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…

Penrhos beach - North of the coastal park

The wind continued to blow and showers were forecast so we elected to try somewhere with a bit of shelter. We’d been for a walk around the coastal park at Penrhos and had seem someone fishing north of the car park, just where the clay cliffs start so we parked up, donned waders and waterproofs and got going.

Weed was a bit of a problem initially as the tide ebbed from right to left and the wind blew the same direction, but once the tide turned everything became a little calmer.

A small Bass for me

This was another one of those infuriating sea fishing sessions where you know there are fish there, made even more so by the fact we could see birds diving for bait fish and we even saw a few fishing jumping, but no matter how hard we tried or what method, we just couldn’t hook into anything.

And then, while sitting and having a coffee, I noticed a slight bump on my rod but thought nothing of it as the weed and wind had been doing that all day, until it happened again – a tiny little knock.

Could this be a fish?

I wound in even more weed to find my smallest Bass yet attached to the bottom hook of my rig, a whole ragworm dangling from it’s mouth.

This was to be my first and only Bass of the hoiday but we’d found a new venue and got a fish out of it in conditions that in all honesty were probably best suited to sitting in the pub and having a pint. It doesn’t look very windy on the photo but believe me, it was blasting along the beach and after a while we called it a day as not only was the weather worsening but the tide was pushing us away from the deeper water.