Andy Phillips

Cornwall Trip… Day One – The North Inn

If you look at my blog articles for 2011 you will notice that roughly the same time last year my pal Nobby and I made a trip down to Cornwall to have a few days camping and fishing. Well, on the basis we couldn’t remember what the beer or cider tasted like at the North Inn in Pendeen where we camped last time, it only seemed right and proper to go back and refresh our memories! This time we were to be joined by Mo , a pal of Nobby’s, who is just getting into his lure fishing.

The weather was reminiscent of last year as well when we arrived… low cloud and persistent drizzle in the air. Nevertheless, tents were pitched…

… food was troughed…

…. and then a couple of ales were sampled to remind us of what the local brew tasted like…

All done with an eye to where we were going to fish the next day. It was tempting to fish the same spots we had found to be successful last year but we were keen to establish some new marks and hatched a plan for the next morning over a couple of these ales.

A word on camping at the North Inn…. it’s basically a field at the back of the pub, no frills at all just rock up, pitch your tent and pay your dues of £5 per night at the bar. Facilities are simple with a couple of showers and a toilet block open in the pub 24 hours a day. Handily for us fishermen there is also an outside sink as well to wash down your kit after a session. All of the facilities are perfectly clean and serviceable. The real bonus is you have a proper local pub, serving very reasonable food and a decent pint on your doorstep. It’s definitely got a certain charm about it and the landlord John is a smashing chap of true Cornish tradition! All this and it’s in a great geographical position to explore the coastline and fishing potential of the far west of Cornwall. All was set fair and we headed to our pits at a sensible hour ready for the first days fishing ahead of us… at 1:30 in the morning Mo turned up in his caravan!

We were ready to fish!

Until next time…

Kayak fishing over…… for now anyway

Well, the picture says it all really but with a slight air of reluctance I’ve sold up on the kayak fishing front… for now at least! The simple truth is I just wasn’t getting out on it anywhere near enough to justify having it sat around doing nothing and to be honest it had been on my mind for a while to cash in on it. Things came to a head recently with the need to raise some funds for some pretty substantial on-going dental treatment and sometimes you just have to make sacrifices.

If I was making the effort to go out then maybe I would have made a different decision but truth is I wasn’t and found myself more likely to choose the simple pleasure of lure fishing along the shore with minimal kit than taking the kayak out.

I will still be keeping an eye in on the kayak fishing world as there are some seriously good anglers on kayaks doing some awesome stuff all over the globe which is always well worth knowing about!

So there you have it. I’ll be focussing 100% on the lure fishing for the foreseeable future and hopefully I’ll be posting a few more articles than of late…. particularly later in the month when I get back from a week’s lure fishing in Cornwall.

Thanks to all those who have taken the time to read and commented on my kayak fishing articles over the last couple of years or so plus I should give a shout out to Rob at www.saltwateryakfisherman.com for his help getting me up and running in the first instance. Finally, good luck to Ian who bought all my kit lock, stock and barrel!!

Until next time…

Fishing at last…

It’s been a while but finally managed to get out for a lure session with my pal Nobby on Sunday. Headed down to Dorset early afternoon with plan to fish the flood with high water around 9pm. Finally got there after a bit of a marathon trek in the car and then the usual hike round the foreshore.

Conditions were quite bright but the water was pretty murky with plenty of weed washed up – on the face of it things looked good but to be honest it was a hard slog… neither of us having a sniff all afternoon despite trying just about every lure in our boxes.

As we hit the evening there was a distinct change in the weather with the water chopping up as the tide really started to flood towards high water and we were saved a blank when Nobby managed to land a small bass of maybe a couple of pounds. Despite my best efforts it wasn’t happening for me!

Here’s your man playing his fish…

…and here he is victorious with his bass!

So, not a huge amount of action on the fish front but still good to get out after a frustrating summer fishing-wise to date. Will be putting that right early September when off to Cornwall for a week trying to get amongst the fish!

