Catch Report - Seaton, Cornwall - 26th October 2018 (4)

Date: 26-10-2018

Time of day: Evening - Night

Location: Seaton, Cornwall

Mark: The Beach

Low Tide: 01:25(0.86m) 13:43(0.90m) 02:00(0.89m) 14:19(0.94m)

High Tide: 07:37(5.48m) 19:54(5.50m) 08:13(5.48m) 20:31(5.43m)

Time fished from: 17:45

Time fished to: 01:45

Weather: Cloudy with very little wind. Occasional light rain.

Sea: Clear with a small swell and waves.

Method: Ledger (homemade pulley rig) | Ledger (homemade 2 hook flapper)

Bait: frozen medium sandeel, frozen whole loligo squid, frozen mackerel segments | live ragworm, live lugworm

Caught (weight): 3 Pouting (0lbs 3oz, guessed), 1 whiting (0lbs 2oz, guessed)

The Session: This session was a meeting that had been organised by John Mitchell and was to get some anglers together who had only previously met online. 7 of us attended and we all arrived around 5-6pm. I had already met John, Paul and Terry as we had fished previously at Seaton Beach in Devon.

We all set up on the main beach and I think we all fished two rods. I used two ledger rods, one with a pulley rig and one with a 2 hook flapper rig. I cast both of them straight out around 70 to 80 yards beginning with double sandeel and ragworm and lugworm as bait.

At the beginning of the session I didn''t have any bites and so I decided to spend some time chatting and meeting the other anglers. This was when the first decent fish was caught, a large Bull Huss and it prompted me to get back to my rods and concentrate on the fishing from now on.

The line on one of my rods was going well to my left and as I reeled it in I found I had hooked a child’s hoodie along with lots of weed. I rebaited both rods expecting to bring in more weed each cast but I did so only on occasional casts. I began getting bites on the flapper rig, the fish were mostly taking the lugworm and the bites were quick. Eventually one hooked itself and it was a small Pouting. A few more followed over the next few hours and also a whiting that took ragworm. Almost as quickly as the bites started they stopped so I decided to take my big bait rod and have a cast over near the mouth of the river to my right. I gave it 20 minutes with a segment of mackerel but I had no bites. I returned to my rods to hear that the others had caught small conger, pouting, whiting, and a bass.

I was looking around me when I realised that a large amount of thick weed was on the beach in front of me and Terry. The weed stopped about 20 yards to my left, around this time a couple of the others were packing up so we decided to move, putting our lack of fish down to the weed somehow hanging around just in our area.

Once we had moved the tide had gone out quite a bit and the beach was now shallowing off to being almost flat. This was more like the beaches I fish locally and we needed to move forward a few times over the next couple of hours. By now I had tried squid, mackerel sandeel and plenty of lugworm and ragworm but I had no big species. I was just walking back after casting when Terry was reeling something in. He had managed to catch a nice 7lb Small-eyed Ray which prompted us to decide to give it another hour in the hope some more were now around. It wasn’t to be though and just before 2am we decided to pack up. It was a shame that not many large fish showed but especially pleasing that Terry caught a big fish as he is still new to sea fishing

All in all it was a good evening despite the lack of large fish.

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

Set up 1: Rod: Daiwa Seahunter X 14ft 3 piece Fixed Spool (£60.00) [ > 0 years 5 months ]

Reel: Shakespeare Agility Surf 70FD Fixed Spool (£39.99) [ > 4 years 5 months ]

Line: Maxima Hi-Viz 20lb (£15.42) 550m

Hooks: Sakuma Manta 2/0 (£13.05) 100

Shockleader: Gardner Slinky 60lb (£6.99) 100M

Hooklength: Sunset Amnesia 40lb (£4.50) 100m

Set up 2: Rod: Daiwa Crosscast 13ft 3 piece Fixed Spool (£60.00) [ > 0 years 11 months ]

Reel: Daiwa Crosscast S 5000 Fixed spool (£48.99) [ > 3 years 7 months ]

Line: Maxima Chameleon 20lb (£17.99) 600m

Hooks: Sakuma Stinger 2 (£15.00) 100

Shockleader: Gardner Slinky 60lb (£6.99) 100M

Hooklength: Maxima Clear 15lb (£4.00) 100m