Invasion of the crabs

How do I stop the crabs from robbing my bait? Right now we are in the middle of the Spider Crab spawning period. They come inshore in there thousands and eat everything that they come across. The shallower areas of Chesil to the West such as Abbotsbury and West Bexington with finer sand and gravel are the much more heavily effected than the Ferrybridge and Portland end of Chesil. So you have a few choices: Use Peeler Crab, this will give you a better chance of getting a deceeent fish and the crabs tend to leave Peelers alone for longer. The obvious downside to this is the cost of Peeler Crabs. Use braid hook snoods, the crabs can not cut braid as easily as they can mono. the thrid option is to fish the Weymouth and Portland end of the beach, where there are still Spider Crabs, but not anywhere near as many as the other end of the beach. You are also more likely to catch a Bream or Gurnard down the Ferrybridge end. Just as Kevin Webb did over the weekend.

Fish of the month has produced a lot of entries this month including a couple of fresh water entries with a nice Carp and Catfish.

If you caught anything decent last month send it in, I will take entries up to the 5th of June (fish only caught in May) for more details check out May fish of the Month

Sea Conditions: 

Water temperature 12.7 °c.

Chesil Beach: flat calm with good clarity in the water.

Portland: Calm and clear water

Portland Harbour: Calm with clear water

Weymouth Bay: Calm with  clear water.

Chesil Beach forecast: Plenty of Smoothound around if you can get through the Spider Crab. Mackerel have been a bit thin on the ground, but if you fish after 5pm you normally find that they come in closer

Portland: Loads of Wrasse being caught and should continue to be caught in these conditions. Bait and soft plastic lures are doing well. The tides are great for Pollock around dusk. Try a White sidewinder lure.

Portland Harbour: Bass, Mullet and Flounder are all being caught from within the harbour. As always lures rule for Bass.

Weymouth Bay: Some nice Mullet showing in the Harbour. The Thin lipped Mullet are further in the harbour around the angling club and the sluice gates. The piers are producing lots of different species. I had a look down on the Stone Pier yesterday at low water. I spotted thousands of little Sandeels. That will bring in all the predators including Bass, Mackerel, Pollock and Garfish.

Lyme Regis: Fishing Lyme today with River Cottage. Hopefully I will be able to prove Darren from the Tackle SHop right by catching plenty of fish from Monmouth beach.

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]