The practice pond - somewhere safe to get the hang of casting

We were a bit early so we had a brew at the very comfy cafe and planned our lunch from the simple but extensive menu while waiting for Mike.

Mike arrived not long after and after asking about our previous experience and skill (not much of either) we moved into the tackle shop away from the cafe’s punters but still out of the rain to get to grips with the basics of safety, rods, lines, flies and basic watercraft. Mike was a great ‘teacher’ and I managed to learn a lot in such a short time as well as how to tie a few new knots.

We moved onto the practice pool where, as predicted, the wind was blowing a bit much to make learning the overhead cast a bit difficult so we concentrated on the roll cast, a cast that doesn’t involve the fly line travelling behind you so it can be made in more confined areas or, as was the case with us, when the wind is blowing a monster over your shoulders.

Mike was very patient with us and after a while we got the hang of things and the morning flew by until it was time for a lunch break, cheese and bacon toasty and a mug of tea – lovely.

We devoured our lunch and as the wind didn’t seem to be abating we moved onto a local playing field that was a bit more protected to have a go at the basic overhead cast. We stayed here for ages although it didn’t seem long (as they say… time flies as you’re having fun) as Mike helped us grasp and execute the basic overhead cast, culminating in us learning how to ‘shoot’ line to gain a bit of distance. It was fantastic, when it went right the smile on both our faces must have made us look like complete goons.

Pontoons on the main lake at Curley's Fly Fishery

We ended the afternoon with a bit of fishing, putting into practice a few of the things we’d learnt. We didn’t catch anything but that really wasn’t the idea and the conditions were a bit rubbish to say the least.

I should have taken some photo’s of Mike casting as to see anyone skilled in their chosen profession doing what they obviously love is always a pleasure but I was too busy trying to learn and put into practice everything we were being taught. Seeing Mike casting to demonstrate certain techniques and even being skilled enough to add errors to his casts to show us what happens when you do it wrong was amazing. Mike even let us have a go with one of his more expensive rods just to show us how a different ‘action’ of the rod can affect your cast.

If you are interested in giving fly fishing a go I thoroughly recommend getting tuition from a qualified instructor, and if you live in the North West of the UK, give Mike a call – it will be worth it.

Taking it easy on the bank of the River Douglas

For some bizarre reason I woke up early last Sunday morning so after raiding the freezer for some frozen black lugworm and mackerel I made the epic journey of 5 minutes to the River Douglas to have a quick sea fishing session of a couple of hours up to high water then one down.

Although there were a few black clouds on the horizon the weather stayed warm and dry and a few more anglers turned up to see what could be tempted out of the coffee coloured water, the main target species would be Flounder with maybe Eels as well. The river was high, considering the size of the tide, due to the amount of rain we’ve had recently so with all that fresh water fishing was going to be tough as the fish may not come up the river if the salinity is too low.

A good thing about the recent rains is the hosepipe ban has been lifted in Lancashire, not that we’ve needed to water anything except the odd hanging basket, and the wild flowers and grasses are probably at the best I’ve seen them for a few years with the flood plain of the River Douglas being covered in bright yellow Catsear (Hypochaeris radicata).

A Floodplain of Yellow Catsear

It was a good job the weather was nice as the fishing was dire but it gave me a good opportunity to take a few photo’s and explore one of the inlets looking for Mullet (didn’t see any). No matter what baits I used or at what distance, they were coming back intact – not even the crabs seemed interested.

Usually I do quite well on the dougie but no one caught that morning, which made me feel a little better, so maybe it was such a lovely lazy morning even the river’s residents had a lie-in.

Trying to Tempt the Trout at Mere Beck Fly Fishery

After my recent poor form in the sea fishing department we had an evening session fly fishing at Mere Beck Fly Fishery, near Preston, a few nights ago. The reports had been pretty poor and apparently trout don’t like bright sunny conditions so the prospects of a fish didn’t look good but we packed some sandwiches and drove the whole 10 minutes (I know!!!) up the road to have a go anyway.

Big Grin - Little Fish

Chatting to Gordon, the Owner / Manager, who gave us a quick lesson over a year ago, it wasn’t fishing well but buzzers would be the way to go. Buzzers are basically small hooks ‘dressed’ to look like small nymphs and consist of a hook covered in thread to make it a bit thicker with slightly more to give it a ‘head’ shape near the eye of a small hook – that’s it.

As we had the place to ourselves (obviously everyone else decided it wasn’t worth trying) we had a bit of an explore around the various ponds the fishery has but appart from a few splashes we couldn’t tempt a trout although towards dusk there was increased activity and Wendy, spotting a few splashes on the surface in a shady spot, managed to catch the smallest fish I’ve seen in a long time – a Minnow I think.

