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Monday, 20 June 2011

Blimey - more sea fishing...

A trip afloat after smoothhounds...

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I went fishing with some old work buddies the other day. We have an annual trip out of Hayling Island and it normally turns into a good day. This time, however the weather forecast was not so inspiring as the warm weather had broken and a gentle force 5 was forecast. As we generally fish inshore we hoped we'd find enough shelter to fish in a semi sensible manner. Normally we can fish with very light leads and carp gear for the sporting starry and common smoothys.

We started with a bit of breaming and as is often the way one or two anglers were getting the lion share with the fish seeming to only be populating a couple of square meters of sea bed. What goes on here? Is it a particular bit of reef, a particular line angle giving better bites, or just chance. Who knows... Anyway eventually the boat swung around enough in the stiffening breeze for everyone (or nearly everyone!) to catch a load of, mainly small, bream. The weather started to cut up rough so once everyone had enough of this the skipper asked if we were ready to go inshore for the smoothys. A unanimous yes....

However, inshore was not much calmer and a mate who was struggling with an awesome hangover started to look greener and greener. I tried to help him by attaching one of the lively hardbacks crabs we'd collected to his ear. This seemed to help as shortly latter he was attached to a lively hound. After much buggering about and collecting various other anglers a nice fish of about 9lbs was brought aboard.

Due to the swell and our general incompetence the smoothy fishing wasn't as good as normal. Most people managed one and one chap, who never catches anything (you know who you are Robbo) even managed a smoothy and a small tope.

The light line fishing was a bit of a disaster as due to the swinging boat in the increasing gale, many tangles ensued. The fish were also being a bit tricky and unusually gentle biting. Still, when you hook one they don't half hang on!...

 

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