gary
Posts : 236
Join date : 2008-02-05
Age : 73
Location : abergele
 | | Subject: Boat Match No 2 12th June 2010, 10:26 pm | |
| Match No 2 06/06/2010
Venue Menai Straits
Weather Showers
Wind West southwest veering Northwesterly 15mph
Meeting at the little chef Llandegai near Bangor for 0800hrs, five boats made the trip and after a brief discussion a bit of banter and a cup of overpriced coffee we decided to launch at Moel y Don, this is a beach launch, access is fairly restricted with limited parking on the top end of the beach, the launch itself is pretty easy with compacted shingle and a fairly gentle slope, 15 minutes or so saw all five boats on the water, a quick radio check and we were all off to our chosen marks.
Rosea decided to start her day drifting the hole at Port Dinorwic to see if we could pull a herring and save ourselves the journey down to Beaumaris, plenty of herring there but none bigger than 15cm but we perciveered with the drift later changing our tactics setting up for the now rare Menai Straits flatties, after about an hour of drifting around the hole we had nothing to show for our efforts other than about half a dozen lesser spotted doggies and a few very chunky mackerel, time for a move.
The Straits does tend to fish poorly on the ebbing tide and with low water around 1230hrs we still had a couple of hours down before the start of the flooding tide and hopefully improved fishing, we decided to fish an area of rough ground just off Pwllfanog, this area can produce a wide variety of species on it’s day and is one of the better marks to fish on an ebbing tide, we picked up a few ballan wrasse just above the 30cm minimum size limit and also caught quite a few gobbies, Roger was pulling a few codling on his fresh crab baits but nothing of size they were all around the 30cm mark.
A nicely marked ballan wrasse (returned)
Our next move was over to the Bangor side of Pwllfanog hole, an area of very rough ground that holds pouting huss conger poor cod and other rough ground species, the downside on this mark is that it's very tackle hungry especially if the boat is swinging losses can be very heavy at times, we picked up our insize pouting fairly quickly then it was dog city, nothing else had a chance of getting at the baits, by now the flooding tide was well under way and we were getting pretty desperate to make our species count look respectable.
We did get some entertainment while on this mark in the form of a large armada of home made rafts doing a charity race from Port Dinorwic to Menai Bridge there must have been forty rafts of all shapes and sizes and the crews seamed to be having a great time while raising money for charity at the same time so well done to all of them, i managed to take a few shots of them.
Thought we were going to have to rescue the one in the last shot.
Anyway back to the fishing, with only four species to our credit and over half the day now gone things were getting desperate so we shifted down to the mini mark over towards the Brittania bridge that is usually a pretty safe bet to add a few species to your tally, we quickly added a tompot blenny and a goldsinney wrasse but there was no sign of the corkwings that are normally fairly common here but we did manage a bigger ballan, time was flying by and we found ourselves with only an hour left before the end of the match so the last throw of the dice was the huss mark at Pwllfanog, top bait here seems to be calamari squid the only problem is the lesser spotted dogs seem to have a great liking for it too and today was no exception with a couple of dozen dogs and only one huss which was just under size, that just about summed it up for the whole of our day, one of them day's when nothing seems to go quite right but having said that i just love being out on boats and if you catch a few fish or win the odd comp it's a bonus.
Back at the launch it soon became clear that not everyone had done as badly as us with a few nice fish coming to the scales.
Roger Edwards, skipper of Lady M with a specimen male cuckoo wrasse of 0-14-00, Roger also had a specimen herring of 0-12-00
After the calculations were done Bass Hunter won their first match of 2010 with 11 species and top weight giving Bob and Frank a winning 53 match points, second spot was taken by Lady M with 9 species and 2 specimen fish 18 weight points for a total of 51 points, third place was O2B@C with 9 species and 1 specimen 19 weight points for a total of 49 all pretty close in the end for the top three, top junior was once again Lewis Brownson fishing with his dad on Hanna Lou, The heaviest fish pool was split 50/50 between O2B@C and Bass Hunter and the Heaviest flatty pool will be carried over to the next match.
Thanks to all who took part.
The next match on the 20th June has been postponed because we have the presention awards at the clubhouse on the previous evening the 19th. | |
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Kev
Posts : 855
Join date : 2008-02-10
Location : Sunny Rhyl
| | Subject: Re: Boat Match No 2 13th June 2010, 1:30 pm | |
| A forecast of strengthening Westerlies for Sunday afternoon led the 5 boats who took part in the second leg of CBVSACs 2010 boat league to fish in the Menai Straits on Sunday. We were launched and on our way to the first mark for 9 o clock. Things were a bit slow to start for us aboard O2B@C with us failing to find a Herring over the 18cm size limit at the first mark although we had plenty up to 15cm. We gave up on the Herring and moved to a mark near the Britannia Bridge for the chance of Pout, Poor Cod and Wrasse and mini species. We did ok here, and managed to pick up a bonus Codling insize as well as most of our targets. The next move was to try for a Bass off Church Island. I managed a half decent Ballan here and we had some Dogs between us before moving to the hole near Beaumaris to try again for a Herring. Sadly we didn’t get one here but managed to add a Whiting before moving back towards Bangor to try for a Bass again. It was no good here and we didn’t see any of the other boats fishing here catching so we dashed back to Pwllfanogl hoping for a Huss or Conger. The Huss came aboard with half an hour of the match left, so after a quick couple of drifts through the the Herring hole near Dinorwic, it was time for us to head back to the slip at Moel Y Don for the weigh in. We managed third, with nine species and one specimen which was slightly disappointing, especially as we couldn’t get a Corkwing or an in size Herring but we would have been right up there if we had! It was still a nice day, the wind didn’t really get up as forecast and although we had some light rain, it wasn’t too bad and 4 new species for me for the hunt so Happy Days!!! Here are some of my fish....     A nice male Cuckoo Wrasse for Roger.  and some scenic shots.       | |
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