In typical sea fishing style after a beautiful day on Saturday I arrived at the Venue know as Rossall Hospital nr. Fleetwood and it was chucking it down. As this beach is very exposed the gullies change location so while I was waiting for the rest of the BLAS crew for our 3rd match of the season I had a quick look up and down the stretch of beach we’d be fishing.

The best of these gullies was already occupied but looking North I spotted a likely looking spot so once everyone arrived I made my way to where I remembered seeing the break in the sandbank – remembered because in the short time I was waiting the sea had completely covered the sand and was breaking against the shingle.

Eight of us fished this match, the first leg of the beach cup, and it was hard going – at least for me.

Although there was a good surf on, a Bass like surf, no Bass showed – we didn’t expect any as it’s a little early but it would have been nice. The main species that was coming out was Dab and Flounder but the only thing I was catching was a few rays of sun.

Although the sun made me feel a bit better Tom, fishing a few yards North of me after having a bit of trouble with his reel came over for me to witness his Dab – I was pleased for him – at least a little bit…

The tide was ebbing quite quickly now so, using just Black Lug to try and keep my bait streamlined, I launched a bait as far as possible. Needless to say the cast went a bit wrong as these things always do when you’re under pressure and as Shacky called ‘all out’ I wound in thinking of my first ‘blank’ of the season only to find a fat Three Bearded Rockling firmly attached to my rig with half a large Black Lugworm down its gob. Possibly the greediest fish in the sea but I’ve never been so relieved to see that little Rockling.

As well as Dab, Flounder and Rockling an undersized Plaice was caught. Everyone caught something and had a good natter so once again thanks go to the Blackpool and Layton Angling Society guys for a great morning and hopefully I’ll do a bit better at our second visit to Fairhaven in a couple of weeks.

With the sea being almost flat calm and no movement of consequence in the water the humble Dab was the target species. Armed with 30 or so frozen (past their best) black lug and some Mackerel as bait I met up with the guys for a few of hours before high water then selected a spot in front of what I thought looked like a ‘fishy’ gully, set up a couple of 1 up 1 down clipped rigs with size 1 hooks (just in case anything bigger turned up) and waited for the shout of ‘all in’. We cast our baits into the darkness and then the wait began.

It was a good job the company and banter was good as the fishing in the area I selected was grim, not a bite for 2 hours. It was so bad a couple of the guys left early so I moved along the prom 50 yard or so to continue – hoping to maybe locate a fish or two.

The move payed off and I landed my first fish of 2011, a small Dab of 24cm. It seemed I had found the fish but time ran out on me and the call ‘all out’ came far too soon.

Although it initially looked like the fishing was going to be rubbish over half of those present handed in catch sheets which considering the less than ideal conditions was a great result all round.

First sea fishing outing of 2011, a fish and a good chat with some mates – what a great start to the year.

I’ve not had much luck here this year either due to weed, weather or just being a bit crap but I was determined to catch. The sea was flat calm but there was no sign of the rafts of weed that have plagued us recently and the temperature was at least above zero (just).

The only drawback was lack of fresh bait due to the cold snap earlier in the week so armed with frozen Black Lug, Squid and Mackerel I set up opposite a small gap in the sandbank hoping that the smelly May 2009 vintage Black Lug and Squid cocktails would tempt a few Dabs.

Eight of us fished to the right of the slipway while the Fleetwood club, also having a match, set up to the right and the wait began. Shacky was first in with a double header of undersized Dabs  and soon everyone except Dave had caught some of these little flatties. As well as an in size Dab I managed a small Flounder on Mackerel (too small dammit) and Tom managed to snare a half decent Whiting on his last cast.

I had a great afternoon with good company which was made even better by finally breaking my run of bad luck, admittedly it was only a Dab but damn – it was good to catch a fish. I even came third and this being BLAS’s only cash match won a whole… wait for it… TEN pounds.

This is one of the reasons I love being a member of Blackpool and Layton Angling Society, there is some stunning silverware to be won and some of the anglers within the club are exceptionally skilled but being part of BLAS is all about mates, matches are realistically just a good excuse to get together and catch (pardon the pun) up.

The Fleetwood club set up to our right

Although the forecast wasn’t too bad the wind was bitterly cold sweeping down the beach from the north and by the time our black lugworm baits were in the water we were wondering if this was such a good idea after all. This was confirmed as after 5 minutes our tackle was loaded with weed and was almost impossible to retrieve. After a few more casts Wendy decided to sit it out for a while to see if the weed situation improved while I launched my baits as far a possible, setting the rod high on the tripod and hoping to keep the line out of the weed.

After a couple of hours of this, Wendy rejoining our struggle against the weed we’d had enough and just to drive home the point I lost my terminal gear on the final retrieve as the line parted under the pressure of the amount of crud on the line.

