April in Jersey (At long last)

Well I've been getting a bit behind with my posts of late, a lack of internet access and a busy working schedule being the main reasons for this. Eventually though, I've sorted myself some Wi-Fi and its time to do some catching up.


So..... April!
As many of you will know, during the first week of April, I made a switch to the channel islands to spend the summer working on a charter boat as a deck hand. However, with the first booking of the year not being until the 14th April, I was supposed to spend the first week settling in to Jersey life, learning the ropess on the boat and finding myself some digs. In reality though, it was essentially a week for exploring and finding marks that I'd be fishing later in the year, whilst doing a bit of fishing in the process of course. My catches during this period were fairly decent, with plenty of wrasse, garfish, turbot and mini species falling to my light gear tactics.

The time soon came though for my first day on the boat.

PB smashing Turbot - 8lb 4oz

My first Brill - 6lb dead

PB Whiting - 2lb 15oz

Monster 4lb 9oz Whiting

15lb 8oz Blonde - Andreas

Up and out by 7.30am, I met with the skipper to sort out the gear for our first party of anglers, a German trio that had come to the channel islands for 5 days to catch one thing, Turbot. This really excited me as I'd never fished for turbot off a boat and my PB was a measly 10oz. Anyway, over the 5 day period we got out on all but 1 day and its fair to say we did pretty damn good. Here are a few photo's of the catch.




New PB Pollack - 11lb 12oz

As for the rest of April, let's just say it was a fun time to be on the boat. We had a real mix of people from all over Europe and fished many different tactics over different types of ground for a wide variety of species. The highlight of April for me though came on my birthday, a wrecking trip with Tom, Brian, Chris and Peter, a group of anglers that joined together each year from different areas of the country to fish in Jersey. I had never done wreck fishing before, so again I was not sure what to expect, although my hopes were high for at least one decent fish...... if of course the guys would allow me to wet a line.


New PB Ling - !5lb 14oz

For the first few hours it was relatively quiet with just a few Pollack coming aboard to just under the 10lb mark and during this period I was unable to fish as I had rigs to make for later. As the tide eased though, the lads gave me the all clear to have a fish and I was quickly setting up to join them. After a number of fruitless drifts on live eel, I decided to make the switch to artificials, a rhubarb and custard sidewinder being the lure of choice. Two drifts later I got smashed, rod bending over double and an immediate adrenaline surge. After a really good fight, the fish was up on the surface with the skipper doing the honours with the net. It was a massive new PB Pollack of 11lb 12oz, well and truly chuffed, but it was to get better. Having changed tactics to bumping half a mackerel along the bottom, I was soon back into another heavy fish. We knew it could of been one of a few things so when it revealed itself as a nice ling, again my face lit up. At 15lb 14oz, it was again a massive new PB, beating my previous best by over 12lbs. With that I stopped fishing and returned to my duties as deck-hand, cant say I minded to much though.

That pretty much sums up April,
Hope you enjoyed reading,
Tight Lines,
Ross

A great day out with Tozer

Myself and Tozer have been talking about sorting a session on the rocks for a while and this Saturday it finally came to fruition. Both of us being species hunters, it was a great chance for me to see if there were any species in particular that he thought I could still tick off and hopefully this would be the day.

 To be honest we couldn't have picked a more pleasant day either, for the first time in what seems like forever the wind had dropped and we were left with sunshine and a flat sea. With that in mind our first stop was to venture onto the island to a rock mark where we would hopefully get some garfish. Tozer had picked up 2kg of sprats and a couple of loaves of bread and proceeded to mix up some shurvey using a very handy mincer, a tool that I must purchase. The chumming started whilst we rigged up, a simple float set up with a size 4 hook about 3ft under the float and either sandeel fillet or a slither of macky for bait. It didn't take long for the gars to appear either, signs of them feeding on the surface was all we needed to get a bait in the water. Tozer was in to his first fish almost instantly and shortly followed it up with a second and the biggest of the day at around
 a pound in weight, a cracking gar! I then had my first bite and lost a gar close in, gutted but the next cast I managed to get one for myself, job done. Species 62 ticked off :) We stayed at it for around two and a half hours, both of us finishing with 3 garfish a piece so now it was time for a change of scenery. I had talked up a mark that most people that read the blog will know as the secret pollock mark, so as Tozer was here for the day, I thought he might enjoy having a little dabble there. After the lairy route getting to the mark, we finally got up and running, myself starting with rag baited sabikis and Tozer had a bash with my LRF rod and some soft plastics to try and tempt a wrasse or two. The fishing was not as prolific as it usually is, but we did manage a good haul of fish none the less. Notching up 6 species between us including, gold-sinneys, corkwings, ballans, pollock, scorpion fish and poor cod. The best of the fish came to Tozer on half a hardback, a wrasse of between 2.5-3lb. We stayed at this mark until shortly before dark, made our ascent back to safe ground and started discussing what we could do next. By this point I was shattered, so I decided enough was enough and went home for a much needed kip and some food. Tozer ploughed on though so be interesting to find out what he caught.

Thanks for reading,
Tight Lines,
Ross