Sunday May 3rd, Venue Menai Straits.
A very poor turnout for the first match of 2009 with only four boats making the effort, the worst attendance for the first match of the year since i have been a member of the club which doesn't bode well for the future.
With fresh northwesterly winds forecast for Sunday the only choice was to fish the Menai Straits and early May would not produce the best from this venue but there should be a few species knocking about, Launching at Moel y Don opposite side to Port Dinorwic we soon had the boats launched and the trailers parked up at the top of the beach, three of the boats decided to run down to gallows point to try for the herring that are usually taken in the deep hole there at this time of year but the skipper of Rosea decided to shoot across to the hole just up from Port Dinorwic as herring had been taken there in the past, as soon as we got the drift right it payed off with a few being taken by Ian, we also picked up three or four mackeral on the same drift, we perserveared fishing this area hoping to pick up the dabs which once were so common here, no success with the flatties but we did manage a whiting to size.
The next mark we fished was an area of rough ground just of the hole at Pwllfanog closer to the mainland side in just over 60ft of water, at it's best this area can fish very well producing nearly all species of wrasse, huss conger pouting poorcod codling & pollock but today it was deffinately not at it's best only throwing up dogs and small ballan's, so we shot across the Straits to mark no3 hoping we could do a bit better here, apart from a couple of undersize huss this mark was no better but we had fished it for a couple of hours in the hope of an in size huss which would have given our bag weight a bit of a boost and given us a shot at the heaviest fish pool.
The other three boats had done what they had to at Gallows and had returned to the top end, all three were fishing the mini marks close in just up from the Britannia bridge so we decided to go over and squeeze ourselves in on the mark, even this area was quiet but we were getting the odd bite with a few undersize ballan's and eventually a ballan of size was taken, we also managed to scratch out a goldsinney wrasse and a tompot blenny, so with the clock ticking away towards the 5-0pm finish the last throw of the dice was to return to the rough ground we had fished earlier in the day, with the tide aproaching high water we were hoping at least the pouting and poor cod would have switched on to the feed but it was not to be with only a solitary sea scorpion coming to our rescue giving us a grand total of seven species.
Back on the beach Bob & Frank on Bass Hunter had continued into 2009 with their good run taking a match winning eight species and 44 points, Roger and Jason aboard Lady M took second place with seven species giving them 40 points, Rosea took third spot with seven species and 39 points, Dan & Adam on O2B @ C took fourth place with five species and the only specimen of the day, a herring of 7 ounces, they also shared the heaviest fish pool with Bass Hunter both catching an LSD of 2-07-00, no flatties caught so the heaviest flat pool will be carried over to the next match on the 24th May. Sorry for the lack of photo's, maybe next time.
Thanks to all those who supported the match, let's hope for something better on the 24th.
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Might bring a few of the fine weather fishermen out 