Sea Fishing - the species hunt continues

It's been a few weeks since I've posted a blog update. This is quite simply because I haven't been out much. Since my last post I have only had one outing on the beach at Cleverleys and quite frankly, it was a very much uneventful trip and resulted in a further blank. I don't normally object to writing about a blank session but I couldn't think of anything worth saying about this one so decided to leave it. I should have also had another Pem Central match to report on based on the match calendar I have published, but, to cut a long story short it transpired that I had muddled up the dates and we had no match on the 18th July as planned.

So here I find myself, ready to report on my last 'proper' outing, on which My regular sea fishing partner Danny and I managed to find some time and headed down to Cleveleys again to see if we could top up our species hunt tallies.

Rossall Promenade - 5 Bar Gate 

Friday 7th August

High Tide - Approx 17:30

The tides for this session were good for me. Being able to finish work at 12:30 would allow me plenty time to get up to Bispham Angling for some fresh worms, then make my way up to the mark and fish it a couple of hours up, and then all the way down to low tide at around midnight. Danny would be joining me around high tide. A few delays though saw me only get to the beach at around 4pm though. When I got there, there was already a few anglers on the beach but I managed to find myself a spot and was soon set up and had my first bait in the water at around 4:30pm - so I would at least get to fish an hour up.

As the plan for the day was a 'species hunt', I took 2 rods. 1 rod was set up on a 2 hook flapper rig, supplied by Rig Kraft - on which I would fish worm baits either on their own or tipped off with squid. The second rod would be set up on a pennell pulley with bigger baits, such as whole squid, sandeel or cocktails of the two in the hope of a larger specimen. I had plenty bait for the day so I was changing baits fairly regularly but in the hour or so up to high tide there was little happening, looking down the beach, it seemed I wasn't alone as I could see others were struggling. Danny showed up shortly after a high tide and was soon fishing. We fished for an hour or two after high - during this time Danny managed to catch 2 small Tope pups, and I caught a dogfish on a pennel rigged large worm/squid bait.  I wouldn't normally be overly pleased with the presence of dogfish but it was a species hunt and despite their commonality it was one that I was yet to record so it was certainly a positive.

As the tide started to drop, we had less and less depth in front of us so we decided to have a break to allow the tide drop a little further before fishing again. A freshly made brew on the gas stove and a quick trip to a near-by Chinese takeaway quickly refreshed us and we were soon itching to get back on the beach.  The tide had dropped enough for us to get beyond the first gulley now and as we were walking back out towards to sea Danny spotted something flapping on the beach, the culprit was the smallest flattie I've ever seen and after a quick inspection, it was safely returned to the sea.

As we fished the tide down, we were rewarded with a very pleasant evening with a clear sky and some good views of the stars, the space station and some satellites but alas, no further fish showed themselves that night. At around midnight and low tide, we decided enough was enough and called it a day. We were hoping the fishing would have picked up as it had been a bit slow in the area of late but despite the improvement on our last session, and the fact that we both recorded an additional species on the hunt, I can't help but be a little disappointed with the result and the realisation that this session will likely be he end of my summer campaign on the beach as the next few weeks sees me on match duty with Pem Central and also have some important family time. Maybe I can sneak a last ditch attempt at the species hunt towards the end of September and into October. 

Blog Update

I've added this little bit in after initially publishing this post but I have completed the update to my 2015 species page.  This can be found here http://fishernutstu.blogspot.co.uk/p/sea-fishing-species.html

Outlook

So my forecast for the next few weeks is looking like this, 15th August Pem Central take on Orcheton. On the 21st and 22nd August some of the lads from Pem, myself included are heading down to Barston to fish a match on the Saturday. I've managed to score a cheeky day off so will be heading down on the Friday for a practice. Then after a weekend off I've got consecutive Saturday matches in September at Weston Pools and Old Hough. Will be a busy few weeks but I'm hoping there will be some good results in there too.