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Shore fishing trip
Sunday 28 December 2014
PAKA
Christmas Cracker
Fishing for Pleasure
18 anglers fished from SA1 fishing club, MMBFC, and Cwavon SAC. 70 fish were
caught including Turbot, Flounder Dabs and Whiting. Stan John
MMBFC won the £50 pot with a 39cm Flounder. 2nd was Junior James Bibb with a
36cms Flounder and joint 3rd were Martyn Wilde and Martin Bibb with 35 cm Flounder.
James Bibb caught a 36cm Flounder |
Alan Duthie Floundering on Aberavon Beach
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Boat fishing trip
Monday, 29 December 2014
Oystercat skipper John Elvins took members boat
fishing off Morfa beach to try for Cod but the Dogfish were in
abundance. So skipper John moved Oystercat over to Sker point. This
proved a good move as Daron Lawry and Clive Jones hit
cod straight away, Daron caught a conger but new member Paul Applegee
won
the day with a 7.5lb Conger. All the anglers thanked skipper John for
the wonderful day and the copious amounts of tea and coffee as well as
breakfast rolls he provided.
Awaiting photos |
Oystercat fishing
reports for 15 & 16 December 2014
Report by skipper Dean Gifford
Weather,
work commitments and being in the process of buying a house has meant
I’ve not had a massive amount of free time for fishing recently,
and when I do have a spare few hours often the weathers pants!
I’ve
got this week off, luckily Monday and Tuesday both gave reasonable
forecasts so I put my name down to take out a trip on Monday and put
my name down to join another trip on Tuesday, as it turned out I
ended up skippering that one too which was fine with me.
Monday
Forecast
was for a reasonable residual swell and moderate wind dropping off as
the day went on. We made our way through the marina out through the
pier heads out to a mark that often provides good mixed general
fishing at this time of year.
Just after sunrise Paul Eaton
had a nice chunky codling of around 3lb followed by another about at 4lb.
Reasonable
numbers of small whiting, dabs, dogs, pouting and poor cod coming to
everyone else on-board. As high water approached we moved out to a
deep water trench where often we find more larger fish like eels,
spurs, cod and rays as well as very big whiting but all we found here
were dogs, and with a beam on swell of a few foot it wasn’t the
most comfortable fishing.
The ebb had gained enough
strength to warrant moving to the final mark of the day, again a mark
that provides good general fishing but is most noted for its large
whiting, within a few minutes of being on this mark the whiting began
showing themselves, often coming to baits presented well above the
sea bed; many of them were small but we had a few over 1lb 8oz which
is a nice table fish.
Victor
Lilygreen and a nice whiting
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Oystercat fishing
reports for 15 & 16 December 2014 Cont...
John Bevan fishing a large squid bait
attracted a nice 9lb thornback, while going to get the scales to
weigh that fish my rod arched over. I expected it would be the little
male that often goes around with the larger female thornback but
turns out it was a little strap of around 7lb – interestingly taken
on an inch or so of frozen black lug on a size 4 hook fishing for
dabs.
As
the afternoon got towards early evening the wind dropped and sea
state was lovely and flat, it really was a pleasure to be out there.
Clive Skidmore finished the day with a lovely small eye ray of 4-5lb.
We got
back to the marina for the 4:30pm lock, quick wash down and ready for
another trip in the morning.
Tuesday
With the
sea state forecast to be better than the day before I planned on
heading straight to where we finished the day before as it would be
nice to see a few more big whiting. We weren’t disappointed with a
few smaller whiting coming in first eclipsed by Stan's (John) 2lb 2oz
whiting, quickly followed by a codling a couple of ounces smaller.
The
day continued with plenty of whiting many small but reasonable
numbers between 1lb and 2lb along with dabs, dogs, pouting and poor
cod. |
Oystercat fishing
reports for 15 & 16 December 2014 Cont...
Often
the mark fishes best on the ebb so really I was waiting for the ebb
to start – unfortunately with the wind increasing and a very small
tide it took us an age to turn on the anchor. Finally around 2:20pm
we were able to get the anchor up and sit on the steep slope where I
expected to find a few more whiting. Unfortunately we only had a
couple of bigger whiting here – if I'm honest i expected a lot more
but that's fishing.
Richy Pearce lost a nice eel on the surface of
around 15-17lb.
Stan John soon after boated one of around 5lb.
That
concluded the fishing for the day – again we got in for around
4:30pm, after cleaning down we tied the boat up nice and snug ready
for the bad weather that's going to come the rest of this week.
In
all a nice couple of days fishing, looking forward to getting out on
some bigger tides to get the big whiting in larger numbers.
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Oystercat 7-9-14
Skipper Dean Gifford
The tides very much
jumping up in size at the moment as I was planning another Sunday
trip out on the Oystercat for bass. I had a wedding to go to Saturday
so spend the day fueling up and getting all the gear ready before
leaving the boat late giving my self only 30mins to get ready before
having to head out.
On Sunday morning we picked up 4lb of live
eel from Swansea Tackle and Bait, managed to just catch the first out
lock at 7am and made our way on the Oystercat down to the first bank
of the day.
