Oystercat fishing trip report, Saturday, 29 June 2013
Skipper Dean Gifford
The
weather forecast wasn't great for this weekend, quickly changing
isobars indicated we'd be in for a bit of blowy weather. Having not
fished the last few weekends, I went out and spent a small fortune on
new tackle. The lot, rods, reels, braids, pirks/speed jigs, end
tackle, even a rod holder to store my new purchases in!! My new
goodies included a Shimano
nexave boat quiver rod,
matched
with a Daiwa
lexa baitcaster reel,
so
I was really keen on giving this set up a try.
After
a little delay getting all 10 of us on-board I set Oystercat on a
course heading out towards the Swigg to get some fresh mackerel bait
for the day's sport. Within 20 - 25mins of arriving at the Swigg we
had a couple of buckets full of mackerel along with some scad and
gurnard.
A nice red
gurnard caught by a new junior member Stephen Haynes
Once
we had the fresh bait we headed over to the reef, there was a bit of
swell running but dropped the anchor to see how it was fishing. We
had a few dogs and a little bream - but the swell was taking its toll
on one of our members, so after he'd dropped a little ground bait, we
upped anchor and headed over to a inshore wreck.
New junior
member Ben Mordecai with the small black dream he'd caught
I
took a little time and re-charted the main super structure of the
wreck before anchoring so our baits would be in the scour just in
front. It didn't take long before lots of pouting were attacking our
baits, we also had a ballen wrasse and a blenny before the tide
changed and we move out onto some clear ground for a spot of flatty
fishing.
The fishing here
was a little slower, with a few dogs, dabs, plaice, mackerel and
hounds showing. The wind was now blowing over tide and strengthening
all the time. The option to move elsewhere wasn't open to us until
the tide rose enough to hold us safely off the anchor rope. I waited
until we were 1.5hrs into the tide before getting the anchor up and
moving across to see if we could do any better on the St
Christopher’s Knoll. The fishing at the Knoll was pretty good with
lots of Gurnard, dabs and occasional plaice coming aboard.

Skipper Dean
with a gurnard
The
peak of the tide had come and gone, the wind began to push us over
the anchor rope so it was time to run back towards Swansea. It was a
far smoother ride back than expected, so made fairly good time. With
the extra time gained we dropped the anchor as close as we could to
the Strombus, without interfering with a boat that was already
anchored there. Fishing was a little slower here with only a few
dogs, a couple of hounds (7-9lb ), a single mackerel and a foul
hooked dab coming aboard.
Craig Barnes
with smoothhound
We
headed back to the marina around 5pm, after washing Oystercat down
and tying up, Ossi (Craig Barnes) and I decided to use up the left
over bait fishing for eels off our birth. Hands up, he well and truly
beat me there - 4 eels and a bass to my single eel ( I've beat him
the last 2 trips down there recently so every dog has its day!
)
Not
the greatest of days, but not bad! Very happy with my new outfit! |
Oystercat fishing trip report 2 June 2013
Skipper Dean Gifford
If truth be told I wasn't really looking forward to this
trip, with a small tide and the wind set to build from the West in
the afternoon giving wind over tide which could cause issue with the
plan I'd made.
Roughly, the plan for the day was to try and
feather up some fresh mackerel bait first thing, then head on to the
smothhounds for a few hours before moving out to try for some tope
and ray on the Scarweather Mark.
The reports I'd heard
regarding the availability of mackerel East of Oxwich were not very
good. So I briefed my anglers that we wouldn't waste too much time
off the Swigg Buoy as there were better fish to target. With all of
us in agreement we slipped Oystercat through the locks and pier heads
towards the Swigg Buoy.
Surprisingly,
we fo und mackerel on our first drift along with a few garfish and a
herring.
A
few more drifts saw us with enough bait to get us started, so we made
our way over to Sker. With the tide being on the low-side we decided
to fish further out than I normally do in that area. The mark has
produced reasonable numbers of smoothhounds and eels in the past.
