Well the weekend came and went so quickly it almost felt like it didnt happen !. Fishing reports were very slow, so much so that I am all but relying on a few facebook posts with little to no feedback from the walls since last Thursday. Basically its a story of peeler spiders from the east wall. Ive not heard if there are many pestering the west so it may be a bonus for those on that side although to be honest I suspect the west has suffered from higher than usual breezes/winds on the south westerlies !.
The weather and crab situation has fairly much produced a result/report of decent bass catches if you are able to find some peelers, and in amongst the bass are smooth hound pups also on the feed. As robin Howard posted this morning the bass are somewhat obsessed with the spiders at the moment and the hounds are not far behind them.
Hot on the heels of the hounds come eels, Congers of varying sizes and quite a few silver eels (they can also look as if they are green), as mentioned in past posts, please folks , put the silvers back as they have a protection order on them due to some form of virus that is messing up their migration navigation thus reducing the breeding numbers and causing the numbers to crash.

While mentioning protected fish I may as well add here that bass must be 42cm minimum and there is an allowance of 2 per person per day or session. also a note re the per day/per session bit, that does not mean based on per day you can take 2 after midnight and 2 before hence the 2 per day/session is the wording.
Also continuing the protection theme we have started to see a shad or two being caught on the wall. To some they look a little like bass especially in colouring and they also look a little like overlarge herring that are bass sized. The easiest way to tell they are shad is from its fat lip and the fact that the lighted of touches see loads of scales slide off them. Please folks if you catch one of these, handle with as much care as you can using T towels or gloves. The skin is delicate and they should be lowered over the side carefully and released as again , Shad are protected and they are now heading to inshore so that they can breed up the rivers.
There are plaice and sole out there but conditions atm are a bit stirred up so numbers are a bit on the low side, likewise bream numbers are quite a bit down on what I would expect as we get into july. That said Ive noticed on my facebook history feeds that a couple of past Julys have seen late may rot still causing issues so I guess on that basis we are still doing ok.

micro species in the way of Blenies & scorpion fish (bullheads to many)are starting to be caught down the side so there is something to occupy the juniors along side collecting soft back spider crabs for which you will need some form of net that can be dropped down the “Vs” with a bit of bait to attract them. Please note if you are keeping spiders they need to be a minimum of 12cm across the main shell. The marina is within an MCZ zone(marine controlled zone) and we do get regular visist from the fisheries inspectors. All of this info can be found on the size regs page of the site so please if unsure of any of the correct keep sizes take a look at the webpage.

Finally there is a bit of a blow forecast and mark has taken the decision to close the west at night on WED/THURS/ and FRI night as said due to higher than normal wind speeds. I will add here that when we close the walls we are limited to the forecasts and if its decided to close it means that the wardens are off duty and the walls are monitored by marina security. Sometimes the predicted winds dont happen, which is a PITA as yes we could have opened BUT, getting peoples plans changed and back in & onto the wall after telling them they have a free night/day is not as easy as it sounds and as a result the walls do sometimes end up shut when we could have got away with it…. but again getting away with it is taking risks with other peoples safety and there would be hell to play if we got it wrong and there was a serious accident because we opened the walls on a half chance injuring someone or god forbid, a live was lost in poor conditions. Simply put, we are not insured to take risks and that sort of risk would see the walls closed to fishing long term.
Stay safe folks, the sea can be a rewarding mistress but can also be a cruel one. food for thought !

Well, thats enough waffle from me for today so, as per I will bid you all ADIEU
F