A plague of Pouting

The hunt for the elusive Solent cod continued with an evening trip to Browndown, fishing the edge of the main channel about 3/4 mile out. The fishing took place around low water for no other reason than the winds were low and I'd not managed to get out for 2 weeks. The northerly force 3-4 kept the sea flat making fishing conditions quite pleasant, if not a tad cool.

Two rods were fished, one a 6/0 pennel whole squid/ragworm combination, the other a simple two hooker flapper arrangement baited with a combination of mackerel, squid strips and ragworm.

Water depth was 20m, once I'd hit bottom an extra 40m of line was let out leaving little remaining on the reel.

The action was none stop with a multitude of double hook-ups of pouting with a few whiting showing up to. The pouting were generally large, though the whiting were disappointingly small with no keepers for the table.

A few dogfish showed up too, though thankfully not in the numbers experienced recently. There was a moment when a decent fish seemed liked, only for double hook-up of dogfish to appear at the surface.

So after 3 hours which saw a total of around 50 fish come to the yak the decision was made to call it a night. One great thing about the evening was terrific displays of fireworks around the Solent, and it didn't cost a penny!

Please feel free to comment.

2 comments:

Paul said...

That's some good number of fish, Rob. How long were you out there??

Rob Appleby-Goudberg said...

Trip was 3 hours at the most. Small stuff, lots of it.. better than blanking. Hopefully something bigger next time!. If the weather holds that should be tomorrow night, might be an all-nighter as I do enjoy a good sunrise.