Latest Fishing Reports: Silver Spray II
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20/05/2015
Fishing Report by Sam Cumming
20 May 2015 by Sam Cumming
May has been an excellent month so far with much more settled weather and a chance to get offshore. On the reefs bream have shown up in increasing numbers and size. With the bream are a few nice smoothies both common and starry into double figures. We are also picking up undulate and thornback rays which certainly put a bend into a bream rod.
Offshore there have been excellent numbers of cod – perhaps this will be another year link the “brittle star” year of 2008. Most have been in the 4-7lb range but there are enough double figure fish to keep life interesting. Best so far was our April fish of the month a 21lber which fell to Joe Noke. The cod are voracious feeders and don’t give the Pollack a chance to get to the lures leading to cod only wreck trips! Colin for Portsmouth hooked up what he thought was the wreck while drifting with a mackerel flapper near slack. It however turned out to be a 32lb ling which is a new boat record. Colin Low is now known as Coling to his mates!
We have now completed our first Alderney trips of the year. As well as the excellent wrecking on the trip over and back the fishing for flatfish was superb with good numbers of turbot. Although the size was generally 3-7lb there were enough 10lb fish to keep interest up with a good number of smaller fish being returned to fight another day. As well as the turbot we had some nice brill to 5lb. What promised to be a monster turbot turned out to be a large and very energetic blonde ray.
Silver Spray has been out of the water for a major refit which has included two new Iveco Neef 420Hp engines giving a top speed of 29 knots and a 2 knot increase in cruising speed while being much quieter than our previous Cats. We have also increased fishing space by a third by adding walk around rails on the foredeck. The livebait system has been increased to the same capacity as Silver Spray ll and we have invested in more large Iceytek coolboxes to keep fish fresh. To top things off the navigation electronics have been updated with the latest Raymarine digital displays and finally the galley has been refitted. Quite a project which was completed in 3 weeks and which we hope our anglers will enjoy during the summer. -
20/04/2015
Fishing Report by Sam Cumming
20 Apr 2015 by Sam Cumming
April Report:
It’s nice to be able to write about some good weather happening at Easter for once as the last couple of years haven’t been the best with far too many trips being cancelled. This time around its been high temperatures, low winds and plenty of fish. Flatfish such as plaice and turbot have been great fun over the past few weeks, Finley Palmer won the prize money one Sunday with both the biggest turbot and the biggest plaice of the day. The wrecks are fishing very well at the moment due to the amount of sprat shoals that have arrived this season. Pollock, ling, congers and even the first of the cod are hitting the deck on both lures and live eels which we have been catching on feathers when venturing further to the west. Keen angler Joe Noke showed the more experienced lads how its done recently by landing a 21lb cod whilst others were catching pollock, the biggest cod we have ever had in April. As an added bonus there is an abundance of dolphins around mid-channel feeding on the sprats, we have been treated to some fantastic shows in the calm weather when they are in a playful mood. It’s been the most enjoyable April I can remember so far, now all we are waiting for is the start of the black bream which should hopefully find their way to our baits on Sunday!!
Sam Cumming
Silver Spray II -
29/03/2015
Fishing Report by Sam Cumming
29 Mar 2015 by Sam Cumming
Spring is well under way and so are the fish that come with it. We have seen the start of the pollock out on the wrecks with plenty of sprats marking for them to feed on as well as small cuttle fish. The first flatfish of the year have hit the deck with turbot, brill and plaice all making an appearance on our first trip down west. It is the first season that I have caught a brill before turbot on the banks, I usually think later in the year is better for them. We haven’t had any monsters yet but I think we should start seeing a few bigger ones after this big spring tide coming up this weekend. I’ve mentioned it in the last couple of reports but even now, when they have usually disappeared, the spurdogs are still plentiful out on the banks. Just yesterday the staff from Greenoke Energy managed 14 spurs to 21lb along with 11 blonde rays to 28lb in a day that was none stop action start to finish. I’ve started to use 6/0 circle hooks pretty much all the time for this sort of catch and release fishing as they leave the fish unharmed with the hook point always settling in the corner of the mouth and not further to the back.
