Catch Report - Abbotsbury - 30th June 2021 (3)

Date From: 30/06/2021 14:46:43

Date To: 30/06/2021 22:45:44

Time of day: Afternoon - night

Location: Abbotsbury

Mark: Car Park area

Tide Times:

Moon Phase:

Weather: Cloudy but sunny with a little bit of wind

Sunrise/Sunset:

Sea: Clear and almost flat to begin with and small waves later on.

Method: Ledger (shop bought 2 hook flapper) | Ledger (shop bought up and over rig) | Lure (feathers)

Bait: Live King Ragworm | Frozen Peeler Crab, Frozen squid pieces, Frozen Whole Launce | 5 Hook Coloured Feathers

Caught:

The Session:

For my 4th session during my Weymouth holiday I went to Abbotsbury to see if I could finally get a good session there. I arrived in the afternoon and walked up the shingle to check how many anglers were there and where the nearest available area was. It wasn't as busy near the car park as I expected from my previous experiences of fishing here but it was still around a 200 yards walk to a big enough gap between other anglers.

I still had plenty of ragworm to use so I fished that on a flapper rig as well as trying Crab and squid on a big hook and then doing feathering for Mackerel for other bait or to take home with me to freeze. I cast both ledger rods around 70 yards and set about trying for some mackerel. I hadn't been feathering for long when I saw someone back towards the boardwalk bring in several at once and I hoped it meant a shoal was around but myself and most other people failed to get any, at least for a long while. Some anglers came and went without catching and others caught one or two eventually but I noticed this one person seemed to be getting several every now and again.

I had had no bites from fish by the time my friends joined me but there was plenty of evidence that spider crabs were around. Eventually, after being there around 6 hours I brought one in tangled around my line. I decided to cast more often to try to give the spider crabs less chance of taking too much of the bait so I would be able to recast some out instead of just using it all up, I assumed it would take them at least 5 minutes to get to the bait and within 10 minutes of that they wouldn't have managed to eat much of it. One of my friends did some lure fishing but never caught anything this time.

Just before 9pm I had two Mackerel on feathers and then it was another hour before I had another one. By this time I was fed up of the spider crabs because they were managing to eat each bait quicker than I thought and even with leaving just 10 minutes before checking the bait it was gone on some casts. I ended up packing up earlier than I had planned as I was nearly out of crabs and Launce and I just didn't think the crabs would dissappear any time soon. I had an LRF trip pencilled in for the following morining anyway so given the fishing was so bad I'd rather get plenty of sleep and focus on the next day instead.

For the number of times I've fished here it has been a terrible venue and I think it is over-hyped with possibly people giving it a good reputation from occasional good sessions in the same way a gamber would celebrate a good win despite being down overall over the year. My local pier has produced better fish and more species for me than Chesil has produced for any of the anglers I know who have fished it, yet the pier is known as a poor venue.

Tackle used (price) [ time since first used ]: