Many thanks to Daniel Welch of Predator 2 for this excellent report on the second heat of their species competition.
We left harbour at 0800 with a group of friends on board for a species hunt, on this occasion we headed down channel fishing various reefs, banks and deeper water marks. The intention was to move around a lot and fish both at anchor and on the drift. The target was to try and beat the previous species day total of 16.
Various tactics were used including floats, lures, and different types of bottom rigs running ledgers and patenosters. Tactics also included different coloured beads and weights various sized hooks and baits.
Baits used during the day included squid, harbour rag, lug, mackerel, scad, prawns, spider crabs, shore crabs and small fresh bait fish caught during the day.
It was a very close run competition with Ross Stanway taking an early lead but everyone was in with a chance to take the win. With an hour to go Ross and Toby were tied at the top on with the lead changing regularly until they got to 20 points with 30 minutes to go. Both had very realistic target species to take the win. However by observing successful tactics of others Toby changed baits and took the win by catching two black bream sneaking ahead of Ross for the win and a £70 voucher for future use on predator.
During the day we caught a respectable 20 different species Toby Basset won the day with a total of 23 points consisting of 13 different species, Ross Stanway came a close second place with 20 points but actually had 14 different species.
The 20 different species landed on the boat during the day were tub gurnard, mackerel, pollack, scad, Bull Huss, tope, conger, black bream, smooth hound, ballan wrasse, goldsinny wrasse, corkwing wrasse, blond ray, smalleye ray, dragonet, bass, pouting, poor cod, dogfish and Tom pot blenny.
A great day was had by all this is not something we usually do but it makes a nice change especially with the friendly competitive banter all day.