Harriet Eaton with a garfish
It
took 15mins before the younger anglers (Nathan James (right) and Jack
beynon) had this nice brace of smoothhounds
Soon
after Daryl Strong found himself into his first of the day.
Things
went a little quiet, with a only couple of dogs to show for our
efforts. I took a bit of a gamble and headed back to be tight inshore
to be on one of my 'bigger tide' marks to see if the hounds were
still in there.
Within
10mins or so we had a triple hookup
The 3 smoothhounds, Wayne Keepins, Nat James & Harriet Eaton
Followed
by what could have been 6 fish at once, but 2 were dropped
4 This time: Daryl Strong, Wayne Keepins, Harriet Eaton & Nat James
Fishing
continued like this for a few hours, with the 2 biggest fish coming
together, both 12lb.
Dean Gifford (left) & Paul Eaton with the 12lb smoothhounds
Oystercat fishing trip report 2 June 2013 continued...
High
water came, and with the wind freshening I abandoned the search for
tope on the Scarweather mark in favour of a trip over to St.
Christopher's Knoll to try for some flat fish. It appeared everyone
else had the same idea with Lady jue pulling up at the same time as
us, as well as half a dozen other boats already there . My normal
spots were taken, so I searched around a little and found an
interesting feature on the side of the bank and dropped the
anchor.
Fish
catching started really quickly with a few gurnard coming aboard
before I hit the first ray of the day.
Dean Gifford with 5lb small eye ray
Several
more rays were caught, including a couple on the light rigs put out
for dabs.
Wayne Keepins with his 5lb small eye ray
Dean Gifford with yet another small eye ray
Paul
Eaton had a little turbot – I was massively envious!!
Paul also caught a plaice on a set of feathers tipped with mackerel.
We
got back onto the berth about 9:15pm.
Ending the day with 31
smoothhounds to 12lb, 12 small eye rays to 5lb, a couple of garfish,
a herring, few grey gurnard, whiting, mackerel, turbot, plaice, dabs
and a few dogs. Pretty good day in all!!
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Oystercat fishing trip 3 June 2013. Skipper John Elvins
Beautiful and scenic boat trip, shame about the fishing.
Might aswell sunbath then. Richie Pearce & Ray Bennett
With no one looking Jon Scott gets busy...
.. and reels in a very nice eel. |
Oystercat Fishing Trip Report For
18 & 19/05/2013
By Skipper Dean Gifford
On the Saturday I intended to take my Oystercat
fishing party out for some tope and smoothhound fishing. The tides
were forecast to be small and the weather good. At 6.30am me and
Ossi Barnes were picking up bait from Swansea Angling before boarding
and preparing the CAT for the trip. The rest of the anglers were on
board by 8.0am and we made our way through the locks and headed West,
all the other fishing boats were setting an Easterly direction. On
the way towards Oxwich we marked the location of plenty of fish on
the sounder. Once anchored at the moorings were quickly into
whiting, our main target for the tope bait. We were also picking up
gurnards, dabs and Ossi caught a very nice plaice. Again, we were
marking large shoals of fish but not mackerel – only hungry little
whiting.
To supplement the whiting we took a couple of
drifts over the wreck to get some pollack for bait. We then ran out
off the headland and in no time we were into the best conditions ever
in terms of sea state. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for
the fishing; we only had dogfish and a few bullhuss to 5lb.
With the tide turning and the fishing being slow
we got the anchor up and motored over to St. Christopher's Knoll for
the last few hours. Here we caught lots of gurnard, red and grey,
dabs and the occasional dogfish. Fishing in here was fairly good but
unfortunately, we didn't catch any rays or turbot.
We ended the fishing trip with a catch of whiting,
pouting, pollack, dabs, grey gurnard, red gurnard, bullhuss. Paul
swears he had a few flounders, I was not convinced. Alas no tope or
smoothhound.