Sam Cumming
Silver Spray II -
17/02/2015
Fishing Report by Sam Cumming
17 Feb 2015 by Sam Cumming
Much the same as last year, and most years, we haven’t been up to much since Januarys report due to the poor weather, only fishing the neap tides to target spur dogs and blonde rays. It’s been a brilliant season for both species already, we have managed to land more spur dogs in the last few trips than we did all of last year. The biggest tipping the scales at 23lb 4oz and the average being around 17lb. It really good to see the stock of spurs getting healthier every year although there aren’t anywhere near as many as there were thirty years ago from what people tell me. As usual along with the 2 main target species we have been getting plenty of bull huss, congers and other types of rays, on a couple of occasions we have even had so much by catch we end up running out of bait. Looking forward to the end of February when we have our first trips out to the wrecks for the spring pollock.
Sam Cumming
Silver Spray II -
15/01/2015
Fishing Report by Sam Cumming
15 Jan 2015 by Sam Cumming
January Report:
Unfortunately since my last report I have managed a grand total of 3 trips so I’ll keep this short and sweet. On the 28th December we got out in a strong north-easterly breeze for the Sea Fishing Poole Cod Competition. Although conditions meant the day was a little bit quiet with mostly dogfish pout and whiting hitting the deck, one angler had possibly the best days fishing of his life. Tony Lees managed to land a new boat record bass for Silver Spray II weighing in at 15lb 8oz. He used a single squid stuffed with limpet and trotted it right back in the tide using a much lighter lead than other anglers. There is something about this technique that tends to temp the odd big bass in the winter, this time in just happened to be the biggest bass I’ve ever seen. Just to round his day off Tony landed a 15lb cod to weigh in at the competition and claimed himself 4th prize, many thanks to Steve Porter for organising. To round the year off we headed offshore for our first trip out to the banks on a flat calm day with no wind at all. The fishing was brilliant, as it was this time last year, with spur dogs coming up to 19lb and blonde rays up to 28lb in the morning. In the afternoon we changed marks to fish a different type of ground, we found that the harder ground produced more congers and undulate rays and only the one spur dog. Fingers crossed that the weather improves and we can head back out there again before the end of this neap tide.
Sam Cumming
Silver Spray II -
19/12/2014
Fishing Report by Sam Cumming
19 Dec 2014 by Sam Cumming
December Monthly Report:
We are coming to the end of another year of fishing from Poole and I think it’s been good all round with every target species turning up in both quality and quantity. The one season that I would say has been slightly slow for us would have been the winter coding, plenty of mixed fish like rays congers and whiting but unfortunately not as many cod as we would have liked so far. This changed last Saturday as Ray Baldwin joined us for the day, he caught the biggest cod of last year weighing in at 28lb 12oz. Using the same tactics, a sliding pennel rig baited with squid, cuttle and lug worm, Ray produced the goods again with a mammoth 33lber which put up a tremendous fight. Being the first angler to land a 30lb plus cod this winter has earned Ray a free trip to Cherbourg next year and in the process redeemed our end to the year. As I mentioned the cod may have been a bit slow but that hasn’t stopped the anglers from hooking into plenty of other fish. It’s unusual to see spur dogs this far inshore at this time of year but they are now making regular appearances, fingers crossed this means we will have plenty of sport when we start fishing for them properly on the offshore banks. Many thanks to everyone who fished with us this year and made it such a good one. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from all of us at Silver Spray Charters.
