Time for change
Conditions over the weekend are going to be pretty different from today. The wind is going to drop to almost nothing over night making it ideal to target Bream, Gurnard and Mackerel from Chesil. However for me there is only one beach worth fishing in this area and that is Preston Beach in Weymouth. The South East wind has stirred up a nice bit of swell which will attract Bass in from miles around. Portland has been fishing well recently with some lovely Wrasse falling to lures, just like this one from Fraser Munro.
So what is the meaning of todays title? For several years now I have been doubting more and more of the styles of fishing that we see as conventional in the UK. I am looking to what anglers in other countries are doing and using, such as the use of longer rods. My latest thoughts are why we continue to use multipliers on boats. Having done a lot more boat fishing recently I have realised that there is no need to use a multiplier. It does seem strange that we are prepared to use a rod and reel in basically an upside down state, that does not fit very comfortably in our hands. I have heard the arguments saying you have more control over the speed of your drop and that you have more cranking power with a multiplier. I have decided to buy myself a fixed spool rod and reel for use on the boat. I have gone for the Fin Nor Pilk rod and the Offshore spinning reel. I will do a test over the next few weeks or months and let you know how I get on.
Water temperature 13.5 °c.
Chesil Beach: calm with good clarity in the water.
Portland: Calm and clear water
Portland Harbour: wavelets with clear water
Weymouth Bay: surf out to 70m with coloured water.
Chesil Beach forecast: It should be a good weekend on Chesil with plenty of Mackerel and some Bream and Gurnard. Night tides will produce Dogfish and Pout, but there is always the chance of a Ray. Smoothound like the larger tides, so as they build towards the end of the weekend your chance of one of them is a lot higher.
Portland: Loads of Wrasse being caught and should continue to be caught in these conditions. Bait and soft plastic lures are doing well. You should be able to get some Pollock on lures or float fished Mackerel strip. There are some nice Garfish showing down the Bill.
Portland Harbour: It has been a bit slow in the harbour this week, with only Ferrybridge producing some Wrasse and Pollock. A few Flounder have come from Sandsfoot area, but not in the numbers I would expect.
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.
I had a guide this morning and I took my own advice. I headed over to Preston Beach where my client had a nice little Bass first cast.
That was one of several as well as Flounder. It was a nice session with plenty of fish, as usual the size of the Bass was small, but you do get the odd decent one there, so it is worth trying. Interestingly despite having Peeler Crab, every single fish came to Ragworm.
Lyme Regis: Wrasse and SMoothound from Monmouth Beach, with Mackerel coming from the Cobb. If you fancy a try at the Mullet then have a go in the harbour, as there seems to be plenty in there.
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]
Related Posts
Catch report & fishing forecast for Dorset including Chesil Beach, Portland & WeymouthForget fishing Chesil or the Solent for Smoothound. Just fish the storm drains behind […]
Fishing forecast for Chesil Beach, Portland & Weymouth. 23rd June 2012Almost a repeat of last Saturday, but with better tides this weekend. I just had a look […]
Christmas Cod FestIt was a very changeable week, which produced loads of Codling whenever the weather […]
An untraditional bank holidayWhat happened to the normal poor weather and bad conditions to spoil a typical British […]
Gurnard galoreGurnard really are quite an easy fish to catch. At the moment it seems that there are […]
It will be interesting to see how your experiment goes. I have used both multipliers and fixed spool reels from boats and feel that both have their place. I like using light/spinning gear for bream and bass and find that fixed spool reels are good for this and have the advantage of being easy to cast – sometimes an advantage in shallow water. When fishing deep water with larger weights I like to keep my thumb on the spool and the reel out of gear much of the time. This allows me to trot the lead back in the tide and give line to biting fish. This is particularly useful for conger and tope as I like to wait until the move off with the bait before striking. This is a bit like playing chicken with conger but does lead to a good hook up rate. If you don’t like ‘holding the rod upside down’ you could always track down an ‘interline’ rod where the line runs up the centre of the blank.
I went down to Lyme Regis last night to try with a few lures off Monmouth beach but the water was too coloured up I think – hopefully as you say it will settle down later. One question, have you found that Bass attack lures based on the surface splash or do they need to see the prey?
As a rule they need to see the prey. Having said that, if you drop a large splashy and noisy lure near them they are likely to come and investigate it.
I used to use a fixed spool a lot on the boat and found it to be just as good as a multiplier line pick up is a lot faster and is grate when up tiding .