DAYLIGHT DOVERS
How to catch when you’d least expect success
How to catch soles at night.
There aren’t many charter boats in the UK that offer dedicated sole fishing trips, let alone fishing for them during daylight. When I started seeing pictures of 3lb-plus soles on Portishead skipper Chris Buxton’s Facebook page, I just had to give him a call and find out what it was all about. I love social media because it allows charter skippers to engage with their customers and prove that they can ‘walk the walk’ as well as ‘talk the talk’. A consistent stream of pictures from trips tells you all you need to know, right there in front of you at the press of a button.
After a short conversation with Chris, he invited me over to see for myself just how interesting and frustrating the daylight sole fishing can be on his patch. I couldn’t wait.
SKIPPER AND BOAT
Chris Buxton is well known in Bristol Channel circles for his shore fishing exploits. He’s won countless matches and has even trialed for the England shore team on three occasions, but his love for boat fishing eventually got the better of him. Now, he’s a fully-fledged charter skipper into his third year of chartering with the boat.
Channel Explorer is actually Dan Hawkins’ old boat, a 10-metre Colne Cat powered by twin 150hp Mercury outboards. She cruises quite comfortably at 20 knots and has a top speed of 38 knots. The cost of a day’s fishing with Chris is £450 for the boat for the day, and he can supply bait and tackle on request.
I’ve caught plenty of soles from the shore and boat over the years, but it has always been during darkness with late summer and autumn being key times. What intrigued me was that Chris and his crews have been catching consistently throughout the hours of daylight, from two or three different marks in the Bristol Channel.
Chris revealed that the marks he fishes are actually quite close to the shore, just a few miles away from Portishead marina. The key to locating them is to find an area of relatively shallow water with sand or mud banks, preferably exposed at low water. The soles will almost certainly move up on to these banks as the tide pushes in and covers them.
He actually found the marks during his shore fishing days, and just decided one day to give it a go from his boat. With fish regularly topping 3lb, Chris really believes that there is a five-pounder just waiting to be caught, but that’s where the problems begin. These soles are by no means easy to catch. For every five insanely violent bites you might land one, and that’s exactly how it played out during my session with him.
SPORTING TACKLE
The Dover sole isn’t at all shy, and bites can often be savage. If you want to enjoy the scrap from a decent sole, my advice is to fish as light as the tide and conditions will allow.
During this trip we were fishing in a maximum depth of 25ft, so I used a 10-40g lure rod and fixed-spool reel loaded with 20lb braid. I got away with a 3oz lead weight all day.
Our trip was a bit of a jolly, with just Chris, his friend Mark Watts, me and my friend Roger Cooling on the boat. Chris had planned it that way so he too could spend the day fishing, which he rarely gets to do when he has a boat full of paying customers.
Within minutes of casting out, Chris’s rod tip showed the telltale rattle of a sole bite. As the seconds ticked on he paid out line a couple of feet at a time to entice the sole into swallowing the bait, and each time he did this the bites became more violent.
After a good five minutes he picked up his rod and wound in…to bare hooks
This is typical of a sole. They have tiny
mouths, and even though we were using Pennelled size 2 fine-wire hooks they have the knack of stripping the bait without actually getting hooked.
Next up it was my turn for a real rod rattler. I too paid out line and waited, and waited. The result? A big fat zero. This happened to me five times during our six-hour session and I ended up blanking.
Roger had quite a few bites that resulted in a blank too, and Chris himself missed a further four bites. Luckily for us, we had Channel Explorer regular Mark Watts on board with us, and he saved the day with a cracking 2lb 8oz sole, swiftly followed up by a little slip, but even he missed half-a-dozen bites throughout the day.
FRESH BAITS
Most worm baits will catch you a sole, with a wriggly ragworm being the preferred choice in many areas. Fresh or frozen black lug is also a good bet, especially later in the season. However, here off Portishead the soles have a preference for king rag, which are abundant on the ground that they are feeding over.
Chris has had most success by fishing a 3ft length of 15lb or 20lb mono with two size 2 fine-wire Aberdeen hooks rigged Pennell style. He told me that a lot of the soles actually get caught on the top hook of the Pennell, and although I didn’t think about it on the day, I wonder if this is because the fish are attacking the bait head first?
This trip certainly got me thinking, and on the drive back home I was milling it all over in my head. How could I convert those violent bites into fish on the deck? I don’t have the answers, and knowing how good an angler Chris is, I think he would have worked out if there was any way to increase the catch ratio.
I have been thinking of a slightly different approach, though, and I reckon it may well work, but I’m going to have to wait until next year to prove my theory because from now on in it’s all about the cod fishing in the Bristol Channel – the soles will have to wait.