gary
Posts : 236
Join date : 2008-02-05
Age : 73
Location : abergele
 | | Subject: Boat Match No 3, Menai Straits, 11/07/2010 15th July 2010, 9:00 pm | |
| Five boats fished the third leg of Colwyn Bay Victoria Sea Angling Clubs boat league in the Menai Straits earlier today.
The fresh breeze kept the temperature down and the fact that we were mainly fishing the ebb meant the fishing could be challenging to say the least!
We set off from Moel Y Don and headed straight to Pwllfanogl to try for a Huss. We also dropped down mini rigs here to try and pick up some bonus species.
The mini rig was first to register a bite, and I was soon bringing a Corkwing to the boat. This was a massive bonus as nobody had a Corkwing in the last match here so we were heartbroken when it spat the bait at the side of the boat and disappeared back into the depths.
As we sat there thinking about what the escaped Corkwing might cost us, I had a run on the Huss rod, baited with half a fresh Mackeral from Fridays trip on Suveran. I picked it up and couldnt feel much in the way of resistance but the fish kept taking line so I reeled down to it and retrieved. There wasn’t a great deal of weight so I assumed it was a Dog, but the fish broke surface and started spinning, leading to a rush for the net.
It turned out to be a half decent Conger, but it couldn’t erase the bitterness of the Corkwing.
We moved through a few marks, picking up the odd fish here and there.
It was a strange day, with the bread and butter fish such as Whiting, Pout, Poor Cod and even Dogs few and far between, but we already had the Conger and picked up a bonus Bass of about 3lb and a decent Ballan of over 2-11-00 which boosted the weight as well as the species count.
Adam managed 8 Rock Gobies during the day, neither Dan or I had one between us!
We ended up with 8 species, including Goldsinney, Tompot, Dog and Pout, but the pressure was on as we knew at least one of the other boats was on 8.
Would the Corkwing cost us???
Happily, NO! Our 8 species and one specimen was enough to take top spot on the day and the Conger was the heaviest fish of the match at 8-04-00.
Not the greatest days fishing, but another species chalked off and a first win of the year for 02B@C so happy days!!!
Club member Dave Elmer had been species hunting on the Breakwater at Holyhead today, fresh from his victory in yesterdays shore league match and his luck continued when he bagged a lovely looking Rock Cook Wrasse for the species hunt.
With a week off work soon, im formulating a couple of days of species hunting and Rock Goby, Corkwing and Rock Cook are high on the target list!
I have copied and pasted Kevs report of the match, sure he wont mind.
As Kev has already said the fishing was very slow with the Straits not producing the fish you would normally expect on a decent tide in mid July, in previous years you would need anything between 13 and 15 species to win the match but there you go that's fishing i suppose.
We ( Rosea ) started our match fishing a little gulley not far from the launch at Moel y Don with hopes of picking up a flounder and maybe a bass, we gave it an hour or so with only dogs and a silver eel we then shot down to Pwllfanog to drift for a pout and poorcod at slack water high, failed miserably on those two species but did manage a huss and a codling in size, after loing a fair bit of tackle drifting this very rough ground next stop was to pick up a mooring buoy which was over an area of mixed ground just off the slates at Pwllfanog, on previous visits to this area we have caught a lot of different species ranging from smoothies to bream even plaice dragonets and pollock, we did manage one species here, a ballan wrasse, next port of call for us was down at Beaumaris, the deep hole at gallows to try for a herring and anything else we may come across, after four or five drifts and not a sniff of a herring or anything else if it comes to that we headed off to the moorings just ABC side of the pier confident of at least picking up a whiting, about a dozen dogs later and numerous well undersize whiting we came to realise that we had wasted valuable time coming down to this end of the Straits as the fishing was dire to say the least so back up the Straits through the swillies and onto the mini mark for us, we picked up a couple of goldsinney wrasse quite handy, some smallish ballans, a tompot blenny then about a dozen of the same in quick succession, we also picked up a goby here so our species count was increasing but ever so slowly, we stayed on the mark hoping for a specimen ballan and the usually fairly reliable corkwing wrasse but neither were to come over the gunnells of Rosea today, time was now ticking away and our last throw of the dice was to go back over and try again for the pouting and poorcod drifting around the area of Pwllfanog hole, we gave it our best shot but today that was not good enough so we headed back to the slip with eight species nowhere near good enough.
Back at the slip we find that all five boats had been struggling to find the fish and our lowly score was all of a sudden looking a lot better with three boats catching eight species, only one boat managed to find a specimen and that and top weight gave Dan Kev and Adam on O2B@C 47 points the no 1 spot, Rosea took the runners up prize with their 43 points and Bass Hunter took third with 42 points, O2B2C took the heaviest fish pool with a conger of 8-04-04 and with once again no flatties being caught there will be a double rollover on the flatty pool at the next match.
An unusual visitor in the Straits, i think it's the first one i have ever caught there.
Bruce and Billy on Lazy Days turned up to fish the match, Bruce was once a regular so nice to see his return.
Bob Frank and Derek drifting for herring just off Gallows Point.
Roger and Mike on Lady M just off the Gazzelle.
One of the Goldsinney wrasse taken off the mini mark. | |
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Kev
Posts : 855
Join date : 2008-02-10
Location : Sunny Rhyl
| | Subject: Re: Boat Match No 3, Menai Straits, 11/07/2010 16th July 2010, 6:29 am | |
| Still gutted about that Corkwing but im sure ill get 1 or 2 on Sunday. Trevor Davies Cup match which is a species hunt on Holyhead Breakwater. Would be nice to see some of the boat lads there using their species hunting skills.  Looks like the mighty O2B@C will be missing from the next match so see you all in August! | |
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