dorset
Swanage Tompot Bonanza
Dropped in on Swanage Pier for a few hours this bank holiday and bumped into fellow light lure enthusiast, Ricki Hill. It was really firing in places and it was painful when I had to tear myself away, all too soon. Pleased to hear that Ricki found the rare Baillons after I left. I did add Black Bream and Pouting to my yearly tally. The number of Tompot Blenny was staggering.
Portland Wrasse
We endeavoured to find a new wrasse mark this weekend but the results were slightly disappointing. Having said that, we did find some stunning scenery and worked out access routes, etc. In fact, I think we stumbled upon some great looking bass ground. More
LRF Really Getting Going
Really feels like LRF is firing now. The water feels alive. Loads of mini sandeel and fry about. With it a huge amount of aggressive species. Good array of fish hitting non-flavoured lures. Nice to see the shoal bass have returned. Could this be why I didn't catch a single goby all weekend? Or maybe just out-competed by the wrasse.
Pollack to Bass
Weird. All the Pollack have turned into Bass :0) Perfect way to christen the new 5g Rock n Force though
LRF on Bournemouth Pier
Dropped in on Bournemouth Pier for an hour after seeing some fish around the pilings. Turned out they were Smelt, including some jumbos. Good fun jigging cut-down Knight Worms for them.
There were large numbers of Spider Crab present. At least I wasn't trying to fish bait!
Poole Quay LRF
Stopped off at Poole Quay on my way back from wrasse fishing further south. Of course I had an LRF rod in the car! More
Night Game Poole Quay
A 90 minute Night Game session at Poole Quay resulted in some good fun with the local Pollack population. All fish were caught in the top third of the water column. A couple of big Smelt even managed to inhale the size 8.
Best of all, and what really gave me payback for braving the drizzle was witnessing ragworm spawning on the surface. I've only ever seen this once before and never as clearly as this. Couldn't understand why they weren't getting smashed by the Pollack.