Sunday
We were lucky again with the weather. Sunday
started at the more leisurely time of 7.00am, again I collected the
bait. By 8.30am we were running South out to the wreck where we had
some reasonable fishing a few weeks earlier. On arriving at the
wreck we found fisher Jay Robbins already anchored behind the wreck,
so we motored uptide and dropped the anchor.
Following a chat with Jay, who was not happy with
his position on the wreck. I'd spent a lot of time outlining the
wreck on the plotter, so I checked his position by radar and could
see he was a fair way behind the wreck. As a result he got his
anchor up and had a look around to outline the structure, but in the
end he decided to head else where. In retrospect this was probably
the best thing to have done. We spent the first few hours feeding
the dogfish.
The first reasonable fish caught was an 8lb bullhuss,
by John Elvins.
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A
few conger eels were hooked and lost before Carl Hayward had the first and
only one in the boat weighing 16.5lb.
Luke
Heyward had a 12lb bullhuss
As
high water approached the wind began to pick up and we were joined by
a massive number of gulls, terns and gannets. Watching the bird life
go about their fishing business was pretty cool, but no substitute
for hooking into a big conger; it wasn't to be.
John
Elvins had another reasonable bullhuss before we began to swing
around with the changing tide.
The
next plan was to head over to the Sker marks and have a go for some
smoothhounds. Unfortunately, the with was by now really fresh from
the South West, and blowing over the tide. So I decided on the safer
bet of heading in of the Strombus – but it was crap – only
dogfish.
We
called it a day around 4.00pm, gave the boat a good scrub down and
heade for home.
In
all it was a very nice day out, we enjoyed it, but the fishing was
fairly poor. Fingers crossed the weather holds for a little while so
Oystercat can go out with another party of member anglers.
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Oystercat fishing trip report, Tuesday 25 June 2013
Skipper John Elvins
John took Oystercat and his party of member anglers to drift the ledges for bass unfortunately, none were coming on the bait.
The plan for targeting bass had to aborted and secure
in the knowledge smooth hounds were still being caught they changed
tact, anchored up and were soon catching the hounds.
John Bevan with his 15lb smoothhound
Richard Pincott and a 16lb smoothhound
Skipper John caught a 12lb 8oz thornback ray which was quickly released to fight again. |
Oystercat fishing trip 5 July 2013
Skipper: John Elvins
Dave Craddock - nice black bream
Rob Gibbins- 21lbtope
Richard Pearce - cracking tope
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Saturday
9 February 2013 –Skipper Dean Gifford's Oystercat Wreck Fishing
Trip Report.
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The
weather subsided enough to make a weekend trip possible. Our small
party, Dean Gifford, Wayne Keepins, Luke Haywood, Carl Haywood and
John Fennel headed, headed out through the pier heads onto a grey but
flat sea. I was keen to fish a small bit of wreckage I'd passed on
the last trip for the remainder of the ebb tide. After 5mins of
charting the area we put the anchor down well up-tide of the bulk of
the wreck structure hoping to pull any fish lurking nearby out of the
iron work.
The first
fish to come aboard was a little thornback ray of 5lb. Due to the run of
the tide the ray gave a good account of its self by holding
against the run of the tide.
We
had a few dogs, whiting and pouting before a spur dog took a liking
to my live whiting bait. I was lucky to land it, having taken some
time to bring the fish on board using a 30lb fluorocarbon as we were
not expecting spurs in 45ft of water.
Continued in next column...
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9 February 2013 Report continued
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Soon
afte rwards Carl lost another spur dog due to a dodgy clip swivel...
my fault for trying to use the last of my cheap ones. We put the bait
catching rod back out looking for some more live baits and Luke
pulled in this 2lb whiting - a bit big for bait but good to still see
there were a few bigger whiting still around.
As
low water approached everyone switched to either live or bigger
mackerel/squid baits - Carl managed the one and only conger of the
day.
