Offshore boat anglers are enjoying some hectic sport with spurdog with a party aboard John Barbeary’s Ilfracombe based Charter boat Bluefin landing over sixty in a trip last weekend. These members of the shark family bring welcome sport each winter with their numbers recovering following the ban on commercial fishing.
Combe Martin SAC member Paul Lorrimore caught this bull huss of 9lb 7oz on his latest visit to the North Devon shoreline. Shore anglers are catching plenty of small conger and dogfish but those prepared to persist are eventually rewarded.
Boat anglers will be pleased to know that John Barbeary’s boat Bluefin is back in the water at Ilfracombe following a winter refit. The next two months should see some hectic sport with spurdog, conger and bull huss.
Toby Bassett enjoyed a beautiful day bobbing about on John Barbeary’s Bluefin with plenty of fish tempted throughout the day afloat.
Several bass were tempted drifting over the reefs with the biggest around 5lb. Anchoring brought sport with several tope to 30lb along with huss and the inevitable dogfish. One angler hooked a large fish that came close to spooling him before dropping the bait. The guess was that it was shark?
bass and scad
As winter approaches anglers will be looking forward to targetting the spurdog, huss and conger that prowl the mid channel marks giving some exciting and frantic sport when the weather permits access.
Paul Lorrimore and a party of anglers enjoyed a great days sport on Blue-Fin out of Ilfracombe.
Thanks to Paul for his account of the day.
Initially after seeing the water clarity (which was pretty good) we headed for the Horse-Shoe Rocks for a crack at some Bass action.
We chucked everything at it from Skerries Eels to Live Sand Eels – but only small 2lb to 3lb Bass were coming aboard.
A big change to the last visit from the skipper.
After a good go and more Pollack, small Bass and a chunky Pouting to Andy Smiff ,we anchored up and got the big gear down.
From the get go, the Tope came out to play.
Myself and Troy Laing boating fish of around 35-40lb.
Paul’s tope total for the day was 5.
All on the boat landing good fish, and plenty of them -I think we counted 17.
Species today – Huss, Dogs, Pollack, Pouting, Conger, Smoothhound, Tope, Bass.
(Above) A fifty pound plus tope for first timer Colin.
Bluefin will be running fishing trips out of Ilfracombe throughout the winter months at present there are still a few tope being caught and bass from the reefs. With the new that anglers can now retain one bass per day trips to reefs will be popular with option to keep the occasional fish for the table.
A fine tope on Bluefin Off Ilfracombe. The next couple of months should see some top rate sport with these hard fighting toothy critters!
Keith Armishaw from Angling Book Specialists River Reads booked a days fishing off Ilfracombe on Bluefin skippered by John Barbeary. and sent me a brief report on an interesting day.
Keith tells me that The fishing wasn’t great a is often the case in Spring when the winter spurdog shoals have migrated away and the summer species have not arrived in any numbers. As they moved from mark to mark dogfish snaffled the bait in plague proportions.
But as is often the case the day was saved when John managed to locate a should of pollock that put a bend in the rods along with a few bull huss.
Days afloat are about more than just fish and Keith relays an interesting aspect of the day in that several birds landed on the boat.
Keith guessed that these were on migration to South Wales. They had 4 warblers (one actually settled on Lee’s rod whilst he was holding it), a blackcap and another ( caught a fleeting glimpse of was a redstart I think). Keith commented that it all added to the joy of the day. Great to be outdoors.
http://www.bluefincharters.co.uk
Anglers enjoyed a lush spring day with a blue sky and calm sea on Bluefin fishing out of Ilfracombe they landed plenty of spurdog the best a beauty of 18lb to the rod of Bill Cassar.
http://www.bluefincharters.co.uk
Toby Bassett joined a party of anglers aboard John Barbeary’s boat Bluefin off Ilfracombe and boated a fine specimen conger of 44lb 8oz.. The spurdog they were targetting proved harder to find than on recent trips but good numbers of conger proved adequate consultation with good numbers of twenty pound plus eels boated.