Guided Shore Fishing on the Cardigan Bay
Coast of Mid-Wales
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Fish species along the Cardigan Bay shoreline This listing shows what a wide variety of species are possible from Cardigan Bay's coastline. The diversity is due to the variety of habitats to be found. Frequently caught species are in bold. Others are less frequent shore catches but are not uncommon in the area (perhaps we just need to tweak tactics a bit more), while those in italics are rare hereabouts. However, they have featured at some point in catch reports, turned up in nets or have been recorded on shoreline dives. Those species that I have caught from the Welsh shore (a grand total of 50) are marked with an asterisk. In my 2009 "40-species in a year from the Welsh shore" challenge, I did travel widely to target some of these species simply because the odds of success, for example with black bream at Pwllheli, or triggerfish at Mumbles Pier, appeared to be much greater - a policy that proved successful. However, there are still marks locally where varying tactics and innovation may well bring a nice surprise or two. The list illustrates two points. Firstly, some species are so common that they tend to get to baits before others. This especially applies to dogfish and whiting: however, neither species is present all of the time. Secondly, we anglers tend to be set in our ways. Few of us fish small mussel or worm baits cast long-range onto sand patches from the mussel-encrusted intertidal reefs - we tend to use large peeler crab baits aimed at bass, wrasse or codling closer in, or we stick to the open surf-beaches. This may explain why, for example, despite plaice being present, there are few reports of catches. In fact there remains a wealth to explore, both in terms of ground that has hardly been fished or in terms of tactics that are not much used, as well as the mainstream marks with their time-honoured methods. That's what makes this part of the world so interesting.
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