Heavy going for John as he takes the title
JOHN Blaney of Washington took the top prize of £500 in the Newbiggin open with a cod and two codling weighing 14lb 4oz 2drams.
Blaney’s cod of 11lb 6oz 1dram was also the heaviest fish of the event and – like his other two fish – were taken at Seahouses.
Anthony Eke fished one of his favourite marks, Marden rocks to take second place with five codling for 12lb 2drams, with Mark Daglish fishing Dunstanburgh Castle for his thirdplaced bag of six coal fish and a pollock for 10lb 1oz 4drams.
John Williams took the second heaviest fish a cod of 6lb 5oz 2drams, with Ben Larkin taking third heaviest with a pollock of 5lb 12oz 2drams from the Doctor’s House.
A pollock of 2lb 11oz 3drams taken at Crawley’s gave Conrad Mallard another junior win to add to his growing list, with another junior Chloe Nyberg taking the ladies’ title with a flounder of 1lb taken at Warkworth.
Chloe’s grandad took the heaviest flat fish – a nice turbot of 1lb 10oz 5drams – winning £50.
Altogether 294 fished, 78 weighed in 133 fish, mostly codling a few flounder, coal fish, pollock and turbot for 238lb 4oz.
When boats have been able to get out there have been some decent catches boats taking up to 40 fish – most in the 3-10 range and individual fish taken well into double figures.
The best I know of was taken by Dennis Trinh fishing off Whitby boat Shy Torque 111 he landed a ling of 28lb 9oz.
Off the Tyne Dave Haswell fishing aboard JFK TWO took one of 16lb, while Ian Telford took a nice pollock of 13lb. Fishing aboard Kelsey Leigh . Anthony Brown took a personall best cod of 16lb along with a 15lbb ling.
Aboard Blue Eye 2 young Carll Walker has been into the fishh again taking a pollock of 9.2lb,, Phil Hutchinson taking a person- al best ling of 15.8lb.
While baited muppets andd hokkais have done the trick fromm most boats it was shads that didd the business aboard Sapphiree when fishing close in partiess taking good numbers of fish inn the 3-6lb range with the bestt going 10lb.
At Amble, Upholder is takingg cod to 5lb, ling to 8lb and pol- lock to 6lb from the hard ground. Surprisingly mackerel are still around in good numbers not only for boat anglers but also from the piers.
Plenty of codling averaging 2lb are being taken not far off, two anglers fishing the SSBAC match, who fish to a limit of 40cm minimum limit returned over 100 codling.
These codling are also finding their way right inshore with most marks producing catches of up to ten codling per rod, there are also a few up to 5lb among them.
The Wear continues to give the better flounder with some around the 2lb mark, with the Tyne giving the better codling catches along with flounder, the piers giving good sport with mixed bags of mackerel, flounder, dab, whiting and the odd plaice and dogfish.