Some good fish showing on Chesil at last

In complete contrast to last years Chesil Championships, some decent fish were caught during the competition held last weekend. Several Bass were caught along with some nice sized Smoothound, but the biggest fish landed on the day was an 8lb 4oz. Small Eyed Ray for Mark Ayles.

Water clarity is not great anywhere on the Dorset coast at the moment, with silt still in the water from the weekend and the start of some May water. Despite that Mackerel are still being caught, as well as a lot of Herring. Charter boats are reporting lots of Herring on the Shambles. It would be great to see the Herring numbers get huge again, this would bring in a lot more predators.

Sea Conditions: 

Water temperature 11.1°c.

Chesil Beach: Calm with a milky tinge, but the water is more coloured to the West (Abbotsbury)

Portland: Calm with  lightly coloured water

Portland Harbour: Calm with lightly coloured water

Weymouth Bay: Calm with  coloured water.

Chesil Beach forecast: Reports from the past couple of days suggest that Chesil may well be the place to be fishing right now. Ben Cass sent me a report from Abbotsbury saying he had trouble keeping 2 rods out, as he had so many fish. He managed the Bass pictured below, along with Smoothound, Dabs, loads of small Whiting and Dogfish. The guy next to him had a large Bass, Pollock and a Sole. Now that is what you call an exciting session.

I can see no reason why it wont continue to fish well for the next few days at least. As the water clears more over the next day or two we will see a lot more Mackerel.

Portland: I got up very early this morning to fish Portland Bill with some lures. To be honest there was a few small Pollock around, but not in the numbers I expected. I put this down to poor water clarity. It will improve throughout the day. As high tide coincides with dusk, it will certainly produce fish tonight and tomorrow over high water. Clarity is a bit too poor to try for Wrasse on lures, but they will feed happily on Ragworm and Crab baits.

Portland Harbour: I half expected to get a couple of Bass from Portland Harbour yesterday, especially as I had managed to get some live Sandeels. However the water clarity was against me again and I did blank. The amount of bait fish in the harbour would lead me to believe that the Bass would be around as well. There are Flounder in the harbour, as I spotted a couple darting away as I was wading.

Weymouth Bay: Preston fished well at the weekend when there was a lot of surf running up the beach. It has died off now, with very little surf and coloured water. Dabs and Flounder will be in close to the shore.

Guiding & Lessons: With the fishing season well under way I am taking bookings for lure and bait fishing guided sessions. I am also offering 2 hour long fishing workshops, for those wanting to learn some of the basic techniques.  Have a look on the guiding link at the top of the page or drop me an email for more details to [email protected]