Although the fish failed to turn up we still had a great evening and it’s a lot easier to practice casting and honing a new technique without an audience. I feel we getting better at casting each time we go and it helps that we can stand back and watch each other and give advice but we’ve got to the point where we need a bit more coaching so next bank holiday weekend we’ve booked a full day with a qualified AGPAI (Advanced Professional Game Angling Instructors) instructor.

We’re looking forward to it and I’ve already been ‘chatting’ to him via email to get a few hints before we turn up – I’m sure Mike thinks he’s being stalked…

An Early Start Sea Fishing at Perch Rock, New Brighton

Once more the urge to get up at stupid o’clock overcame my common sense as it does with a lot a sea anglers as I made my way South through Liverpool and under the Mersey to meet up with a few of the guys from the Wirral Sea Fishing website at Perch Rock, New Brighton.

The target species for this sea fishing trip was Thornback Ray as a few had come out of the mark in previous weeks. We would be fishing two hours down to low water then a couple of hours back up into fairly deep water, at a range of anywhere between 50 yards and ‘as far as you can get it’ using either simple pulley or ‘up and over’ rigs armed with 3/0 hooks and baited with Sandeel and Squid wraps.

Signs were good as Richie landed a small Thornback Ray of about 3 pounds to a Mackerel and Squid wrap (just to be different) but appart from a solitary Whiting to Joe that was the only fish we saw with the crabs stripping the baits almost as soon as they hit the sea bed.

A hour into the flood Kev and I called it a day as the weed became to much with the fast current as the sea flooded into the River Mersey so that’s another blank for me. Still, it was good to get out on a beautiful morning and put faces to a few names from the WSF forum. We heard later that Joe went again on the following low tide but during darkness and caught a fish of about 5 pounds – usually the light level doesn’t affect the Mersey due to the colour of the water but who knows – maybe next time I’ll fish it into darkness.

Eileen’s editor, Susan, asked if she could use one of my photographs for the cover a few months ago and until I received an email asking for my address I’d completely forgotten about it.

My first ever published photo – brilliant!

Susan found the photo from a post I did a while back about bird watching at Marshside, Southport and the only change they’ve made to it is to flip it so the moon is top right.

I”ll leave you with an excerpt from the “Walking In the Wind” by Eileen Berry as she describes a bit of Marshside in a way I hope to do in my photography.

“Wide skies, white seabirds, wild seas – this is her world -
the whole blustery world of marsh and near-deserted shore,
where a few people look for shells,
a man walks his dog”

The Sun sets over the surf at Rossall

With the wind in the West we decided on a late night sea fishing session up at Rossall near Fleetwood last Saturday to see if any Bass were out playing in the surf.

On arrival and after a fly by from the Red Arrows along the promenade we had a quick look at the state of the sea and although it looked a bit rough it seemed fishable enough so we quickly set up the gear and launched some black lugworm baits just behind the surf.

Initially this seemed to work well but contrary to the forcaste the wind seemed to pick up and as high water approached it quickly became evident that there was far too much weed in the water to make sea fishing feasible. You can see how windy it was – the bags hanging from the tripods in the photo above are full of rocks to stop things blowing over. This was quickly demonstrated in my last two casts where one bait ended up snagged round a groyne about 30 yards to my left – dragged there by the weed (I lost that one) and the other bait ended up on the beach with about 4 pounds of wed attached to it.

We gave up at that point…

A shame really as the sea looked very fishy but sometimes it’s just impossible to fish it and you don’t know until you give it a try.

Cemlyn Bay

A few more photographs from our recent visit to Anglesey which include our first visit to Abermenai Point

Llanddwyn Bay - looking NW from Abermenai Point

Sea Holly (Eryngium maritimum)

The protected dune plant, Sea holly (Eryngium maritimum) is native to most European coastlines and resembles a metallic blue flowering thistle growing to a height 60 cm. In Elizabethan times in England, these plants were believed to be a strong aphrodisiac and in 2002 Sea holly was nominated the 2002 County flower for the city of Liverpool.

Looking south from Abermenai Point towards the Lleyn Peninsula

"Where Sand Meets the Sea" - Llanddwyn Beach

Looking towards Rhoscolyn Beacon

We might not have done very well in the sea fishing stakes during our summer visit to Anglesey but we managed to get out and about a few times so here are a few of the better photographs I took while we were there.

Helicopter from RAF Valley practicing over the headland

Looking South West from Aberffraw Bay towards the Lleyn Peninsula

Six-spot Burnet Moth

All of the photographs in this post are taken using the Canon EOS 450D with most of them using the standard ‘cheap’ 18-55mm lens. To enhance the skies I used a hoya circular polariser which also cut down on the glare from the sea in some of the shots.

They were all taken in RAW format so if I need higher resolution versions or need to enhance them further the detail is stored within the file. All of them were cropped to size in photoshop and sharpened a little as they tend to blur a bit when you take them down in size so much.