It was interesting though to be on the beach after such wild weather, there were literally hundreds of Starfish washed up with all sorts of crab including a few Hermit Crabs (I tried one as bait) and the odd Masked Crab which you hardly ever see on the beach. There were also a lot of Sea Mouse, which look like something out of a cheesy Sci-Fi movie.

It’s a shame that the conditions beat us as the report by Shacky shows the conditions and fishing improved, we probably should have stuck it out longer but after looking forward to the trip all week the weed just killed off our enthusiasm for the session and after a couple of hours we said our goodbyes and made our way home where the only cold thing I encountered was a beer while watching the TV.

Wind whipping the sand along the beach at Perch Rock

Met up with a few of the guys from Blackpool and Layton Angling Society for an afternoon sea fishing match at Perch Rock, New Brighton, and to get details of how to get a Port of Liverpool Sea Angling Federation (POLSAF) permit to enable us to fish Liverpool Docks Alex Wall in time for the winter Cod season (I can always hope).

As BLAS matches aren’t exactly serious I elected to alternate casting fairly close in with a two hook rig baited with frozen Lug / Squid or Sandeel sections for Dabs or Whiting with another single hook up and over pulley rig baited with Sandeel or Squid for Thornback rays.

The wind was a lot stronger than forcaste, blowing down the estuary, out to sea which endeavoured to cover everything in sand, I’m still finding it in my eyebrows the following day after having a shower.

The fishing was poor with only Kev and Simon managing to catch anything of match worthy note; a Whiting and Dab to Kev and a Mackerel to Simon, the first I’ve heard of coming out of the Mersey. I managed a half decent Whiting that was just to small to count plus a few other ‘pin’ Whiting while the other guys had similar results to me.

So, after a run of blanks, although my fish didn’t count in the match, I did finally manage to catch something.

Dawn breaks over a mirror like River Mersey

Sea Fishing… it brings out the nutter in some people and last weekend I joined the crazy crew as a few of us arrived at the mark known as The Rock Channel at New Brighton on the Wirral Peninsula, Merseyside at 4:15am. Yes, you read that correctly just past 4 in the morning, I’d left the house at 3am arriving to meet a few of the guys from the Wirral Sea Fishing forum after driving South through an eerily quiet Southport and Liverpool.

This was my second assault (and probably last attempt for the year) on The Rock Channel to try and catch a Smooth Hound so after a quick chat we got suited and booted, waded across the gully and about 30 minutes later were fishing into the last of the ebbing tide as the sun rose over Seaforth Docks on the other side of the River Mersey.

The weapon of choice was a standard pulley rig armed with a Varivas 3/0 Big Mouth hook and baited with peeler crab. It didn’t take long for a greedy little Dab to somehow get it’s mouth round the bait and register the tiniest of bites. As the sun rose this was to be the standard scenario for the trip – the bait would hit the sea bed and a few minutes later the rod would give a little twitch and hey presto – another Dab – there must be hundreds of them.

Considering how many anglers turned up by the time the tide turned, if the Smooth Hounds were there, someone would have caught one but for some reason, even though they’ve been there for the past couple of weeks – they weren’t there on Sunday and after looking at the forums today – the results show they’re not there today either.

Maybe they’ve had their fill of Crabs out of the Mersey estuary this year, maybe with it being a big tide and the weather being so hot recently the waters too warm at low tide as it empties a lot more, maybe we were all just a bit crap… who knows, I know some of the guys I was with are very accomplished anglers and helped develop / discover this mark and they don’t why the smoothies weren’t there either so it just goes to show…

You can be in the right place at the right time, armed with the right bait and have fantastic local knowledge but if the fish aren’t there you’re just plain out of luck.

Anglesey for a couple of weeks in a couple of weeks so I doubt I’ll be out sea fishing till then as I’ve a load of stuff to get ready, although I may just sneak in a trip to the River Douglas to see if I can snare a Flounder or two or maybe go to Mere Beck and have a practice fly fishing before attempting to catch a Bass on the fly on Anglesey.

As I was driving through Liverpool the weather changed dramatically for the worse and by the time I exited the tunnel on the Wirral side the rain was bouncing almost as high as the car windows – I was starting to think maybe I was a little mad to attempt this until I arrived at New Brighton prom. to be greeted by a few more like minded fools. We were there now – rain wasn’t going to stop any one sea fishing with the chance of a smoothy in sight.

We waded across the first big gully about 2.5 hours before low water and set off along the bank to a spot about 1/2 mile from the shore. The sand bar and gully has changed a lot since last year and although the initial gully was over waist high the bar was clear of water which made things considerably easier than last year when we were wading knee deep for the whole treck.

