CASTING INTO THE SNAKE PIT
An evening shore session at St Audrie’s Bay in Somerset turns out to be an exciting conger eel bonanza
Action with conger eels in Somerset.
Not only was Somerset showing off its incredible beauty, but its shore fishing was proving to be equally as good. Shore anglers Craig Butler, James Madsen and Dave Wood-Brignall, had just ended a session fishing a full tide at a venue adjacent to Minehead harbour. The boulder-strewn stretch had certainly lived up to our expectations and produced great results with small-eyed and spotted rays, the odd strap conger and plenty of dogfish obliging.
It could be said that the only blemish on the day was a particularly good fish lost to a snag for James Madsen. Why is it always the better specimens that seem to get lucky?
Meanwhile, there was no time to lose. The tide was an hour into the flood and there was another venue waiting for us to exploit.
James Madsen had to leave us as he headed off for a match commitment, but joining the team would be Steve Liddle, who runs West Coast Angling Centre in nearby Watchet, along with leading Welsh international shore angler Chris Read – or ‘Bugsy’ as he is known to his mates.
FELT GOOD FOR A BITE
Downing my last few drops of coffee, I quickly quizzed Craig on where our next move was likely to be.
“We’re off to St Audrie’s Bay. There’s a fantastic chance of catching bass, smoothhounds, various rays and, hopefully, the conger eels will be feeding,” he replied. This sounded promising but, as most of us know with fishing, nothing is ever nailed on.
The winding country roads eventually guided us to a rather remote campsite that happily offered plenty of parking opportunities. It was early evening, overcast and pleasantly warm, with not a breath of wind. It was one of those evenings where it’s distinctly clammy, and just a hint of a thunderstorm in the air.
A relatively short path led us to a steep wooden staircase that twisted its way down the cliff to the beach. Looking down it, my first reaction was: “That’s going to hurt coming back up!”
Resembling a colourful caterpillar, we slowly manipulated our way to the bottom, where it was a simple case of choosing a spot somewhere along the stretch of empty beach.
Two anglers we met earlier in the day, Brad Lock and Dale Webber, from Taunton, had beaten us there and were already fishing directly in front of the steps.
Clearly, they didn’t fancy the yomp along the shingle, preferring to save their energy for the climb back up… and I think this is known as clever planning on their part!
Chris and Steve decided to wander off to the far end of the beach (did they know something?), while Craig and Dave opted for the middle part of the stretch. The tide had been flooding for a couple of hours now, and it certainly felt good for a bite.
GREAT START
Sea conditions appeared to be perfect – flat calm with a relatively heavy and thundering final wave dumping on to the shingle. Every now and again, the sun would also do its best to poke through the darkening clouds.
The lads were fishing with two rods each and rigs armed with either a large peeler crab or fishbait. The idea was to connect with a large smoothhound on peeler, while anything else would, hopefully, be tempted by the fishy option.
Suddenly, a distant howl from further up the beach saw me straining my eyes to see Chris Read at the water’s edge, leaning back as his beach rod arched seaward. I arrived just in time to see him beaching a smashing little thornback ray that had succumbed to a large peeler crab.
“That’s a great start,” I said, as his other rod pulled violently over. Chris calmly unhooked the ray while purposely watching the other rod tip for further activity. He gently placed the fish back into the sea, and it was gone, just in time for him to see his mainline fall slack.
Furiously winding line back on to his reel, Chris connected with a decent amount of weight at the other end.
This fish looked better, judging by the nodding on his rod tip. A few moments later and a lively conger eel emerged from the surf. A fish that was possibly nudging around 5lb was swiftly returned.
Steve was next to spring into action as
his rod bounced furiously in the tripod. The tackle dealer struck, and again, a repeat performance saw a hard-fighting conger eel brought on to the shingle.
We still had three hours of daylight remaining, and the fish had finally switched on and begun to feed.
CONGER EEL
As it turned out, the fish had turned on for Craig and Dave too. I wandered back to where they were fishing just in time to find Brad Lock showing off a conger eel that was easily more than 7lb.
Even better still, the fish behaved impeccably for my camera. Brad had tempted this eel with a simple frozen sandeel on a pulley rig.
The bites were now coming quickly as both Craig and David struck simultaneously into congers. As did Dale Webber, and it was at this point that I actually witnessed three conger eels being landed together.
The eels aren’t massive by any stretch of the imagination, but they do give exciting bites and put up terrific fights. Of course, there’s always a chance that a larger specimen might take the bait.
Once again, I could see Chris Read frantically trying to land a fish. Quickly, I ran up to see what he’d caught as he bullied an aggressive conger that, to me, looked close to double figures. Chris then reassured me that it was possibly 8lb, but, nevertheless, these fish really do hang on.
SPIRITED THORNBACK RAY
As the tide slowed, so did the bites and, to be honest, I was really starting to flag a little… and I was really hungry.
Surprisingly, not a single smoothhound or bass was caught by anyone, but Dave WoodBrignall did manage to have the final glory by beaching a spirited thornback ray.
We slowly packed away our kit and headed back. Brad and Dale were still fishing as darkness loomed, and the pair told us they were now catching dogfish every chuck. Strangely, we didn’t encounter a single doggy during the session.
Back at the top of the steps, we took a breather before heading off to the local Indian restaurant for a well-deserved curry and cold beer. The waiter did his best to look really pleased to see us when we rocked up after 11pm. Apparently, he was also a keen shore angler and had some great stories to tell us, and boy, did he tell us!
As he gleefully reeled off plenty of his fishing yarns that included cold winter nights alone on Chesil Beach, or sitting on the end of the local pier during a winter storm, attempting to lift a huge cod, we listened while wolfing down our food and gulping on our beer.
I was extremely tired, and with a full belly I really needed my bed. After all, we had more fishing to do tomorrow… ■