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  • 08/03/2015 Fishing Report by Gethyn Owen on My Way 2 (Holyhead, Isle of Anglesey)

    8 Mar 2015 by Gethyn Owen

    Report on-board My Way 2

    With the winds at Holyhead Port Control recording a constant F9 and gusting 10 on Saturday 07th March, we had already cancelled one day of a planned fun weekend of competition between members of the RAF and a posse of Welsh anglers. Waking up to howling winds early morning on the Sunday, it was with great relief that a couple hours later on the boat, the winds started easing ready for our 9am sail.

    With 4 anglers form each team aboard Spindrift and a further 4 from each aboard My way it was going to be a fun day. More so for myself, my first real competitive match for a good number of years. I’ve had a few small goes in the last few years whilst running the boat, but this time H took charge whilst I stood on deck and tried my hand. 2005 and the World champs was the last time I fished a true points match!

    Fishing was very hard going, thanks to the winds of previous days the sea was brown in colour and very lumpy at times. We tried a couple marks just outside the harbour and then on the mussel beds with very few fish being caught. Bobby and Scottie played their part on the mussel beds with a nice ray and spurdog respectively. Everyone though remained on single figures for the first few hours! A move inshore though was to kick the fishing, the enthusiasm and thankfully the weather, as calmer seas rolled in.

    Species caught were typical for inshore early March and all at anchor, dogs, whiting, poor cod, some plump codling and amongst our 262 fish total were 50 bull huss ranging from a few ounces up to a guesstimated 6/7lb. Top rod aboard My Way was Bobby Lockwood, who fished at a steady pace through the day, his his final score helped along with an impressive personal tally of 14 huss. The same number of huss caught by team mate, the Scottish scouser Micky Duff, who somewhere down the line also had a career in there RAF.

    Myself, well I managed a fairly respectable 75%, pleased with this outing and maybe a rekindled interest in the match scene, great fun to be had when you have a genuinely great bunch of lads to finish and enjoy some fishing with. A big no is to go into a match using new gear, ideally you need to get used to new rods & reels and get a feel for them, bite detection capabilities etc. But I wanted dive in (not literally) under pressure conditions and see what the new gear had to offer. I paired the 12b Shakespeare Agility with a Penn Fathom and the Shakespeare Agility Tipster with the FS Spinfisher. I’m not going to go into a full blown report just yet, as I needed to try and catch a few fish and not let the others down, lol, so no photographs. Bite detection on the tipster was equal to many rods of a similar build, bent over in ta strong 29ft tide, bite detections was extremely positive, resulting in a good number of hooked fish. The 12lb Agility I found probably best described to be a little higher up the scale, more 15/20lb in stand alone bite detection. But holding the rod you feel each bite and when fishing allowed i was able to load up on the three hook rig, at one stage hauling in a dogfish, 3lb huss and 3lb codling together, all relatively easy to do without pumping but simply allowing the reel to pull in the fish in as the rod took the strain. First glance / use , I can only conclude that the rods and the reels are exceptional quality and unbelievable value for money. I’m sure anglers aboard My Way are going to have a great time through 2015.


    Lastly, big thanks to Harry who took control of My Way admirably during some very trying conditions through the early part of the day, Scoring, making brews and also heating up & serving our lunch, another fantastic Beef Casserole from the talented chef Karen. Thanks pal, training coming along well, think you should do more of this ...

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