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