thames estuary area

[kiwimist]

my wife tells me i'm mutating into victor Meldrew every time i come back from fishing. The last time i posted a topic on the poor fishing for the past two years in the River Crouch,

I blamed the lack of fish on "global warming" and over fishing. A few of you thought that the reason was bad weather or the influx of freshwater during the heavy rains towards the end of 2007. Well, I am a pleasure fisherman and have been for the past 50 years. I have a nice boat moored on the Crouch. How often have you heard anglers say " Even if i don't get a bite i still had a lovely day". That USED to be me. It's wearing a bit thin now though because the bad days were usually tempered by the good days. I like to fish the run of whiting every year normally starting about late October thru to February, and a second rod baited with a pennel rig for cod. the following is taken from my boats log:

November - three trips down the Crouch, one by the 'goalposts' two in the 'Whittaker Channel' weather cold wind either south or SW 3-4. Bait frozen squid, black lug, frozen mackeral, fresh jumbo prawn and large mussels. Result for 39 hours fishing = 2 whiting - 2 codling - 1 bass all undersize. " i don't believe it"

December = 3 trips as November = 2 blanks and 1 trip again with a few undersized fish.

i also fished on a friends 30' boat out of Walton-on-Naze. 3 trips so far, all in the felixstowe area which i believe is classed as the North Sea. My friend only believes in using Squid bait this time of year. results = 1st trip early November lots of small spotted dogfish, most were returned. 2nd trip late November 1 flounder between 3 anglers. 3rd trip December

1 pouting 1 tiny whiting. Is it me? am i doing something wrong after fishing these waters constantly for the last 40 years. HELP please stop me from turning in to Mr Meldrew. Just got the reminder in to pay the half yearly mooring fee's - is it worth it. Should i sell my boat and just use charter boats in more productive areas, it would probably work out cheaper! Anyone got any ideas on what can be done to improve our fishing in the areas mentioned.

[five bellies]

my wife tells me i'm mutating into victor Meldrew every time i come back from fishing. The last time i posted a topic on the poor fishing for the past two years in the River Crouch,

I blamed the lack of fish on "global warming" and over fishing. A few of you thought that the reason was bad weather or the influx of freshwater during the heavy rains towards the end of 2007. Well, I am a pleasure fisherman and have been for the past 50 years. I have a nice boat moored on the Crouch. How often have you heard anglers say " Even if i don't get a bite i still had a lovely day". That USED to be me. It's wearing a bit thin now though because the bad days were usually tempered by the good days. I like to fish the run of whiting every year normally starting about late October thru to February, and a second rod baited with a pennel rig for cod. the following is taken from my boats log:

November - three trips down the Crouch, one by the 'goalposts' two in the 'Whittaker Channel' weather cold wind either south or SW 3-4. Bait frozen squid, black lug, frozen mackeral, fresh jumbo prawn and large mussels. Result for 39 hours fishing = 2 whiting - 2 codling - 1 bass all undersize. " i don't believe it"

December = 3 trips as November = 2 blanks and 1 trip again with a few undersized fish.

i also fished on a friends 30' boat out of Walton-on-Naze. 3 trips so far, all in the felixstowe area which i believe is classed as the North Sea. My friend only believes in using Squid bait this time of year. results = 1st trip early November lots of small spotted dogfish, most were returned. 2nd trip late November 1 flounder between 3 anglers. 3rd trip December

1 pouting 1 tiny whiting. Is it me? am i doing something wrong after fishing these waters constantly for the last 40 years. HELP please stop me from turning in to Mr Meldrew. Just got the reminder in to pay the half yearly mooring fee's - is it worth it. Should i sell my boat and just use charter boats in more productive areas, it would probably work out cheaper! Anyone got any ideas on what can be done to improve our fishing in the areas mentioned.

 

 

Mate you Obviously are having a rough time at the moment,

 

I have had some of the best fishing in years from the Thames Eastuary in the last 20 or so months Roker,cod and Bass fishing have been good, with the exeption of that very wet spell last year.

Im not teaching My granny to suck eggs you have years of experiance but why use black lug in that area, its a very localised bait IMO and if used where it is not natrauly found tends to get out fished by fresh blow lug,Herring over mackeral every time in the Thames and North Sea unless its high summer, frozen prawn and Muscles save for a peallia when you get home Yum! Squid is best used as a cocktail bait with fresh lug. fish with Big baits uptide ( you are uptiding arnt you?) and wait it out also its no good fishing where the fish aint You have to keep your ear to the ground,Secondly it will start slowing down a bit inshore now so be patiant,

spring will pick up again.

