HITTING THE SPOT
You can see where fish are located but it takes skill to get your boat in the correct place. weekend warriors to take advantage of modern electronics
Make the most of your electronics.
Tfast, so he tide was ebbing a we were guaranteed wreck consistent drift. The on the was showing well grouped sounder and fish were rusted in a cloud above the for ironwork as they waited along in baitfish to get swept the faster water. In to be an easy drift. This was not going the tide slackened, a few more hours, when one on the wind, we might get a better to rely on the trail but for now we had sounder to judge where shown to us on the best to start. meeting, Russ
We had a committee
didn’t take long to work Weston and me. It the those fish high in out that to catch in to tap bottom well water we would need then work our lures front of the wreck and from the bottom. between 30 and 50 turns and do was skim down What we would try as close as we could, the side of the wreck
10 very fast turns on tap the bottom, take the gear up and above the reel to get our then make a tackle-snatching scrimmage, on the big paddletails slow retrieve, letting their magic. the soft Skad lures work decision that you rely This is the sort of to make, and as long on a charter skipper how you should as he can communicate the drift, you should fish when he sets up of catching. But today stand a good chance that they want to make a lot of anglers feel so that they are decisions for themselves, long days when they not herded into fishing and be home in would rather stop inshore time to watch the football. to start at daybreak Maybe they’d prefer or else get five and fish till mid-afternoon, is as flat as a dab and miles off, realise it is decision that today instantly make the that deep-water wreck the day to run to to get to for weeks. they’ve been trying of modern engines With the reliability
GPS, the deepseated and the new generation is of ‘doing it my way’ satisfaction for boat owners. there to be enjoyed
WRECK PROFILE
I have been collecting wreck information since the days of steam-powered Decca sets. Data on the wreck we were to target today told me it lay 25 miles south-west of Start Point, and had been torpedoed by a U-Boat while carrying coal from Barry.
Relatively small wrecks such as this, with a large and deep scour, are an obstruction in an area with a pretty heavy flow of tide. Small fish and crustaceans will be swept into the scour, making it the perfect habitat for bottom feeding fish such as cod, ling and even turbot.
The local grapevine indicated that for a couple of weeks some halfway decent fish were being caught further east, on the mid-channel wrecks. But would they move closer inshore, within range of private boats and smaller charter vessels?
First drift I got tucked up into a piece of wreckage. Pointing the rod down the line with a heavy thumb on the reel’s spool, I let the drift of the boat do the work. Suddenly, I felt a lurch and I was free. When the rig got to the top it was carrying a bright pink ‘dead man’s finger’, a spongy growth that clings to the side of wrecks, so we were close, really close.
In the meantime, Russ Weston was whooping with glee as his rod bucked and bumped to the tune of a nice ling close to 20lb.
The trail on the electronic chart plotter showed exactly where we started, it showed the drift precisely in relation to the wreck and, after another very quick committee meeting, we decided that we would start the next drift a boat length (30ft) further to the north.
A few drifts later the wind shifted a little, pushing us in towards the wreck – which is not where we wanted to go. We started up Mr Yanmar and went around for another recce.
INSTANT ACTION
The way the wind and tide vectors were pushing us would, at a squeeze, allow us to drift the scour, if we got it right. So we started right on top of the wreck and let the drift take us towards where we thought the scour would be located.
This was taking a chance. We left the lures to fish closer to the bottom, and instead of reeling fast for the first 10 turns, we started the slow retrieve the moment the sinker tapped the bottom. It didn’t take a minute before my rod bucked and bumped, and I knew instantly that this was a ling.
A couple of minutes later a great whiting just a bit south of 4lb tucked itself into RW’s landing net, lured on a pink Skad. Is life good or what?
TACKLE LINE-UP
In the winter, when the big lumps are about, I fish a 20lb-class outfit, but the rest of the time I use a 12lb-class rod and reel if I am using shads, Skads or Eddystones, with a boom and long leader. On the reefs in summer a 12-15ft leader is sometimes a good tactic, but over the wrecks I rarely fish more than a 10ft leader.
Experience has shown that when dropping a lure 200ft, even with a long boom to separate the leader from the mainline, a 10ft leader is all I need to avoid tangling, and it presents the lure well enough to fool the fish.
One day Mr Big will happen along, so make sure the drag on your reel is set so that the fish can take line against the spring of the rod. If you want to be scientific about it, set the reel’s drag, while it is on the rod, to between 25 and 30 per cent of the braid’s breaking strain. If you go for 30 per cent, be very sure that your knots are the best you can tie and are fresh knots, not left over from your last trip.
KEEP RECORDS
A good chart plotter with your position quickly and accurately displayed on screen is essential if you want to find fish consistently. Today, it is common practice to have one half of the screen displaying an electronic chart with your position updated every second or so (if the microchip is fast enough) and the other half showing a live sonar pictogram of what is happening under the boat’s keel.
You can see where the fish are located and where your drift is in relation to them. It is not easy to judge the wind, tide and combined effect of both to push the boat in the direction that you hope will put you over the fish.
This is where the skill comes in, and is the reason (some) charter skippers are adept at it, because they practise it every day. We weekend warriors have to take advantage of every bit of help that modern electronics can give us and, believe me, you can get good at it if you have a mind to read the manual and practise.
You need to keep a good record of when and where fish were caught. Then take it home and put it into your computer. Over a period of time, just four or five years, you will amaze yourself at the amount of information you have at your fingertips, and how useful it can be. ■