Innholdsfortegnelse for June - July 2023 i Saltwater Boat Angling

Welcome to the summer issue of Saltwater Boat Angling and as ever we have a great variety of articles to bring you. It looks like we’re in for another hot summer – as I write the winds along the South Coast have been blowing pretty relentlessly from the north east accompanied by dry, sunny weather. Further down the coast and to the west this hasn’t been such a problem and there has been some really excellent fishing to be had with a lot of pollack, big tope, smoothhounds and also really good-sized bream being boated. Referencing tope, we’ve seen a good number of really big tope being caught, the biggest so far coming from Wales and weighing over 63lb and a few in 40s and 50s. This has to be…

The European Federation of Sea Anglers is a long-established organisation formed in 1961 by a group of international anglers who were taking part in a fishing festival being held out of Looe in England. It now consists of a number of European countries and each year the English Chapter has its own boat championship which is attended by the cream of boat match anglers in the UK. This year the event was held in Eastbourne, organised by John Little, skipper of Manx Belle. He got together three other boats to run the event: Deep Blue skippered by Simon Logan, Odyssey skippered by John Goldsmith and Excalibur skippered by Lance Brown. EFSA kindly invited me on to one of the boats (Deep Blue) to report on the event, something I was…

One of the best kept angling secrets in the UK is the angling potential in the waters around the Mull of Galloway. We’ve covered the various festivals held on the peninsula over the last few years, and for someone who spends most of his time fishing on the South Coast and in the West Country it’s a pleasure to be able to go further afield and experience the amazing Scottish scenery. In a repeat of the epic adventure we undertook in 2021 with Will Parkinson and his Smartfish Suzuki Pro Team, Will and I drove up in convoy with the Mckell family, us towing Smartfish and they with their boat Squidward III. And, as with the previous trip, we caused quite a stir at various stop off points on the…

In the last issue we looked at what you need to look for when buying a boat. Once you’ve decided which vessel is perfect for you, it is time to look at what is the most appropriate plotter and fishfinder that will work best for your requirements. I quite often get asked about marine electronics and, although no expert, I have used most of the brands available to small boat anglers. It can be quite bewildering, so this a guide through the maze. Should it stay or should it go! Very often when buying a secondhand boat it’ll come ready rigged with electronics. It’s tempting and more convenient to just leave it as it is, but we would suggest that, unless you are very familiar with what is installed, you…

BOAT REVIEW SPECIFICATIONS ■ Length: 5.5m■ Beam: 2.01m■ Draft: 0.3m■ Freeboard: 0.8m■ Top speed: 30+ knots■ Reserve bouyancy: 660kg■ Maximum dead weight for trailer: 875kg FEATURES: ■ Two moulded seat boxes with internal storage compartments and mounted with a 360 degree turn■ Two stainless steel handrails, grab rails, marine bollards and bow roller■ Heavy duty fender with rubber end caps■ Engine well drain tube and screw in bung■ Hydraulic steering■ On board fire extinguisher■ Boarding ladder History Tope Hunter is not a new design – it was originally built by Stormcat in Scotland and has been around well over a decade. The brand, and design, is now owned by Eastbourne-based boat builder Steve Paice and his Tope Hunter Boats company. Basic design, look and feel The reinforced hull has a…

OTI SLOW PITCH JIGS Ocean Tackle International Slow Pitch Jigs were developed from the Japanese Slow Jigging Technique. These jigs have a slower rate of decent to replicate a shocked or stunned bait fish. This is achieved because the keel has a weighted design on the underside of the jig which gives it erratic actions. The technique requires anglers to drop the jig to the desired depth and begin rhythmic lifts of the rod tip to make the jig appear to be injured or fleeing. These jigs will catch a wide range of species, particularly bass, pollock and cod as well as a long list of tropical game fish like amberjack, snapper and grouper. They are rigged with Raptor Glow Assist Hook and Raptor Split and Solid Ring. ■ Sizes…

