Sea Fishing – Alan Yates’ Monthly Diary

The hounds are on the way - get on the peeler!

This month Alan is enjoying some terrific south coast plaice fishing and looking forward to the first of the summer species

April can usually be a bit ‘in-between’ this year the spring sunshine got underway early and the first peelers started to pop out in the south during the last week in March – a great shot in the arm for estuary anglers because the flounders start to home in on the peeling crab and they are joined, in many regions, by the rays, eels, school bass, pout dogfish, plaice and others. It’s not long before the smoothhound return either and they are a serious proposition for beach anglers.

Along the English Channel coast this spring will, however, be remembered for plaice with numbers of the species returning to beach catches for the first time in a long while. Not big plaice, but sizeable fish of 35cm and upwards, and they have been missing in recent years. Indeed it’s a long time since I went fishing at Folkestone deliberately for plaice and going by reports the same has happened at Brighton and, of course, Chesil Beach. I am told the plaice numbers are up because of commercial quota reductions on the species, whatever the reason, let’s have more of it please!
 

Back to the smoothhounds and peeler crab is without doubt THE bait to use for them, other baits catch but crab give such an edge over everything else, even from the boat. In the Solent region lots of the Charter skippers pot-catch hermit crabs for hound bait and they work well enough - but try taking some peelers if you go to the Solent, either on the shore at Selsey or out in the boats from Portsmouth or Langstone etc and you will find peeler out fishes hermit crab every time.

Talking about bait here’s a question! With silver eels being protected, or at least only catch and release, what is the situation regarding using silver eel segments as bait for tope, a use for which they are deadly? Answers on Facebook please!!!!

I signed up to Facebook a month or so back and I must say that as an angling journalist it was a great move. Anglers just love to talk about and show off the fish they catch and with modern mobile phone cameras being so good some quality pictures are on show. However, I am not so keen on knowing what anglers are having for dinner, how their football team are getting on etc - but catch news and pictures really are welcome!

I have just been involved in a new range of sea tackle with TF Gear of Brecon and that includes a number of new rods including a couple of quiver tip models which are popular with summer sea anglers. Fishing light and sensitive has grown in popularity because of a drop off in fish size, ray and smoothhound are the exceptions, other summer species including bream, scad, mackerel, school bass, garfish, pollack and mullet are not always of a great size, but on a sensitive rod, fixed spool reel and micro braid line they can be great fun to catch. This kind of fishing, plus the newly touted LRF (Light rock fishing), as well spinning and plugging for bass really are the future of sea angling in my mind.

My best fish of the month was a near 12lb pollack that I caught out of Brighton aboard Paul Dyer’s ‘Brighton Dive’r during the Daiwa sponsored Pollack Challenge – It’s an event I was involved in originally with Fox and it is growing each year with over 100 competitors on 20 boats this year fishing within 30 miles  from Brighton marina for the biggest pollack.

The winning fish was a 17lb 3oz specimen and three over 16lb were landed so my fish was well back in the ‘also rans’. However, pollacking over a wreck is fun, especially with a light and sensitive 6/15lb braid rod and 20lb micro braid line. The trick is lure speed and it’s odd how on most boats when all the anglers are fishing one reel load/speed seems to work best and the lucky angler catches the most.

From my experience a 7000 size multiplier well-loaded with 25lb mono usually works for pollack fishing, for braid a smaller model is essential and I can’t say I have completely solved the line load/reel speed but at Brighton local angler Jimmy Laban had the hot reel load and he just kept hooking fish on 30lb braid fishing a silver speckled white Sidewinder lure, whilst other struggled.

You can read all about the competition in the next issue of Sea Angler magazine, which also contains all you ever wanted to know about fishing for smoothhounds, even with light tackle.

This month I am off to Gambia for a small shore competition, I have not been for a couple of years because the fishing became far less productive compared to how it was when I first went there. That seems a familiar story worldwide nowadays however I am looking forward to a break from the computer and a couple of fishing trips lounging around on a hot beach sounds just the ticket. Whether I get my string pulled is another matter, although I shall be a lot more confident than I would fishing from the middle of Hythe Beach in summer!

An essential of a Gambian fishing trip is wire hook lengths because every other species has a fearsome array of dentures that bite through mono line, nowadays I only use solid wire bite traces and not the dreaded plastic coated, twisted steel wire that curls up when you look at it. Solid wire does not put the fish off and that’s because it’s the same diameter as mono line. I use a Gemini wire boom attached to the hook making it an extra long shank and have used the system at home for conger and tope and have caught lots of other species on it as well.

TIP OF THE MONTH

Don’t forget to return some of the summer bits and pieces to your tackle box! This month sees the mackerel return and in lots of regions a few sets of the mini Sabiki lures are great for catching the smaller Joey mackerel as well as herrings which are now a very realistic angling target from many of the southern piers. Then there are the garfish too and some big shoals start to move inshore around the UK this month, so don’t forget a few floats for some fun gar fishing via a slider when the water is clear and seemingly lifeless.