 

Good luck and dont sell your boat Just yet you will regret it

[Stoaty]

We all go through bad patches. But I must say the fishing on the south side of the estuary has been good since october. The whiting have been better this year and although not large, there are many 3lb codling about and the odd bigger one. We had a couple of thornbacks in December as well. If you don't mind dab fishing we are having a fantastic run of big ones at the moment. On the downside we have a run of spratt going on, this kills the cod fishing until they have gone and the water temperature is low which takes some fish, like bass, off the feed. Bait for us has been black lug and cuttle for the cod/ whiting and herring or mackeral strip for the thornbacks. Things are never the same, you have to keep looking.

[kiwimist]

Cheers stoaty & five bellies

 

I used to moor my boat at Halcon's, Canvey Island and could motor down as far as Ramsgate (weather permitting) and we rarely if ever blanked. Problem was it was a mud berth and you could only get in and out on the top of the tide. it always seemed that the best tides were about 3am then you had to stay out for about 12 hours - not very convenient, as like Greengrass would say - i'm nearly an old age pensioner now! Part of the enjoyment is having a decent meal and a couple of pints on the way home, an it don't feel the same at 3 in the afternoon. That's why i moved to a marina berth on the Crouch, cause i can get in and out at almost any time i want. for the last 3 years the fishing has been diabolical. Just to put the record straight - I started fishing in the 60's usually out of southend or Hole Haven. During the winter months back then you nearly always caught good qualit cod. I remember that anything under 6lb was regarde as codling. Fish to 10lb -12lb were not unusual and 20lb plus was fairly regular. we were some of the first anglers to charter with John Rawle, so yes we know all about uptiding. other skippers out of Bradwell were bob Cox and Owen Wooley, also a chacter called " Black Jack". I wonder if anyone remebers him. John Rawle was always a skipper that gave good value for money, and i remember well the day that when uptiding was in it's infancy and we poo pooed JR for casting off a boat We were fishing the Deeps in the Thames Estuary. He had about a 5 - 6 foot trace, 4 oz grapple, with a 4/0 hook loaded with about 8 - 10 black lug, and sometimes tipped with squid or lug lobbed out about 50 - 60 yds uptide. We had traditional 6 foot boat rods, flowing trace 2/0 - 3/0 hooks baited with 1 or 2 lug dropped over the stern. this would have been around mid December 1973. Result - me and my mate had about 10 fish between us, the biggest an 8lb cod. J Rawle had 6 cod, the smallest 18lb. Those were the days. Anyway i have been a boat owner for the last 15 or so years and have fished regularly throughout the year. yeah i've had my fair share of really good catches especially Tope Roker and Bass. I like to think that i know what i'm doing and perhaps where i'm going wrong is comparing things now to what it used to be like. We regularly go down to the South coast and go out from Dover, and Brighton, and comparitively speaking they are all struggling to come up with decent catches. some of the underfished wrecks are still producing good catches of Cod and Pollack, but you now have to further than ever to find them. I only fish one rod, and in the winter always uptide. I agree with your comments on bait, and am always experimenting. Recently the few small codling that have been caught were stuffed full of sprats. Perhaps that is why our baits are not working very well - who knows.

So if anyone is looking for a nice old 27' grp diesel cruiser - fully fitted with all mod cons inc colour chart plotter/blown air heating/flush toilet/bait fridge etc etc i'll probably sell up soon including the prime mooring paid for 2008. cheers, and thanks for the reply's.

[Leon Roskilly]

Once you have your own boat, it's very easy to lose contact with what other anglers are doing, where they are catching etc.

 

Down in the Medway there is a boat angling club which organises competitions, a monthly get-together in a local pub etc.

 

Great for making friends and going out together sharing marks and knowledge about where and what is working.

 

And by using your boat one weekend, and a friend's another you can keep the expenses down whilst getting all the benefits of sharing knowledge and seeing how others do it.

 

If there's nothing like it round your way, maybe it's time to organise something.

 

 

 

The other way is to leave your boat in the yard, or on the buoy, and go out on some charter trips throughout the year with a good local skipper and pick his brains, as well as sharing knowledge and experience with other anglers out on the trip.

 

It's surprising what you can pick up (but don't then go out and fish on his GPS co-ordinants!).

 

 

I've got to agree though, that those days of the early 70s are but a memory.

 

I used to go out from West Mersea with my Dad and his mate, firstly in Mr Tope, then we bought our own boat.

 

One of our biggest problems then was getting hold of the builder's heavy-duty plastic sacks which would carry the fish we caught, now a couple of Tesco's carrier bags is about all that's needed!