Until next time…

Back in the good old days…

As anyone in the UK will tell you right now the weather has been pretty shocking for getting out fishing whether from the shore or more adventurously in the kayak. I’m struggling to remember such a poor summer as we’ve had so far with the unseasonal winds and Biblical amounts of rain…. all on the back of a hosepipe ban in many parts – laughable really!

Anyhow, what this has meant is that rather than fishing I’ve had time to catch up on other things I’d been meaning to do but had been putting on the back burner. One such task was getting an invite together for my Dad’s 70th birthday later in the year for which he gave me a bag of old photos to go through to try and magic up something for him. There were loads of them right back to his childhood days but there were certain one’s that struck a chord with me for obvious reasons.

My father was a carpenter and joiner by trade but honed his skills as a boat builder with an apprenticeship back in the late 1950’s/early 1960’s. Obviously inspired by his work he set about building a wooden canoe and amongst the hoards of photos he gave me to go through I found a few great snaps of the craft which I thought I’d share.

Here’s Dad (right) with pal during the construction phase…

Next is a picture, not of great quality I admit, of the craft completed and in action proving it didn’t sink…

Finally, this one is possibly my favourite in a way as it was obviously used to entertain younger members of the community but more strikingly is Dad had the foresight to specifically build a trolley for the canoe as well… who needs a C-Tug after all?!

What I really should do now is establish what wood was used, the construction process and whether he has any drawings for it? Will have to have that conversation with Dad me thinks. Whilst these days plastic is king for most canoes, kayaks and most other small watercraft come to that, I think there is something much more to admire and appreciate in the workmanship involved to create such a wooden vessel as this. The good old days indeed!

Anyway, back to the here and now – let’s hope the weather is a bit kinder in the coming weeks as I’m seriously missing my fishing fix at the moment. It can’t get any worse can it?

Until next time…

Cornwall in June

Great family week in Cornwall but only managed to squeeze in a couple of short fishing sessions though to be fair the weather didn’t help at times. It never amazes me how one day the seas can be clear, blue and tranquil and the next the polar opposite… more of that later in this post.

As for the fishing it had to be about finding somewhere safe to go with my lad Billy who is certainly showing a keen interest, which I’m of course pleased about, and is something I want to actively encourage with him. It can be difficult with some activities, as like most kids his age these days he loves his electronic gadgets, but when it comes to fishing he does show a genuine interest which I shall duly nurture. It does help when he catches and in our two short sessions he was the only one to catch so it is he who has the bragging rights in our household at the moment… albeit was only a small pollack!

We were staying near Lamorna in the far west of Cornwall at a place called Burnt Toast Cottage which was located in a cracking spot above Lamorna Cove no more than ten minutes walk down to the coastal path. We were joined for a couple of days by my pal Nobby and his wife who coincidentally were visiting friends in Cornwall so we took the opportunity one of the days to take the rods and a few lures with us to have a go along the coast between Lamorna Cove and Penberth.

The coastline is pretty rugged and you do have to exercise some caution finding the right places to fish from but luckily the first place we tried was an easily accessible boulder strewn cove. It was a bright day with only a little movement in the water but a lot of weed – after about an hour of fishing hard lures and soft plastics around the cove we had nothing to show for it so made our way up the rocks and back to the main path. Here’s the view back across the cove from up high…

We headed back eastwards and found a decent safe spot for the three of us to fish nearer our start point. It was a fairly deep mark so in between keeping an eye on Billy I tried out the new Lucky Craft Slender Pointer lures I’d recently acquired… good action but no fish to show for my efforts! Neither Billy or Nobby were having much luck either but that changed when Billy, who was fishing with a Grass Minnow softie on a 5g jig head, gave a cry of “fish on Dad”! It was only a small pollack but he was chuffed to bits… and so were Nobby and I come to that! Here he is with the blank saving pollack…

That was as good as it got on this short sortie despite fishing our way back round to Lamorna Cove itself. Pleasant enough though and great to see my lad catch like that – happy days!

