Weymouth and Portland Borough Boat Festival 2014

Usually fishing a competition is not my thing! But I thought bugger it, lets enter the Weymouth and Portland Borough Boat Festival 2014! Now to fish this comp i needed a boat! So i got in contact with Trad Casye's to fish on his boat Gypsy with Billy Short, Austin Weeding and Ian Weeding. He accepted and the fishing session was booked for Sunday the 21st of september. The night before I checked the whether to see what fishing conditions would be like. I found that there would be no tide and sunny all day. But on the other had we had to pay for this as there was loads of wind kicking around the East side of Portland; as a result we could only fish on the West side of the Island.

After we steamed out to Portland bill we set about drifting around the water by the light house in search of Wrasse! Now the only down side to fishing the ground at this location is it is very rocky. So when we rigged up we had to be prepared to loose some gear. This was not so much of a problem as there was no tide, so we only had to use small weights. I used a 4oz bomb weight with a two hook flapper rig loaded to the teeth with rag worm fresh from Chesil Bait N Tackle. This rig was extremely effective at not only catching the Wrasse but also being able to pull the rig out of the rocks when we snagged up and have a hole rig still attached.

In the first half hour we were all pulling in the Wrasse form Cork Wings to Huge mother pigs of Ballen Wrasse. I lost count! Something to try next time will be lure fishing for the Wrasse of a boat.  Just over a hour later I hooked into another fish, But this time it felt a bit heavier than the other fish I had been pulling in ! Only once I Brought the fish to the surface did I realise that I had caught a Huge Cuckoo Wrasse! Now Man alive the colours on this fish were out of this world; but just for minuet I thought I was fishing somewhere in a tropical ocean! But I soon composed myself and remembered I was in Weymouth ! This is also my PB Cuckoo as I have never caught one before !

Due to the size of the fish I was advised to take it in to be weighed. This posed a problem, I would have to kill the fish to take it in. No I said to myself there must be another way. I looked at the cool box on the engine hatch and decided to fill it with salt water and put the fish inside. I recovered the fish in the cool box and monitored it all day whilst changing its water every hour. I felt like I was corse fishing. Thankfully the fish survived all day in the cool box witch aloud me to demonstrate that you DONT have to kill fish to weigh them in for a competition, but instead all you need to do is take care of the fish to make sure that it survives until you release it back into the wild! On arriving back at the club house we quickly carried the fish in the cool box in to the cub to be weighed. The weight of the fish came to 0.84kg (1LB 13 and a half oz). Thats a 148% specimen! Not only did this win me the trophy for Best specimen caught by a junior in all the five days of the festivals but I also smashed the cub record for Cuckoo Wrasse Prior to the previous record of 1LBand 11oz. this made the day all worth while! 

#catchandrelease

After we finished fishing the drifts around Portland bill we decided to fish opposite Chessil beach. At this point I changed my set up to a running ledger with a 8oz weight and 2.0 Hooks. This aloud me to cut up my fresh caught mackerel into thin strips, Perfect for Pout! This rig proved very effective catching me Bream, Pout, Pout whiting, Wrasse and dog fish. after about two hours into fishing in this spot Austin Weeding hooked into his first ever Tub Gurnard that he caught on rag worm and a one squid's head. I estimate it was 2LB, but that does not matter as he was over the moon with catching this fish because he set about catching one all day! Well done Austin!!! :)

After this the fishing slowly died down, and all the time had gone! I really enjoyed fishing this comp! As result I will be definitely fishing it next year and hope to see others fishing it to as I highly recommend it! I would also like to say a big Thank you to Trad Casey as I would not of fished this competition with out him supplying his boat!

have a fantastic weekend everybody! tight lines Luke :)

Trout Grayling and magazine photographers

To start this post I must apologise for not fishing and posting with in the last month. This is due to school work. Now as nerd ish as this might sound School work must come before fishing because that will fundamentally effect my future and carve how I will live the rest of my life! Thats enough of that ! Now to get on with the post!


My Savage Gear Roadrunner Gear Bag Review on Planet Sea Fishing - 

http://www.planetseafishing.com/reviews/read/savage-gear-roadrunner-gear-bag-reviewed

And on my blog - Just click reviews on the right hand search panel. 

   

Trout and grayling 

When I talk about my fresh water side of fishing I can safely say that i could quite happily fish for Pike and Perch! But as we all know there are plenty of other fish in the sea. So to test this hypothesis i decided to take a trip up to a local river With Will Harding to try and catch something different! Little did I know that I would defiantly catch something different to my usual. On arriving we decided on setting up two different set ups. One rod had a meps spinner attached and the other had a standard float set up. At the bottom of this float was a size 14 hook tipped with white maggot. You don't have to use live maggot ether, you can also use fake maggot! We both found this to be affective as well! Once the mess spinner was set up will and I set about catching some fish. Still to this point he kept the spices of fish we were targeting a secret! First cast into the river with the meps spinner and it was fish on! Now this fish fought well considering on how small it was! We even got it to jump out of the water. When the fish done this I noticed that it was brown in colour but i was still not sure what it was. I quickly reached for the landing net to bank the fish. After scooping the the fish up i realised that this fish was a Trout. For the life of me I would not of ever guessed that there would be trout in the river that i was fishing. I was also astonished at ow easy it was to hook one of these beautiful creatures! Now after using a Meps spinner Will puled out one of his own home made spinners ad once again first cast caught another trout. So lets sum this up. All you need is your rod licence, Rod reel and line, a spinner (may that be a Meps or your own, by the way making your own spinners is easy! Just give it a google search and you will more than find out how to make your own lure. It s cheaper as well! The last thing you need is a net! I was blown away by this! Just at the fact that you need so little to be able to catch a beautiful yes beautiful fish!

