Firstly a quick look at what is to come in the future on here, I as most anglers do have set myself a few targets for this coming year, a lot of these are based around the mission badges in the Sea Angler magazine. I managed to pick up my first one at near the end of last year, this is something I will go over a little further into this post.
I have set my sights on getting another five of these this year, these will be the Bull Huss, Spotted Ray, Mullet, Black Bream and the Ballan Wrasse. I'm guessing that some of you are reading this and thinking that doesn't sound like much for a full year, to be honest you're probably right, although I am very new to sea angling and most of the time spent this year will be more in learning to target these than in actually fishing for them.
I have also set my sights on bettering a few of my personal bests, or setting some as the case may be for a few species. These will be Plaice, Smoothhound, Small-Eyed Ray, Dover Sole and then later on in the year a Cod and Flounder. I currently only have PB's for three of these species, Plaice 1lb 4oz, Small-Eyed Ray 7lb 12oz and the Flounder at 1lb 1oz, none of these are specimens by any stretch of the imagination although I have only been sea fishing for 'big' fish a little over 6 months and have a lot to learn!
Finally I have set myself a target for how many species caught from the shore this year, that number has been set at thirty-five, not too many but still a challenge. I do this mostly because I really enjoy LRF so it gives me a little target for that as well.
Okay so lets move on to a little bit about the lead up to creating this blog, for many of you that know me you will know that this is not my first blog, I have done one in the past but I felt it wasn't going in the direction I wanted it to and because of that have decided to start this one. I have all but given up fresh water fishing as I now find the sea fishing a lot more exciting.
As I said earlier in this post I do have a few sea fishing personal bests and have done a fair bit of it over the last twelve to eighteen months, mostly though this was all just heading off to the beach to see what I could catch and maybe the odd match. It was only really six months or so ago I decided to start 'specimen hunting' I started to learn a few marks locally and what to expect from them species wise. Also as mentioned earlier I still am yet to set a PB over the 100% mark.
The above picture is my personal best Thin Lipped Mullet at 2lb 7oz, this is one case where I had set out to catch the species and achieved it, I had learned of a mark and after two or three learning sessions I managed to figure out how to catch them. I will go through how I target them in a future post when I finally get back out targeting the mission badge for the species.
Speaking of the badges as I mentioned earlier I did manage to get one in November last year, this is one of my proudest achievements in angling so far as I set out to target the species and caught it on the second session after putting in months of research on how to catch them. This is something I will again go through with you at a later date as I am looking to beat the PB for the species this year. Again any of you who had checked out my old blog would know that I'm talking about the Small-Eyed Ray as I did not stop talking about it for about a month after catching it.
That was the second species in the same month I had managed by design, I was over the moon, so as you can imagine when I set out this January to target a Flounder and had two in the first trip I was ecstatic.
The Flounder has always been and remains one of my favourite species of fish so I am very much looking forward to the latter part of the coming year to get out and try for a bigger one. I am not however going to be wishing the year away as I have a lot I want to achieve before then and I really hope you guys want to join me on my journey!
Just as a quick side note, due to my coarse fishing background one thing I feel very strongly about is catch and release and all of these fish were returned fighting fit to the sea.
So onto things that have happened up until now, I have only been out fishing four times this year so far, once for the Flounder back in January, once back to the same spot for a match and managed a third of the species.
My second trip out to target a set species was a nice evening session with a few friends where they took me to a mark to try for my first Spotted Ray. I was also there to test out some new 'up and over rigs' from Kraken Tackle. I was very dubious of using a rig that I had not tied myself although I was extremely happy with these. The components that make up the rigs are of a very high standard and very well tied. In fact I cannot honestly remember a time where I had used a rig not tied myself but I will for sure be trying out the other rig types the company produces. If you want to check them out click the company logo on the side of this blog.
Unfortunately I only managed to hook a small Whiting on this trip but we will be back there very soon to try again, this was also the story for the forth and last time I've been out up until now, I went out for another evening session this time with my brother at the mark I caught the Small-Eyed Ray trying for an early season specimen. Once again only a small Whiting for me and a Pouting for my brother. These were kept in a bucket for a picture and then released alive again after.
Thank you very much for reading this post and I really do hope you enjoyed it, the posts on here will be monthly (current global situation allowing) and I look forward to starting writing the next one.
