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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Continued in next column...

Bank Holiday Monday 6 May 2013

 

Luke 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.