Later in the week, in between a couple of rainier days, Billy and I managed one more session on a trip to the north coast of the far west Cornish peninsula. While Rebs took the dogs on a walk round the coast we had an hour to wet a line. The spot was idyllic with beautiful clear water over rocks and sandy ground. I thought there might even be mackerel around but in the hour we had… not a sniff of a fish. Here’s Billy giving it his best though…

To give you some idea of the ground here is a shot of the coast from high up as we walked on round the coast…

And that was pretty much it on the fishing front as on the last two days of our break the storm hit which was spectacular in it’s own right. Here’s a view of Lamorna Cove the day before the wind and rain came lashing in…

… and here it is from down at the car park as the gales hit…

The photos don’t really do justice too how big the seas actually were but it certainly was a stark reminder of the awesome power of the sea and the respect it deserves.

So, a great week in Cornwall even though fishing was limited and one of the highlights was definitely Billy catching that small pollack just for the look on his face – magic moment.

It’s back on the work treadmill for me now for a few weeks though I’m hoping to get out fishing in the next week or so… weather permitting that is!

Until next time…

Back on the kayak at last…

Finally managed to get some time on the kayak today albeit with an early start to fit it in around work commitments. Window of opportunity was from dawn until around 10 o’clock in the morning and with the weather forecast set fair it was too good an opportunity to pass up. I can’t remember the last time I went out fishing on the kayak – it’s certainly been a while – too long if I’m perfectly honest!

Anyhow, my thoughts were to get on the water by 5 o’clock to give me about five hours fishing time. Venue was one fairly local to me in The Solent and I was hoping to have a bit of sport with the smooth hounds and pick up some mackerel if they’ve made there way to The Solent yet! Conditions at launch were idyllic – flat calm with only a very slight breeze…

Fished two rods, one with hermit crab and one I took a chance on using squid… the smuts do like it but so do the damn dogfish and you can guess what was the first fish to come aboard the yak this morning…

There was a bit of low cloud and mist hugging the coast and it was cool for the first hour but nice to see the sun rising nonetheless…

It wasn’t long before the smuts made an appearance – not big at all but good fun all the same. Both the starry and original flavour made an appearance – three in total in fairly quick succession interspersed with a couple more pesky dogfish. Here’s a couple of the smuts…

I rarely use a rod to catch mackerel from the kayak and just use a hand line that I attach and leave out under the kayak. Things were pretty slow on that front though but I did eventually pull up a single very small mackerel which I decided to use as a live bait to see if I could tempt a bass – it didn’t work and the live bait soon became a dead bait! Undeterred, I wasn’t going to waste the mackerel but guessed a fillet would only attract the dogfish so opted to try the head and guts and that did pay dividends when up came a 50cm bass of probably 2.5lb… dinner sorted!

Encouraged by this I concentrated on the trying to get another mackerel on board but they were not playing ball at all with the feathers. Time was getting on by now and I had packed one rod up when the crab rod started to rattle – definitely not a smooth hound bite and it didn’t seem to be a bass bite either… irrespective, I connected but was gobsmacked to find a greedy mackerel had taken the crab! That’s a first for me without a doubt! This one I decided to keep for another day but as it happened it ended up in the smoker tonight and damn good it was too!

So there you have it, nice to get back out on the yak even if only for a short foray on local waters. Final fish count was four doggies, three smuts, two mackies and a bass! Hopefully, can get out a bit more over the summer and for a bit longer all being well… definitely will if this week’s weather continues. Off to Cornwall for a family break in a weeks time so that will probably be my next chance to fish though that will be back on the lures from the shore – looking forward to it though!

Until next time…

First bass of 2012…

Finally…. yes, the first lure caught bass of the year! No pictures of the fish I’m afraid but went for a local session with my pal Nobby and we both notched our first silver bars of the year!

