Report, Silver Spray - Alderney

Date - 09, 10 & 11/08/08

Day 1

A 6am start from Poole to try to miss the worst of the strong winds forecast, meant leaving the house at around 1am for the drive down from West Wales. We set sail promptly with a group of anglers from Northampton & District Sea Angling Club were aboard Silver Spray for 3 days in Alderney. With 3 hours of reasonable conditions behind us the last hour or so freshened up and got a bit snotty, but soon the guy's were tackled up and bringing mackerel aboard. With the strong south westerly winds (force 7), we were resticted to fishing grounds to the north of the island.

On the drift over rough ground, some nice reef pollack (to around 4lb) were coming aboard to jelly worms, hokki's and sandeel imitations. As soon as the tide eased, we stopped drifting and anchored up over a patch of mixed ground, and sent some baited hooks over the side. Within minutes, some decent black bream, large scad (horse mackerel), ballan wrasse, and more pollack fell for the bait. Amongst the smaller stuff, one of the lads managed a cracking 22lb blonde ray.

Day 2

With the wind increasing overnight, we were again restricted to fishing the same grounds as the previous day. The script was basically the same, with nice bream to around the 3lb mark coming out, with the addition of a few eels, up to 20lb +. With large swells, we called it a day at around 5pm and headed to Braye Harbour.

Day 3

We woke to a slight drop in wind speed, but still a stiff breeze and large groundswells from the previous days wind. Soon we were on our way to one of Andy's cod marks, surfing the large waves with the wind at our tails. Once at the cod grounds, they seemed to have dissappeared (or at least the guy's could not catch any!), so we decided to anchor up on one of the small wrecks in the vacinity.

Black bream made an immediate appearance taking feathers baited with mackerel strips, giving excellent accounts for themselves in 180ft of water. Amongst the bream were the obligatory pout, scad, mackerel, and 5 red sea bream. The 1st I'd ever seen. On the heavier gear, the guys caught tope to 20lb+, and conger, with Mick boating a monster.

Red Bream

With the beginning of the flood, we decided to have another crack at the cod, and we steamed over an area with a lot of marking, soon our shads (fished on portland rigs), were engulfed by cod. The biggest one went around 8lb.

All in all - the wether took it's toll again, but some of the fishing was excellent, with a superb stamp of fish. Roll on some settled weather!!!!!

Species caught on the boat during the 3 days -
mackerel, scad, blonde ray, conger, cod, bass, pouting, poor cod, red gurnard, red sea bream, black sea bream, ballan wrasse, tope, pollack.