  Later I set about using the float rod. Now this was a completely different kettle of fish all together. after placing my personal and what I could best of two maggots on to the hook and casting them out into the river you have to let the bale arm out. This allows line to rip of of the spool as the float - floats down stream. By doing this you are representing a maggot that has fallen into the river and is traveling down stream. The fish loved this and with in a few mints the swim was buzzing! As a result I hooked onto my first ever trout. What a amazing experience and feeling that was!

After this not only was the swim buzzing but so was I!! I couldn't wait for my next hook up! when it came I was ecstatic! Another Trout another Trout. No I was wrong! Another new species, Thats two in one day. This time it was a Grayling. Now these fish look the most placid thing ever. But when they show of their dorsal fin it really gets the blood going! Just like the trout they put up a fantastic fight for a small fish once hooked. The only down side i found to targeting these spices is they don't like to go back. Or in other words they take a long time to recover. I would just like to say that no fish were harmed or killed in the making of this blog post! They were all put back safe and sound. So I found out that the rule of thumb is to get both of these fish back into the water as quickly as you can! Out of the water for no more that 20 seconds. Quick photograph and strait back in the drink. When putting them back that might appear to look dead, but they are not! just takes a little while for them to swim off!

 Just as I was releasing my grayling Will hooked into another fish! Now from the bend in the rod while he was fitting the fish, I guessed that this one was substantially bigger than the last! Wasn't I right! He done it again.. The biggest fish of the day by far! We estimated this Trout to be about 4LB. But we were not sure. All we know is that it was a stocker Trout! That just nearly made my day. But the next bit did make my day when we released this wild brown Trout. Watching this fish swim of gave me a humbled feeling knowing that fish will go on to get bigger torus to catch again! To round up this trip have to say that it was fantastic ! I would defiantly make it a regular fishing session because it is so good! sum it up in two word - I'm Hooked !!

A few days later I got a call from shaun asking me I wanted to come and fish with him while a photographer of a fishing magpie came to photograph us. I was rather interested in this and ant along to the meet to find out more.  On arrival I found out that the Photographers name was Steve Phillips from Total Corse Fishing Magazine. He told me that he was setting up the U.K's first dedicated salt and fresh water lure fishing digital magazine set to launch later in 2024. He also said that he had came down to get some shots of us LRF boys to put in his launching issue of this magazine. After I found out this i soon got fishing.  fishing with me was Shaun Charrington and Mike Morris.  After previously in the week having a ace fishing session at the Pleasure Pier we all decided towhead there first. 

Photograph by Steve Phillips.

One again once arriving at the pier i set course for under the pier balancing on the beams underneath. While fishing hear i used only a standard split shot rig with a size 14 hook tipped with a little pice of ether red or pink ISOME. This time while under the pier I hooked into four different types of Goby. Common goby, Rock Goby, Black Goby and a Leopard spotted Goby. Now catching a leopard spotted Goby was a first for me as I had never caught one before. People say that catching Gobys is boring. I completely disagree on one condition. As long as you catch a wide selection of the different species of goby. It fascinates me when i come across a new type of Goby. Also under the pier I caught Wrasse. Cork Wing Wrasse and Ballan Wrasse. No matter what size the Wrasse is, when fishing LRF any Wrasse fights well. I think that Wrasse are one of the best fighting fish out there! On top of this Me Shaun and Mike caught Smelt, Pollock and sand smelt on this pier. Steve was defiantly kept busy photographing fish as we all kept pulling them out! 

Photograph by Steve Phillips

Photograph by Steve Phillips

After we had fished out the pier we decided to finish of the evening fishing opposite the harbour masters office. for fishing hear I picked up some rocket SV 69 Plus hooks to jig up my LRF lures. I have heard that these hooks were the dogs dodars. Why yes they were. First drop into the water after 10 seconds I was into a Pollock. They have the thumbs up from me !!  

Now that Steve had been taking all the photographs of the evening i decided to let him have a go on my rod to see what LRF was like. He accepted my offer and bagged up on his first ever LRF fish. WRASSE !!!! Soon after he was into the pollock as well. 

I would like to say a big thank you to Steve for coming to photograph us for the evening and doing such a fantastic job! Also a big thank you to Shaun for organising the meet. I look forward the the article in the magazine. I will post the link to the article once it has been published. 

have a fantastic week everybody! New post due next week. Thigh lines !!!!

Luke Gregory. 

Photograph by Steve Phillips

Photograph by Steve Phillips