Reaching the spot I baited a pulley rig armed with a big 3/0 hook with some fantastic peeler crab bought from Blackpool Angling Centre on Saturday morning and cast out eager for my first hound and waited patiently. It’s a good job anglers are patient as this was repeated many times for the next 2 hours with only a few small Dabs and a Whiting coming out – somehow managing to get the huge hook in their mouths.

Further up the bar one angler managed 4 Smooth-hounds and he was only a hundred meters or so from us but for me and my friends today was not to be a smooth hound day. Non were caught to the right of us, nearer the ‘beach’ so maybe the channel was slightly deeper where he was, we’ll know where to go next time though.

The trouble with fishing this spot is it changes every year with the sands and channels shifting all the time so the first few trips are a bit ‘hit and miss’ until you find where the deeper water is and hence, where the smooth hounds are feeding.

We called it a day about 1/2 hour after low water as the tide races in at this venue and it’s dangerous to stay any longer, sea fishing is great but it’s not worth taking risks when they’re easily avoided. In a couple of weeks the water should have warmed a little more, the tides will be ideal and we’ll know where to set up stall so hopefully, I’ll be out again and just maybe I can catch my first Smooth Hound.

Good Sized Whiting for me from Cleveleys

With the high pressure dominating the weather and the rain finally giving way we manged to get out on Sunday night for a spot of sea fishing with a few of the guys from Blackpool and Leyton Angling Society (BLAS). Along with all sorts of seasonal running about I’d picked up some Black Lug from Wayne’s Tackle in Preston which although a bit lazy saved me having to pump any in the freezing cold at Formby so money well spent.

We arrived with about 3/4 hour to spare until the start of the BLAS match so had a good chance to catch up with friends we hadn’t seen for ages. After surveying the beach from the car park for any likely gulleys before the tide covered them up while wrapping up in almost every layer we had we made our way down to the waters edge.

With the sea almost flat we cast our Black Lug tipped with Mackeral baits into the darkness. It wasn’t long until the Whiting started to show, small at first but getting progressively larger throughout the evening. We swapped baits around a bit to see what else was there, using Squid to tip the worms or just on it’s own and managed to catch a few small codling (all undersized) as well as a just in-size Dab for Wendy.

Small Codling for Wendy

Moving up the beach as the tide continued to flood the fish just kept coming and one one occasion I felt my bait get ‘hit’ twice while winding back in to re-bait only to find a couple of Whiting had jumped on the bottom and top hook of a Pennel bait that was hopefully going to catch me a Cod.

It was one of those nights where no matter what bait you put out you were going to get a Whiting or two, regardless of what end tackle was used, the trick was going to be if you could manage to catch an in-size fish before the small army of little ones found the bait.

For once I was the lucky one and managed to come second in the match, admittedly out of only eight people but still, after not being out for a while it was good to catch anything and getting a few ‘points’ was a bit of an added bonus. Wendy, although catching the same number of fish as me, only managed one in size, the Dab, but still, 9 fish each more than made up for our freezing extremities.

The major revelation of the evening wasn’t anything to do with sea fishing though, as we’d be fishing from 6pm till 10pm we’d bought some food flasks and loaded them up with soup. Why we hadn’t done this before is a mystery as we usually take sandwiches but with it being a little chilly we thought something warm would be better. It was probably the best idea of the weekend.

Hot soup, a roll to dunk in it and a few fish being caught – who cares what the weather’s like…

JP with a Blackpool Flounder

After visiting the RNLI the BLAS (Blackpool and Layton Angling Society) guys made their way onto an area of Blackpool promenade named ‘North Wall’ for the last sea fishing match of the season.

I went along to keep them company and to see if I could temp anything out of the perfectly coloured water which had a bit of a ‘chop’ to it to it looked promising.

To say the angling was tough would be an understatement and although I tried various baits, rigs and distances I managed to come away without catching anything. Not that it mattered much, I wasn’t in the match I had a good chat with friends I hadn’t seen for some time and the sun came out – finally.

All that came out were a few Dabs, some (only just in-size) Flounder and a few Rockling.

Shauns' matching winning Rockling

The match was eventually won by Shaun, pictured here with a small Rockling – doesn’t look much does it but this fish and another of similar size won him the match.

After chatting to the guys last week and today they’ve been telling me that this winter the fishing on Lancashire coast has been terrible, not only have Codling been in short supply but so have Whiting which is very unusual. We’re putting it down to the lack of storms churning up the sea bed and dislodging food for the fish to come in to shore and eat – at least that’s what we’re hoping…

Cleveleys Beach, Lancashire

As I hadn’t been fishing for a long time I decided to join a few guys on the beach at Cleveleys. They were holding a match and although I wouldn’t be participating I needed to get out fishing. The forcast was cold with maybe a touch of snow.