Sam Cumming
Silver Spray II -
20/11/2014
Fishing Report by Sam Cumming
20 Nov 2014 by Sam Cumming
The winter cod season is well underway now with the first cod hitting the deck on October 25th for Martin Lewis weighing in at 21lb. Since then we haven’t enjoyed the best of weather only managing a couple of trips a week due to southerly winds and the temperature has yet to drop which is key to a good days cod fishing. In between cod we have enjoyed plenty of congers, rays, spur dogs, bull huss and whiting. Paul Hathaway pulled up a monster of an eel over slack water one day at the end of October, the fish really fighting every inch of the way. We eventually managed to roll it up into the big landing net and had it aboard but unfortunately it was too rough to weigh it. We estimated it to be around 65lb. You always know the season is properly underway when it’s time for the Lowrance British Cod Championships down in Lymington. Due to poor numbers this year it looked like we wouldn’t be needed up until the last minute when a mechanical problem forced another boat to drop out. Both days saw up to 30knots of south/south-easterly wind so we fished in Solent. The first day was just a practice for us as we didn’t manage a decent bite at all but we more than made up for it on the second. Fishing a different area the lads managed 13 cod throughout the day up to 7lb. They may not have been the biggest of fish but it was good enough to see Clive Webb into second place overall with 5 fish weighing in at 21lb all together. The most effective rigs were 3 down flowing traces with 4/0 hooks baited with lug worm and a squid head, I’m so used to fishing big all the time for cod so it was interesting to see a different technique produce such results. It may sound odd but I’m looking forward to it getting colder soon so we can see more cod turn up down in Poole Bay
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13/11/2014
Fishing Report by Sam Cumming
13 Nov 2014 by Sam Cumming
Brilliant time down at the Lowrance British Cod Championships again this year, many thanks to the West Wight Skippers Association for inviting me. Great bunch of guys on the boat for the 2 days, both of which were fished in the solent due to plenty of south/sou'easterly winds and rain. We were just practicing on day 1 bringing no cod to the boat but we more than made up for it on day 2 with 13 cod hitting the deck. The key seemed to be small lug and squid baits fished on 4/0 hooks on a 3 down rig. We missed out on top boat by one fish, we either came second or third i think, and well done to Clive Webbwho was top angler on Silver Spray II, caught 5 fish today and finished 2nd overall with a total weight of just under 21lb. Roll on next years comp!!
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17/10/2014
Fishing Report by Sam Cumming
17 Oct 2014 by Sam Cumming
October 2014 report
We have almost finished a large variety of our trips for the year and it will soon be time to settle into a couple months targeting the winter cod. Over the last few we weeks we have done the last of the bassing, wrecking and also our trips across the channel. The last trip over to Alderney surprised me with some of the calmest and warmest days of the year, not often you can get sun burnt in October. It was a brilliant 4 days with 19 species brought to the boat including the elusive couches sea bream. Not often these days we catch a species we haven’t had before and such a superb looking fish at that. Andrew Kennedy was the man of the hour catching 2 of them using an ounce bullet lead and a short flowing trace baited with squid head, the biggest weighing just over 2lb. The mid channel wrecks really produced a lot of big black bream this year with fish up to 5lb coming on most sessions. Along with these we have also had a few red bream which we haven’t seen for 5 years or so. Gerry Todd brought the first one ever onboard Silver Spray II which he thought was a scad. On the inshore side the shambles is fishing very well for turbot and plaice along with a wide variety of other species. One day recently we tried vertical jigging on inshore reef marks which was a first for us on Silver Spray and turned out to be brilliant sport. Using spinning rods and fixed spool reels the lads managed to catch 7 bass, a dozen or so monster wrasse and more pollock than you can shake a stick at. I’ve only spent a half day down off the Needles so far which produced plenty of congers rays and the first of the years whiting but I’m looking forward to heading down again soon and bagging our first winter cod.
Sam Cumming
Silver Spray II -
20/09/2014
Fishing Report by Sam Cumming
20 Sep 2014 by Sam Cumming
September Report:
Despite a few spots of high wind since my last report the temperatures have been very high for this time of year and the summer fish have continued to keep the rods bending over the last 4 weeks. Out in the channel we are still seeing cod in the high teens pretty much every trip which is a welcome surprise as, as I mentioned last month, they have usually disappeared by now. Along with them we have had good results on both pollock and ling. Recently Pete Knight boated a monster 26lb 8oz ling whist at anchor fishing for congers, the third biggest one we have ever had aboard Silver Spray. Mackerel continue to be a problem up and down the coast and even over by France and Channel Islands where they are always in abundance we have struggled to find many. Despite this our multi day trips to Alderney and Cherbourg are producing good results on turbot, tope and bream still. Our last trip to Cherbourg was hard going on the second day and we barely saw a fish until 4pm when we anchored a little inshore wreck which went absolutely mad in the last hour of the tide. Matt Todd beat his own boat record black bream onboard Silver Spray II, which he set on the same trip last year, with a whopper weighing in at 6lb 2oz. That is sure going to be hard to beat! Along with that the guys got stuck into cod, pollock, congers, bass and even more bream all on light gear which made it even more exciting, a well earned result. Things show no sign of slowing down over the next month and I’m looking forward to some light line species fishing and more monster bream out on the wrecks.
Sam Cumming
Silver Spray
