2015 Review


Comparing last years fishing to this years fishing it has been a year full of improvements for me but also the odd setback that I need to address in 2016 .And it's also only just dawned on me that I actually enjoy scratching around for the smaller fish then hunting for specimen fish

The improvement I am mostly happy with is my tactics for catching my favourite fish the Plaice .Four years ago I would probably have had 5 or so plaice in a season,  last year I had 9 and this year I had 54 . I believe its down to several things Firstly constantly changing/improving my rigs over the last 2 years until I found something that works really well . I also now have three good plaice marks along Chesil instead of one .Obviously there is greater numbers of plaice about which is out of my hands but that has helped me to fine tune my rigs in terms of catch rate and hook sizes etc.So now I have a couple months to work out how I can get closer to 100 plaice next year .I don't think I can improve my rigs much more but will tinker a little so that just leaves bait selection and casting distance . The latter being one of my setbacks this year, although I wouldn't say my casting has gone backwards as such  but it sure hasn't gone forwards so plenty of room for improvement in that respect as for bait I need to mix it up a bit more and maybe improve presentation for better hook ups. The only thing I am sure of now is I am proper addicted to plaice fishing .....



The cod run went as everyone had hoped it would with the average fish size over 5lbs  .My total is about half of last years 61 cod down to 29 , I do wonder if this total will significantly drop again next year to a handful of  doubles or will there be a fresh supply of smaller codling in the 2lbs-3lbs range beating them to the bait as there has been plenty of smaller fish in the Bristol channel . The spring run in march/April could see some really good fish come out but we will have to wait and see!!




Sole fishing is something I have done more reading up on then I have done fishing for and I think I am on the right track in regards to rigs . I have a few more potential venues to try for sole next year so we will see how that goes .
A quick round up on the other species , I had three time as many smoothhounds this year but I believe there is room for improvement .Gurnards a bycatch when fishing for plaice was the same at 14 although they were better sized this year . Didn't manage one red mullet this year after having 12 last year . The fish I did find a bit disappointing was bream, the mark I was catching them from last year seems to have changed so might have to do a bit more walking for them .I have also been trying to catch less dogs and that is down from 83-69 !

I will be working on  improving my fishing and blog in 2016

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

INTRODUCTION

Catch Up Report !!

Plaice Aplenty ,April 2017