We had intended to head down to Dorset but the weekend got away with us a bit so we ended up taking a punt locally in The Solent and eventually it paid dividends with around a dozen fish between us as the tide came up. Nothing big – up to 3lb maximum but great to get off the mark and get used to those hits again. It was quite a challenging mark in more ways than one with obstructions making it difficult in a running tide. It had been a slow start to be honest and we were almost thinking of calling it a day when I hit into the first fish. This was about an hour before high water with the tide running hard and from then on we hit them fairly regularly for the next hour and a half. The majority were taken at medium distance either lower down on Zonks or in the top water on Komomo II’s though I did take one on a Rapala X-Rap and one on an OSP Rudra. All good scrappers! Had a few that dropped off as well and a lure lost amongst the obstructions but pleasing to finally catch this year!

The main lures of choice for me yesterday (above)

Hopefully, a sign that things are picking up a bit after what seems to have been a slow start to the season in many areas. More encouraging signs offshore were terns and gulls working the surface which until yesterday I hadn’t seen much of this year in the Solent area – usually a good sign there are smaller fry around that predatory fish are stalking. Not sure on work commitments this week, or indeed the weather, but yesterday’s success might just prompt a mid week evening session!

Until next time…

New ground…

As alluded to in my previous post I was off work on Tuesday so wanted to take the opportunity to fish. Ideally I wanted to get out on the kayak but with the recent back problems and the two dogs in tow that wasn’t really an option so I decided on trying somewhere I’ve never tried before and that was Chesil beach. Possibly a bit early in the season for the bass to take a lure here by all accounts but worth doing a recce anyway was my thought plan.

As it turned out it was difficult fishing – not because of the conditions more to do with the dogs!! I’ve taken them in the past so I don’t know why I was surprised that I spent most of my time keeping them out of trouble rather than fishing! Lesson finally learnt on that front! Matters weren’t helped when a hare, yes a hare, turned up on the beach and the youngest dog Woody took after it!!

Butter wouldn’t melt… honest…

Anyhow, that was only the start of an eventful day though no fish showed up. Tried off the top and with deeper diving plugs and had no takers. Water was a bit dirty but calm enough – everywhere seems slow at the minute judging by forum reports and such like. After a fruitless three hours I decided to use the rest of the day to check out some other parts of the coast on a leisurely drive home. The dogs were playing up as I de-rigged at the car chasing a pheasant round the car park so in my haste getting them in the car I left a lure on the roof… I only found that out though when I saw it in the mirror flying off my roof into the front grill of the lorry following me somewhere between Abbotsbury and Portesham! I was not amused, the dogs were asleep!

On the way home stopped off at a venue for future reference and again took the mutts with me – not a bad looking spot…

Walking back involves a climb up a narrow path and it was here I had my second wildlife encounter of the day – a full grown adder sat basking in the sun. Luckily the dogs were behind me and the snake didn’t hang around long enough for them to investigate it any closer!

Drove home after that, no fish again but good to explore a new stretch of the coast nonetheless. The day got worse after I got home to be honest with chronic tooth ache setting in to compliment my back issues!

Hopefully, get the chance to fish later in the weekend but we’ll see.

Until next time…

Keeping track…

It’s been a bit of a frustrating start to the year on the fishing front – what with a few recent blanks, the inclement weather and to top it all off the end of last week I put my back out… especially frustrating as I had plans to get out on the kayak this weekend but there is no way I can lift it on and off the car at the moment let alone paddle any distance.

I did try a spot of lure fishing locally on Saturday morning but the water was more or less yellow, it started to rain heavily and for the start of May it was bloody freezing! I lasted about an hour before heading home for breakfast with my back griping even more – in retrospect a pointless trip but I was desperate to wet a line!

Anyway, I’ve rested up the last couple of days and with tomorrow being an extra day off work for me I have a plan – if the back plays ball – to try again with the lures… but with the dogs in tow it will be a tad harder to concentrate on the fishing! With this in mind I’m planning to head to unchartered territory for me which is Chesil beach. Not sure exactly where along Chesil yet as it’s a big old beach but I will use tomorrow to give a small part of it a recce and of course take the dogs for a healthy long walk.

