Had a go down the island yesterday,with the wind dropping thought i would try the west of the island in the hope of bagging an early ray.A 20 minute walk got me to my mark and with a calm and coloured sea hopes of something other than whiting were high.

Fished one big bait for rays and a small hook flapper after some
species, everything was getting hammered by rats from the off so took
a pic for the hunt.
First and only picture this year of a whiting !!!
Had a decent bite after a couple of hours which had a nice little smalleye
landed at 4lb

Got pushed of my mark by the rising tide so gave another spot on
the way back to the car a go, first cast had a doggie,the only one of
the night !!
First and only picture of a doggie this year as well Lol

A good pull down had a fish with a bit of weight on and after some
scrambling down rocks had my first huss of theyear at 9lb, got a bit
excited and forgot to take a pic with my BSA card  :roll: so looks
like i’ll have to get another

Whiting kept me busy for the next hour until another good bite had
a welcome thornie of 6 1/2lb landed,she didn’t want her picture took
and refused to un-curl herself !!.

No more fish except whiting for an hour after so called it quits and at
last it looks like we might start getting some decent fishing
 :D

first session of the yearAfter a few weeks watching the weather and the river height it was decided that the conditions were ok for a session on the river. Preparations were made and we decided to fish from mid Saturday afternoon until one or two hours after darkness.

Jon arrived before me and fished a stick float with maggot successfully bagging eight or nine fish, mainly chubb but a few sea trout.

and a very nice grayling.

I arrived and was soon set up on my peg, i decided to fish the bottom alternating between maggot and meat. With no joy and darkness approaching i switched to two hair rigged eight and a half mm crab pellets.
As the light faded Jon hooked into a cracking chubb around the five pound mark.

The light faded fully and we both waited in anticipation for the barbel to switch on, this was not to be the case and I had the only bite of the evening. resulting in a cracking scrap with a four pounder that thought it was about seven..

We packed up around seven O’clock with four species between us. On the next river session i will definatley be be learning how to fish a stick float.

All in all a great day out

Decided i was gonna have a shot down on the flyde coast again to see what was happening, Speaking with terry ( Southwesterley ) on wsf we decided to fish over low water and back upto high to see what was about.There had been word of the odd plaice showing there face so these where the target species although they never came to play out 

Everything was downscalled to what i have been fishing with recently as we wasnt expecting anything big so 1/0 and 1′s was the order of the day.

Set off around 5ish and got to terrys just aftre 6, short drive and we was at the low water mark. Gear on and off we set for the stomp across the sands down to meet the water. Set up the rods and terry had brought a packet of fresh to get us started, So both rods out with fresh black on and terry did a little pumping to get worms to cover us for the session.

with this i took the general approach of watching and learning Anyway wasnt long before he had enough bait for us to last the night although i did have 40 frozen and a pack of squid for backup 

Back to the rods and a bait change for the baits to come back manged but no fish  , Out with the next and waited until i noticed the rattle on the tip and fish on, Wasnt what we expected when it came to the beach.

shortly after this terry had an almighty pull then slack line and whatever it was didnt conect with the hook gutted, By this time the tide was well into flood and it was pushing us back at a steady pace, Terry managed to bag himself a coddling on the flood but this was all the low water mark produced.

Made our way back before we got cut of by the gully and was pondering on where we would fish high water, After a little debate we decided we would have a bash on the gynn wall.

and boy what a choice we made, got to the selected mark and set up. Perfect timing the tide was just hitting the wall so out with the baits, Rod tip was rattling instantly but i wasnt connecting with anything so i decided to change the trace and put on shorter snoods.

Again the right move as within moments of casting these started to hit the wall

Straight after terry was in

Then it was pretty much the same all night, loads a taps but not connecting with em, couldnt be bothered droping down to a size 2 hook so soldiered on on the size 1′s

Now to say recent reports have been poor from the flyde, i think we did rather well as terry managed 9 fish and i managed 7 so was more than happy with the results.

Couple more pics

Enjoyable evening and cant wait for a shot on the plaice in the next couple of week