The only other thing I tend to do is straighten the horizon on the seascapes as no matter how hard I try, when hand holding the camera I can never get it exactly horizontal.

I’m really enjoying my photography at the moment and Anglesey gives anyone the opportunity to visit some truly beautiful, almost deserted, areas which for any amateur photographer is great.

Saint Cwyfan Church, Porth China nr Aberffraw

Small Tortoiseshell butterfly

It was good to see a few Small Tortoiseshell butterflies feeding on all the flowers – these have been hit with a disease in recent years and I’ve not seen anything like as many as I used to as a child – but they seem to be doing OK on Anglesey.

Penrhos on Anglesey as the tide floods

We’ve just returned from a couple of weeks sea fishing, walking and generally relaxing on Anglesey, one our favourite places to unwind. We stayed in a cottage at Ty Cristion which as usual was excellent and as the schools hadn’t broken up was very quiet so when we needed to just sit in the sun and watch the Buzzards circling overhead or read, our rest wasn’t shattered by the screams of “can we go to the beach now” from hordes of kids.

To say the weather was unkind would be a slight understatement as halfway through our break Anglesey and the North Wales coastline was battered by winds of up to 84mph and more rain in a couple of days than usually falls in an entire month but we still managed to get out a couple of times to wet a line, as the saying goes.

One of our favourite beaches on the island is Broad Beach (Porth Nobla) just South of Rhosneigr, where we fished a couple of hours either side of high water in darkness hoping for a Bass.

The sea was was almost flat, for once, and although it looked like weed may be a problem it only became an issue as you wound back in to re-bait.

Unfortunately no Bass were showing even though we tried every bait under the Sun (or Moon) – ragworm, sandeel, lugworm and crab, and it was looking like even Wales’ most infamous denizen of the dark, the Dogfish, wasn’t going to play until Wendy managed to land a small one then proceed to repeat the feat not much later while I was still staring at my motionless rod like a fool. Finally, about a half hour before we packed up, I managed my own Dogfish – not the target species but a fish is a fish and anything is good when you’re a bit desperate.

We had a few more trips out to various places including Penrhos to fish from low tide up, using ragworm to tempt a Bass but on this occasion even though we saw the odd small fish splash about near the surface the Bass were not to be tempted – outsmarted by a fish – again…

Before the chaos that the wind brought we had a quick go at Fly Fishing in the inland sea, a large tidal lagoon that separates Anglesey from Holy Island and although our skills and techniques are definitely improving the fish weren’t impressed and obviously found something better to eat rather than a hook covered in feathers and fluff.

Wendy snares a Three-bearded rockling at Cemlyn Bay

Another of our favourite beaches is Cymyran Bay, on the North West side of the Island, this beach has been fairly good to us in the past but our timing was off and we arrived at low water and looking back at it there really wasn’t much depth to the water. We’ve been told (local knowledge is everything) that the state of tide doesn’t really matter here, it’s more to do with the time of day as the Bass move in as the sun sets.

This was not to be and we’re now convinced it needs to be fished over high tide into darkness.

The Dogfish were quite obliging once the sun set and Wendy managed a couple of other species; a Five-bearded Rockling and a larger Three-bearded Rockling (her first) so although my tally was more Dogfish a new species was caught and a pleasant evening was spent watching the sun set over the headland.

And then the weather arrived and the fishing went on hold. In fact everything to do with outside went on hold for a few days until the sky cleared.

The wind had made the West coast beaches almost un-fishable due to the amount of weed in the water and the rains made rock fishing a little dangerous as the paths were now slick with mud so we spent the rest of our break going for walks around the island.

We didn’t get anything like as much sea fishing done as we’d hoped and for once never did any fishing off Anglesey’s  rock marks but we did, as always, have a great time and there’s always next time…

As for the weather it was inevitable that we were going to get a hosepipe ban up here in Lancashire, we havn’t had much rain since it snowed and the major reservoirs in the area are only at around 50% capacity. Saying that, as I look out of the window, it is currently chucking it down but  I think it will need a few weeks of sustained rain to make much of a difference.

The water shortage is undoubtedly caused by the low rainfall this year but I’m sure a lot more could be done by the water suppliers to fix leaks. To give you an example there was a leak in the centre of Bolton near a well known night club that was leaking for at least 2 months – it must have wasted far more in that time than a whole village of hosepipes.

Thank god sea fishing doesn’t need rain, if anything fresh water entering the sea in quantity at river estuaries can push the fish out to the more salty depths making a trip to these areas end up in a big fat blank. Thankfully Anglesey doesn’t really suffer from this and so long as you stay safe and be careful on wet slippery rocks, rain doesn’t make a lot of difference.