This brings me nicely to the point of this post. There is probably no more a renowned fishing mark on the south coast than Chesil but for someone who has never fished it where do you start? Yes, you can do your research, if you’re lucky get some information from people that know, but there is really no substitute for getting out there and finding it out for yourself – there really aren’t many shortcuts and personally working something out for yourself is a lot more satisfying when things then do come off. That doesn’t mean I will go unprepared – I always try to give myself the best possible chance of catching… and there’s one piece of kit I’ve found I am using more and more frequently with my lure fishing and that’s my GPS unit loaded with BlueChart maps.

Originally, I’d bought the unit to use with my kayak fishing not only as a safety aid to track positioning on the water but also to mark spots where I’ve taken fish, interesting features in the water, etc. Not rocket science but it made sense to take it on my lure fishing jaunts and begin to mark fishing spots even down to individual rocks, places I’ve taken fish, routes to marks… you catch my drift! Over time hopefully it will give me a decent picture of where I’ve caught and where I haven’t – obviously to be considered bearing in mind other factors such as the conditions and tides.

My particular unit is the Garmin 60Csx and has been loaded with MapSource BlueChart software which links to the unit via your computer. You can transfer maps, tracks, waypoints, etc. between the two as you would expect. BlueChart itself maps things like wrecks, significant rocks, and no end of other nautical information but the biggest plus in my book is it charts water depth. This means you can see where drop offs in the sea bed might occur and it follows that these are the sort of places you might find fish waiting for their next meal? Here are a few screenshots to show you what I mean…

This screenshot from BlueChart shows the changes in water depth at a particular spot…

The blue flags in the picture below are waypoints I have marked that I wanted to try out…

The yellow dotted track in this screenshot is the route I had taken along the coast with the blue flags marking prominent rocks I’d fished from…

Finally in terms of screenshots, the blue flags below show the spots I have marked offshore when fishing from the kayak…

So, as the rain continues to pour down outside, this afternoon I will probably spend a good block of time looking at Chesil on BlueCharts to see if I can pick some likely spots along the beach where there might be drop offs or features to give me a bit of help in my fishing reconnaissance mission tomorrow! You never know I may even be able to put a waypoint or two in with ‘Bass caught here’ marked against it?!! I hope to report back as such!

Until next time…

More blanking…

Just another quick blank report!

Undeterred by a couple of these blanking sessions in Dorset of late I had the opportunity to try again yesterday for that elusive first lure caught bass of the year and made my way down to the Purbeck coast to try my luck for a few hours. Unfortunately, once again, the bass had other ideas and it’s another big fat blank to report for the year’s tally!

I arrived early and was fishing half an hour before sunrise I’d guess. As the light improved I could see the water conditions were better than of late with a bit of colour in the water without it being too dirty. There was little movement in the water though – conditions were very calm although there was evidence of the stormier weather we’d had the previous weekend with some fresh weed deposits on the shoreline.

I had fished this location recently but on that occasion had headed west along the coast where there was predominantly shallower water. This time I decided to trudge east where I knew there was much deeper water with the plan being to explore some areas I had never previously reached. In this respect I was successful – finding some very interesting ground and marks which were all logged in the GPS unit for future reference! The depth of water also gave me the chance to try out some of the deeper diving lures in my tackle box which I’d ‘accumulated’ over the winter and with still relatively clear water I was able to judge and tweak the action of the lures at different retrieval speeds which was useful.

Here’s some shots of the ground I was fishing…

By the time I had reached pretty much as far as I could it was more than clear the fish had won again so I about turned and headed back from whence I had came… it’s a bit of an epic making your way along this stretch of coast – not for the faint hearted at times that’s for sure and travelling light is definitely the key! A good decision to head back when you look at this picture of the storm heading east…