny did manage to snare another which we thought was a Dab but in closer inspection there were feint orange spots visible so this could have been a small Plaice.  It also meant that with no further fish showing for me, Danny had also won the second quid for the biggest fish if he day.  Eventually the tide dropped sufficient for us to call it a day and we packed up, blank avoided but not the most productive of fishing sessions. Once we had the car loaded we took a little walk around the area again to have a look at the beach we had been fishing over to look at the gulleys. Between us we had decided that it could be worth trying to fish this area at low water as it looked like there was some deeper water just beyond the beach that was beginning to show itself. Maybe an idea for next time. 

All in all a good day and a good scouting mission for another beach mark for future sessions.

Next Weekend

Next weekend will see me switch back to coarse fishing and back on match duty at the famous Heronbrook Fisheries. Having missed 2 matches, I am already seeing my name slip down the league table and with at least one other guaranteed missed match, I need a good result to keep me in contention of a good league position.  This match will also see me give my new Nick Gilbert pole elastic a first outing - let's hope they bring me some luck.

Tight Lines