Boat Section 2025
On Sunday 28th September we set off again from our trusty port of Beer.
Overnight they had unforecast very strong onshore winds. In the early hours of the morning, the wind changed to offshore, which stirred the sea up to a chocolate brown colour. Not what we particularly wanted and the offshore winds were creating a lot of swell. The boat had a bit of difficulty getting into the water due to the swell but all the skippers hung around to help each other launch and within 15-20 minutes we were on our way.
The sea was lumpy getting to the first mark so the skipper decided it would be better to anchor rather than drift. 20-30 minutes later we hadn’t had any nibbles and the boat started to drag anchor. The skipper decided it would be better and more comfortable to go inshore and hide away from the winds within the shelter of the cliffs. We got set up and slowly started hitting into fish.
A few hours later than forecast the winds did start to ease which meant by lunchtime we could go and anchor up on the original marks. Almost instantly we started hitting fish, with most being landed by Mr Mountjoy, who could probably catch on bare hooks!
The skipper advised us many times that North Devon boys don’t know how to fish the South Devon coast, bringing spider crab, you simply can’t catch on them down here! But Mr M and his luck proved skipper wrong with spider legs on his hooks. Within seconds of his lead hitting the sea bed his rod began to dance and then he reeled in a brace of bream to the deck’s delight. Skipper seemed very quiet in his cabin with us all chanting “hey skip us North Devon boys know what we’re doing”
We had a lot of mixed species; 100+ bream, small conger, dogfish, a double figure bull huss and some monster south coast mackerel. We even saw a tope chasing the catch to the boat but unfortunately we didn’t manage to hook any.
We had planned to go to a ray mark but we had such good sport and quality of fish that we decided to stay where we were.
Looking forward to next season, the plan is to book a few more trips with the same skipper in Beer and fingers crossed get some local trips to support local skippers as interest is growing.
On Friday 24th May six club members travelled down to Beer and went aboard Orca Charters.
It was a beautiful sunny day with flat seas and our day started off with an exciting launch.
We boarded the boat while it was on the pebble beach and then the tractor pushes us into the sea stern first.
Once on the water, we were fishing within a matter of minutes, spending the morning drifting over a mixture of sandy bottoms and reefs.
The afternoon consisted of fishing at anchor. The fishing on the South Coast has been much the same as the North Devon coast, meaning fishing has been hard going.
However, we managed to pick up 9 species; pout, poor cod, ballan wrasse, cuckoo wrasse, pollock, conger eel, bull huss and the good old favourites, mackerel and dog fish.
To make things a bit more interesting, we ran two pools on the boat; largest fish and most species, which were both won by Brian Hollis.
We had a last minute dash to catch a grey gurnard to make it 10 species for the day but unfortunately we failed.
The docking was equally as exciting as the skipper has to run the boat aground on the beach, they then attach a winch and drag the boat back up onto the pebbles.
We had positive feedback from everyone on board. Three of the people were new club members and have all shown strong interest in coming on future trips.
Skipper has given me another available date at the end of the season should we wish to take it. However, I would like our next trip to be with a Skipper local to the club.