Edited January 11, 2008 by Leon Roskilly

[five bellies]

Kiwimist,

 

Stick with it mate its not that bad, I was a regular with Bob Cox and he taught me how to Angle as aposed to fish lessons that where invaluable to me but even he had off days, You and stoaty have got me qeustioning my Black lug theory so Ive brought 20 and will give them a spin tomorow in the river, I will let you Know how I got on

[five bellies]

Kiwimist,

 

Stoatys right the estuary is FULL of sprat, Five very ordanary fish on the boat all day, when a coaster steamed past us the Gulls where like snow behind it picking up the damaged sprat in the ships wake

(I supposed damaged by the props in mid water)

 

Im going to have to try the black lug another day as nothing was working yesterday!

 

Me and my big mouth

[kiwimist]

Once you have your own boat, it's very easy to lose contact with what other anglers are doing, where they are catching etc.

 

Down in the Medway there is a boat angling club which organises competitions, a monthly get-together in a local pub etc.

 

Great for making friends and going out together sharing marks and knowledge about where and what is working.

 

And by using your boat one weekend, and a friend's another you can keep the expenses down whilst getting all the benefits of sharing knowledge and seeing how others do it.

 

If there's nothing like it round your way, maybe it's time to organise something.

The other way is to leave your boat in the yard, or on the buoy, and go out on some charter trips throughout the year with a good local skipper and pick his brains, as well as sharing knowledge and experience with other anglers out on the trip.

 

It's surprising what you can pick up (but don't then go out and fish on his GPS co-ordinants!).

I've got to agree though, that those days of the early 70s are but a memory.

 

I used to go out from West Mersea with my Dad and his mate, firstly in Mr Tope, then we bought our own boat.

 

One of our biggest problems then was getting hold of the builder's heavy-duty plastic sacks which would carry the fish we caught, now a couple of Tesco's carrier bags is about all that's needed!

[kiwimist]

Cheers Leon & 5 Bellies,

 

Thanks for all the replies. sea anglers are a rare bunch, always ready to help with good quality advice. What you say about the sprats is probably very true. i have used them as bait in the past, but i don't think you can present them on the hook good enough to fool a decent cod. Good advice about the charter skippers Leon, but i have tried that one. My problem is that my boat only cruises at 8 knots, and all the charters usually go much quicker, therefore they fish marks that i can't get to. I have been giving this a lot of thought lately and it occurred to me that maybe some clever marine scientist somewhere knows about the behaviour of the fish around our coast. i mean specifically what is going on rather than generalising on habitat and behaviour etc. As anglers we we can improve our chances by increasing our knowledge. I am an all round angler and regularly go coarse fishing. it seems that fresh water anglers know far more about the habits and whereabouts of the fish they are hunting. I have never done any fly fishing but these guys seem really clued up. Obviously you can't compare Sea angling with any other branch of the sport, but i think we know far less about the specific habits of our quarry. Whenever i fish the crouch i know what i should be catching at most times of the year. i know which tides are likely to produce the best catches. i know what baits i prefer to use and how to present them. I know some good marks which have produced in the past. I believe that because the river crouch is nearly always murky that the fish must hunt by smell or perhaps their preyfish give off some other kind of signal. Most of our fishing is done on the bottom ranging from 20' to maybe 50' i imagine that there is very little light at this depth, so logic tells me the fish (cod whiting etc) must scent the bait. I still get the feeling that when i go out i am leaving most things to chance. I don't really know whats going on except from other anglers catches. I would feel much better equipped if i could be better informed. This forum is a great place to get advice but i would really like to know more. Do the fish congregate and stay in one stretch of the river for a while or as long as there is food for them? or are they on a journey to and from somewhere? are they always on the feed or do they just swim around sometimes not feeding? are they opportunist feeders or do they head for specific areas from previous knowledge? Why would different states of the tide affect the way they feed? Has anyone ever told you " the fish bite least when the wind is in the east" I personally find this hard to believe, how do fish feeding on the bottom know where east is? but in all my years fishing i have to say there is some truth in this. Immature codling are being caught regulary around the thames estuary and associated rivers. Do they stay until old enough to breed? if so how do they decide where to go? I know the breeding area for cod is far out into the north sea so they will be swimming south lets say around the begining of November. How do they decide whether to stay in the thames or swim up the blackwater or crouch etc. We can all guess as to the answers, but i would like to know the science behind the guessing

Cheers to you all, won't using my boat for a while as she is out of the water for a tidy up, so might give JR a call.

[Bugle Beachbuggy]

Owen Wooley, also a chacter called " Black Jack".

 

There is a blast from the past. Last time I heard of OW he was advertising in Sea Angler to punters who would take him out on fishing trips in exchange for his area fishing knowledge. Argonaut was his boat and he was the first angler I saw catching double figure Bass on scad bait. Was Black Jack a skipper named Weitzel. I remember a chap called Kevin Benham