Our first drift saw a nice fish coming to John
Golding, we had a few here most of which were a good size, but the
shoal seemed to be moving around a lot so we only picked up one fish
per drift.
We moved to a near by bank and found some smaller
fish shoaled up but again they quickly moved off, not sure if they're
skittish as that bank has a lot of activity or they were following
bait. As it was getting late in the ebb so we made our way south west
offshore to a large bank that can fish well, we arrived at the same
time as a local commercial boat but neither of us had anything
there.
Low water slack saw us sitting on top of the Helwick
Bank catching lots of weavers, the odd dab and doggie. This gave a
chance for us to have a cup of tea and some lunch before heading back
offshore to try the bank I'd earmarked for the flood.
Once the
tide had built enough we joined the 2 commercials already working the
offshore bank and were quickly into fish. Fishing was pretty steady
for the next few hours with a fish or two coming on most drifts. By
3:30pm we'd ran out of eels, we tried one last bank on the way home
using shads where we found a couple of fish but no where near as
effective as we were with the live eels.
We arrived back at
the lock at around 6pm. In total we had about 45+ bass up to 4lb+
mainly in the 3lb bracket though. Interestingly a number of these
fish had baby whiting still in their mouths
alive so that's obviously what their feeding on at the moment. |
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Bassing the banks
Good
tide and good weather saw me organising a half day in work today. Oystercat was out in the day with another skipper, so 7 of us huddled
eagerly around the berth waiting for the big blue bus to come through
the swing bridges so we could load up and head out. After
picking up 4lb of eel from Swansea Tackle and Bait we pushed down the
Gower coast to the bank I wanted to fish. We got there and joined 2
boats already there. |
We were bang on high water so had to contend with
the battle between wind and tide for the drift of the boat. Only a
few doggies were picked up over this period, as soon as the tide
built enough to give a straight drift we picked up the first few
bass, but we were only getting 1 per drift. So I moved us over to
another part of the bank about 0.4miles away. Luckily the other 2
boats had long gone so I slowly motored over the spot I wanted to
drift and saw 3 reasonable shoals of fish on top of the peak so hopes
were high. The first drift saw 3 bass landed and a couple of stolen
eels and missed bites. |
This rate of fishing continued until the
last drift around 8:40pm (so we could make it back for the last
lock). I was tempted to stay out on the outer pontoon and shoot off
for first light but with a forecast of winds up to 20mph and wind
over tide I decided against it. Unfortunately, the forecast didn't
come to being and it would have been reasonable conditions out there.
Oh well, can only go on the forecast.
We had 20 or so bass in
about 2hrs so not all bad, most between 40 and 44cm but a few bigger
ones also, so everyone had a few fish to take home. Sorry for the
lack of pictures but as it was such a short session we couldn't waste
any time on the drift.
Skipper Dean Gifford
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Dean Gifford - Lundy Cuckoo Wrasse
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Richard Pincott - Luindy Pollack 4lb
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Dean Gifford - Lundy Pollack 6lb 8oz
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John Bevan - Lundy Pollack 5lb 8oz
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John Elvins _ Lundy Pollack 4lb 8oz
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The bass family - Dean Gifford, Luke Hayward, Carl Hayward
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Nathaniel James- Bass |
Ty Scott- Bass |
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Dean Gifford Ballan Wrasse
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Tight lines from 5 June 2014
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Tight lines from 5 June 2014
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Tight lines from 5 June 2014
Marley Covelli |
Oystercat fishing off Oxwich 29 May 2014
Huw Jones 2lb black bream
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Oystercat fishing off Oxwich 29 May 2014
Ray Bennett 4.5lb small eyed ray
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Oystercat fishing off Oxwich 29 May 2014
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Oystercat fishing off Oxwich 29 May 2014
Gwyn Thomas with a 1lb 15oz nice plaice for the table
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Oystercat fishing off Oxwich 29 May 2014
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Oystercat fishing off Oxwich 29 May 2014
Lewis Pearce in again with a 2lb 8oz black bream
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Oystercat fishing to Oxwich 29 May 2014 - Photos above
Pick of the photos from this Oystercat fishing trip, we had a great
day.
We caught dabs, dogfish, bull huss,whiting, codling, smoothhound,
spur
dog, plaice, grey gurnard , red gurnard, black bream, spider crab,
star fish and
Ray caught a ray.
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Low water fishing off Owich Marks
Gwyn Thomas - 2lb 2oz black bream
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Off-shore wreck fishing catches 4 May 2014
Ben Mordecai (L) 11lb spurdog. Carl Rosser (R)
14lb spurdog |
Ben Mordecai assisted by skipper
Dean Gofford with another spurdog for Ben
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Wreck Fishing 4 May 2014
Stephen Haynes 10lb spurdog
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John Elvins 19.5lb spurdog |
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1 April - Sker Marks
Steve Jenkins (R) caught this 30lb conger
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Caught 1 April 2014 down Sker way
Howard Griffiths
19lb conger caught off Kenfig
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14 April 2014 -Off Oxwich
Harry Lawson - 13oz plaice |