JULY ■ Oxwich Bay Kayak festival: 22nd■ Shark Angling Festival, Looe: 4th – 7th AUGUST ■ Mull of Galloway Sea Angling Festival Species Hunt 11th -13th SEPTEMBER ■ Thames Estuary Boat Competition 7th■ Wyvern Small Boats Championships 9th and 10th■ Torbay Sea Angling Festival 1st -10th■ Cork Small Boat Festival 15th - 22nd NOVEMBER ■ Southsea Marina Cod Open Boat Comp TBA■ Cardiff Bay Cod Festival 11th Let us know the dates of your competitions and festivals and we’ll publish them here. email editor@saltwaterboatangling.co.uk IN THE NEXT ISSUE Part II of the New Zealand kingfish adventure, we go out with the Species League Final in Minehead and we’ll have a full report on the Sea Angling Classic, which happened before we went to press. We’ll be looking at wreck fishing,…

After a number of funding schemes were announced last year and the Angling Trust recently secured funding for a nationwide angling data collection programme, Tim Macpherson explains what this is and looks at the current options available. Firstly, let’s look at one of the biggest funding awards so far: Catchwise This is a new survey of sea angling which is being rolled out across England and Wales over the next 12 months. This project was the result of the Angling Trust asking some awkward questions about the data coming out of the Sea Angling Diary Project, which has been going for a number of years and is run by Substance. The Sea Angling Diary is a voluntary scheme where anglers provide monthly data about what, where and when they’re catching…

SUSSEX The weather has been glorious except for a very nasty north-easterly wind that blew all the way through May – which made the fishing sporadically quite hard work. The EFSA World Boat Angling Championship was held over a weekend in May and the weather was quite a challenge. We have a full report on page 26 and the winner was Mark Smith. Otherwise when the boats have been able to get out there have been some really nice pollack caught, tope and smoothhound have arrived and the summer fishing is well underway. Deep Blue, skippered by Simon Logan on his new boat, has been experiencing some decent catches. On a recent trip Simon reported that “the wrecks weren’t up to much, so a change of location was warranted. We…

TECHNIQUE My favourite fishing method is slow pitch jigging, it’s a method I’ve been using to great success in local waters since 2014. Both my personal best bass and pollock, of 12lb and 17lb, fell to my slow jigs. One of the beauties of angling and, in-particular, this slow jigging, are that you never stop learning. It can take many trips to get the feel of it. It’s great fun but it’s also the sum of many parts, so it’s important to learn quickly. The finer stuff takes a bit more time and experience. Having other slow jigging specialists with you and a knowledgeable skipper are all important. It’s not the only way I fish but it’s certainly one of the favourites. Overseas learning I fished a fair bit of…

SPECIES Description Triggerfish have a large head with small, strong jaws containing teeth adapted to crushing shells, with the upper jaw containing an additional set of six plate-like pharyngeal teeth. The fish have an oval shaped, compressed body. The eyes are small, set back from the mouth, at the top of the head. The anterior dorsal fin is reduced to a set of three spines. The first spine is stout and by far the longest. All three are normally retracted into a groove. The anal and posterior dorsal fins are capable of undulating from side to side to provide slow speed movement. The sickle shaped caudal fin is only used to escape predators. The two pelvic fins are fused to form a single spine, gill covers are not visible, overlaid…

Radios v mobiles – a bit of a no brainer Firstly, while quite a few boaters are happy to rely on mobile phones for their communications when out fishing, thinking that is enough for inshore trips, from a safety point of view it’s always better to have as many methods of comms as possible. Of course, many anglers now use the Navionics Boating App on their phones for planning and navigation (although you can’t beat having the card installed on your fishfinder), but relying on a mobile phone alone is not a good idea. All good VHF radios should be fully submersible and, as we’ve often found to our cost, mobiles are not. Just based on the fact that phones aren’t fully waterproof I would always advocate having a radio…