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2022 season:
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Hi all - good to be back up and running! 2020 just didn't happen and 2021 was a very late start and then the bad weather came in and wrecked the plans. I think the two main highlights of 2021 were firstly a meet-up with repeat customer Brolly at the rocky Strumble Head. Now, Brolly caught Covid in early 2020 and was seriously-affected: he had suffered long Covid for over 12 months but that summer it suddenly cleared. The most bizarre thing is that prior to that he had no head for heights at all but here he is acting like a mountain goat:
Great to see and the wrasse were particularly obliging!
The second highlight of 2021 was caught by sheer accident whilst optimistically feathering for mackerel off the reef at Borth in September. I had a good take and simultaneously saw a silvery fish leap clear into the air. A heck of a scrap followed and I was thinking it must be a bass of 3-4 pounds, so you can imagine my surprise when I landed this:
It's almost certainly an Allis Shad (the other shad, the Twaite, is smaller; this is some 45 cm in length). They shed scales in a similar way to poor-cod - I guess it's a defence mechanism against predators. I reported the catch to Natural Resources Wales and it was of course returned immediately after the photo was taken. That's Welsh shore species #49 for me: always expect the unexpected!
But much of the rest of 2021 was a sorry tale of gales and weeded-out beaches - I guess I probably covered the insurance premium and cost of new line, hooks etc!
2022 has got off to a slow start fishwise. There were some sharp, sand-chilling frosts in early April so I've been concentrating on low tide sessions to make sure the baits are on a substrate unexposed to the -5C temperatures. Those have gone for now at least and instead we've had goodly amounts of sunshine so hopefully sea temperatures will respond accordingly. Short 2-hour trips are proving popular and have dominated the guiding so far. Some action shots:
and:
All flatties so far: flounders, dabs and turbot. The turbot in the pic gave a cracking bite out of all proportion to its size! But no dogfish or rays at all which is a bit unusual; bass are around but not in massive numbers although I saw a good one landed by another angler last week. We're in a run of easterlies now for several days at least: although they do kill the fishing on many marks it is hoped they will continue to let the sun get to work and warm everything up. That in turn will get the crabs thinking more about peeling instead of eating our baits. Underwater visibility is poor at about a foot so there are several areas of room for improvement, but I am just pleased to be up and running again. It's been a very long time!