Boat fishing

Fish Conservation

We would like to point out that we have a policy on board of returning every fish that we catch (that we arent going to eat) back to the sea alive and with as little stress as possible.

We rarely take more than one or two fish home with us.

Good catch and release starts with the bite, leave a seafish bite too long and the fish will swallow the bait, making recovery of the hook very difficult. Lip hooking fish by striking quickly makes unhooking easy.

We also use a wet cloth, wet gloves or wet hands to handle fish to preserve their skin. And dont go to sea without a proper disgorger!

Ragworms

Ragworms are an excellent winter bait for just about any fish. Hours of fun can be had playing the whiting with these juicy babies!

Click the image for a larger view!

Squid

Squid is an excellent all round bait and is quite cheap. Use the big ones wrapped in worms for the cod!

Cod Bait

Good cod baits are huge!

This one is made up on two very large hooks and comprises of two calamari squid surrounded by some monster lug worms. Its all held together with bait elastic that is wound around the lot to keep it in place. Having such a large cod bait will hopefully stop the little fish from taking it as its simply too big for their mouths!

Make sure the hooks arent covered up with bait or they wont do their job when a cod bites.

Flatfish bait

Flatfish need very small baits, this image shows the typical bait. The rag worm is small or often cut in half, you dont need it trailing off the end of the hook as the fish wont get hooked that way.

The bait is tipped with a tiny slice of squid to hold the worm on.

Baiting up this way often means the bait can be reused as it rarely comes off when you have a fish. This comes in handy sometimes, especially  when you are far from home and the fish are feeding!

Flounder

Flounder are related to all the other flatfish like plaice or dabs. We fish for flatfish with a brightly coloured two hook rig.

Two of us were fishing here two feet apart, I had fish after fish but my friend didnt, the only difference in our rigs was the spinner I had on mine.

They say these attract flatfish and they sure worked for me.

It seems you need to dress the rig up like a christmas tree in order to get the fish, dont be shy, chuck it on, even a foil tin from a pie worked for us.

The bites are more of a rattle on the rod tip than the jerk of other fish. Its always good to leave them for a little while, they will usually hook themselves.

We had some 20 fish in this session, the majority of the fish were returned but in amongst them were many good sized fish. I often had two on each cast, and at one time i was battling with a dogfish and a flounder together!

They arent the best fighting fish in the world but the big ones have little go in them.

This was on a day when all the boat crews could only catch dogfish, the rest of them stuck it out waiting for cod while we sneaked off to a quiet bay for flatties.They are a beautiful fish, easy to gut and  lovely to eat!