24th April - Bassing and Fishathon

24th April

Back to Bass hunting and "Almost Live" fishathon fun time again

Mark and mackerel

Mark stringing huge mackerel!

Today's plan was rather affected by the weatehr forecast, and illustrates how well even short term planning can be affected by an inaccurate weather forecast. The forecast had been given, as a stiff SE wind all day. Basing the days events on this, I met mark at the ridiculously early time the tides demanded, and we headed down to the beach. Had the SE wind appeared, all would be well and you would be reading about how decent spikey's came crashing through the surf. Instead, the surf lacked energy, and as such it was only schoolies that wanted to play. We rellocated as the action really wasnt inspiring, and found a few bass a bit quicker on the second spot. MArk ended up with ten bass by the time the water reached the shingle, but unfortunately no table fish amongst them. SO, on this vain, I suggested that we headed for the marina, to look for squid, as it would be a new species for Mark. However, on getting there the stiff Easterly wind had put both colour and swell along the West arm. We gave it a go, but with no joy other than a nice Garfish for Mark. IT was looking bad, and time to resort to the tinsel to salvage a feed for Mark. Bingo, plenty of HUGE mackerel around at the moment, and mark managed ten no problem. A very happy customer drove back down the A27 to HAyling that afternoon!

"Almost Live" Fishathon 7

DVice Squad begins to assemble

The DVice Squad begins to assemble.

Time for some forum fun with the fishathon crew this evening. I had previousley pumped a few blacks to get us going, and the plan was we would assemble and scratch some bait out whilst fishing. The venue had been chosen on the strength of the wind forecast, but when we arrived at the beach, once again the wind had failed to get round, and was sitting nicely at Easterly, never the best for fishing down here, and not at all good for generating the surf that is required to attract the bigger bass on these beaches.

Richard showing the results of all that spade work

The fishing and bait gathering began. The format of this event, is that lots of groups fish all around the country (and abroad) and report their catches back to one guy, Mike, who then publishes the results as they come in on the fishing forum worldseafishing.com. Its a lot of fun, and very interesting to compare results of the different areas. The school bass began to show from the beggining, and young Richard managed this tidy eel. I was determined to find a better bass, and sat on a live launce that I had feathered up on the marina a couple of days previously. Cecil II did well, swimming strongly, scaring the crabs and schoolies away. But with no decent bass around, it was a pointless enterprise so I soon switched to the lug to get some fish under my belt.

Steve with a typical flat surf schoolie

At least everyone was having fun, as bites were plentiful, which after past DVice squad performances at these events made a pleasant change. Smiling faces all around, the bait was coming up readily, and the species count began to increase as well.