You can just make out two of the lads walking to the sea, waterproofs and warm clothes clearly evident, and boy was it needed. As I got down to the water after crossing a couple of gulleys (more on these later – you can just see them in the top photo) a blizzard started, whipping up the beach from the south (left to right) and the temperature dropped so much I could hardly feel my fingers.

Winter Fishing - We Must be Mad

They say anglers are mad and I’m inclined to agree but damn, it was good to be out after so long. Good company is worth a little hardship and if we didn’t fish in rubbish weather we’d never go out in the North West.

Normally I’d be re-baiting every 15 minutes or so but as my hands felt a lot better inside my pockets I left my bait out longer than usual so I could chat to the guys and catch up on gossip, and keep my fingers warm.

I was using Mackeral as bait as the cold weather had driven the lugworms deep into the sand making it almost impossible to gather them even for the professional bait diggers.

The usual banter was had with dave trying to convince us he could see a bite developing, we were convinced it was wishful thinking on his part but, as is not uncommon with Dave, he proceeded to reel in a lovely little Dab.

Dave lands a small Dab

This put the pressure on the other guys that were fishing the match – I was just glad to be there as by now the snow had stopped and it didn’t seem to bad after all.

I was started to regret not bringing my serious waterproofs though as they’re a lot warmer than the top i had on yesterday. I wasn’t cold as I had many layers on but my other top is padded, it’s just not very waterproof anymore so it was a case of increased warmth verses fully waterproof. With the snow at the start I guess 100% waterproof was the best choice.

I walked along and chatted to a few of the other guys then wandered back to my rod. If fished competitions before where every second counts but today I was just enjoying being on the beach with a bunch of friends.

Imagine my surprise when, after reeling in I had also caught a Dab – I just hope this is a sign of things to come, local knowledge and skill are very important – but you can’t beat luck.

As the tide turned we made our way back over the gulleys, we know that they fill quickly and it’s hard to see them in the dark – as I was only wearing wellies, all be it with fully waterproof salopettes, I was first to cross followed by the others. The first gulley crossed we fished for another 1/2 hour or so before I made my way back over the final gulley. I noticed that it was filling quickly and called to Dave who was next to me (wearing full chest waders) that I was shifting ‘camp’ to the other side of the gulley. Dave called to the rest of the guys then waded over himself.

A Small Dab For Me

By this time it was dark and as Dave reached me the water was up to his waist. What we couldn’t see was one of the other guys had become stranded on the sand bank on the seaward side of the gulley. He was not alone but he only had wellies on but he’d left it a little to late and his boots had filled with water. Ian stayed with him as long as possible then waded across futher up the beach to get help.

Then we noticed the light was still on, on the sand bank. Our friend could not get off, he was starting to get very, very, cold and the water was getting deeper and deeper. Only one thing for it, call the coast guard. Someone from the prom had spotted us and brought down a rope with a bouyancy aid attached but Dave got swept off his feet as he tried to make it across the now very deep gulley, thankfully the rope was firmly anchored on our side and he made it back but still our fried was stranded and getting increasing desperate.

But we couldn’t see Ian anywhere. Thankfully he’d found an area to wade across and rejoined us on the landward side of the gulley. He told us later his heart sank as, from a distance he saw someone’s light as they attempted a rescue knowing that the water was to treacherous and yelled at them to stop but couldn’t be heard. Thankfully Dave was wearing a floatation suit that is not only warm, but bouyant.

Time stretched and it seemed ages until the coastguard showed, our friend was getting desperate and was shouting that he was going to try and swim. Remember how cold I said it was? We yelled for him to stay put and just as it looked like he’d given up the light from the RNLI’s inshore boat could be seen, he couldn’t see it as the water was up to his chest by now but we could. We shouted at him to listen for it, anything to give him the strength to hold on and just stay put then they arrived.

From what he says the water was to shallow for the boat so two of the crew jumped in and swam to him and threw him on board. After a brief trip to the station and a cup of tea all was well but it could have been so much worse.

Now we are all very experienced anglers, we fish this coast a lot, we know the dangers and we know when to come off the beach when the tide turns. Looking back at it now I can see what went wrong. It was a very big tide so the flood (when it turned) was very powerful and came in quickly. The wind from the South made the tide flood even faster than usual. It was dark and it’s difficult to see the gulleys fill behind you. It was very cold and although our friend fishes a lot he is not as spritely as he once was, he says his strength just went once his boots filled.

So, needless to say after last nights adventure and looking back on all those times I’ve thought “just one last cast” I will no longer fish this area at lo-water on anything except the most moderate tide heights and during the day. And although I never do, it just goes to show you should never sea fish alone.

This was a lesson learned – thankfully with no lasting harm done. It was reported in the local paper – not entirely accurate but close enough – Blackpool Gazette

Here is the link to the RNLI and I encourage anyone who does anything anywhere near the sea to visit and perhaps make a donation – without them I’m not sure our friend would be here today.