After low water, we move back inside to try and have a bash
for some dabs, but my usual dab mark had about 12 boats surrounding
it. I tried to find a bit of ground close by but after 20mins I
couldn't take fishing in amongst all them boats so got the anchor up
and headed towards another inshore wreck. We only had 4m of water on
top of the wreck so again anchored well up-tide and stuck it out here
for a couple of hours, found few good whiting and lots of pouting.
On
the way to the wreck we passed a big bull seal, I was asked what I
thought it would be feeding on, so I gave this massive lecture on how
they'd most likely be feeding on small fish and shellfish as they are
easier to digest than big fish,- less big bones you see. No sooner
had I finished my lecture when a flock of about 40 gulls ,following
the big bull, appear 40 or so yards off the port side. I got the
bin's out to see what the commotion was about, the seal had a cod
into double figures in its gob!! Every now and then the seal would
thrash the cod around in attempt to get a lump of cod. This continued
for 20mins before the tide carried them down towards the piers with
the gulls
following.
Being so distracted we never found the
dabs, so I decided to move Oystercat slightly further east to a
large-steep sided hole. It was very slow here with only a few
whiting rattling the tips so we called it a day at 3:10pm.
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Recent trip to Lundy Island
Skippers Dean Gifford and John Elvins, along with a
small party of Club anglers took Oystercat on an exploratory fishing
trip to sus out the fishing marks around Lundy Island. The trip was very
beneficial, enhancing the skipppers knowledge and experience of the
seaway and fishing techniques. Between them the party caught around 30
pollack, two of which were caught by junior member Lewis Pearce and are
shown in the photo above. |
Oystercat fishing trip
Leighton Lewis - black bream
Osssi Barnes - smoothhound
Oystercat Fishing trip
Skipper: John Elvins
John Bevan with personal best 16lb smoothhound & Richie Pearce with 1.4lb black bream
Skipper John Elvins - smoothhound guys - Lynn Martinson
Dave Clarke with personal best smoothhound at just under 10lb
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Oystercat fishing trip report for 25-26 May 2013
Skipper Dean Gifford
Loaded up with 100 peelers and a few dozen hardbacks from
H R Jones Clydach Oystercat skippered by Dean Gifford and MMBFC members went
sports fishing for hounds. On the Sker mark Rob Turner caught the first smooth
hound, closely followed by By John Elvins, Richie Pearce and Dean Gifford.
Moving North West to another mark the anglers were into a flurry of fish, many
lost from the hook. Soon plenty of fish were being caught Ossi Clark had the
pick with 3 hounds. At low water Oystercat was taken over to Langland looking
for black bream and coding, but found gurnard, bull huss, ballen wrasse,
whiting, one mackerel, a thornback and then black bream, codling. Later on the
Oxwich mark tub gurnard, dabs and mackerel were being caught. Using crab bait a nice little smoothhound was caught by Dean,
followed by one for Carl Heyward. Luke Heyward scored his first ever plaice. Over on St
Christoper's Knoll on turning tide the fishing kicked in with good numbers of
dabs, gurnard (mainly greys and reds) and 3
plaice.
At the end of the trip 30+ hounds ranging between 5lb and
11lb, 60 dabs (lots of small ones but a few keepers) a few bull huss, gurnard,
whiting, wrasse, black bream, mackerel, codling and the
thornback.
1 Rob Turner with the first smoothhound
2. John Elvins
with his smooth hound
3. Dean Gifford and smooth hound
4. Richie Pearce with smooth hound
5. Ossie Barnes with his first smooth hound of the day
6. Jack Beynon with smooth
hound

7. John Bevan - smoothhounds
8. Richie Pearce with yet another smoothhound while Rob Turner looks
on
9. John Elvins with bull huss
10. Nathan james with his smoothhound
11. Ossie Barnes, Jack Beynon and John Bevan the 3 smooth hounds
12. John Bevan and Nathan James with more smoothhounds
14. Luke Heyward with his first ever
plaice
15. Carl Heyward and smooth hound
Report ends. |
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