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