|
Boulay Bay / L'Islet 11th Aug 2000
GR: 672,546
Drove through St Helier, and stopped off at J.F.S.Sport, and purchased a long handled landing net, which I decided would be a lot safer and more practical to use (should the occasion arise!!!!), than the short handled huntsman I had been using. Grabbed some squid as well, to supplement the rag we'd already purchased earlier in the day from St.Ouen's Motor Works.... along with the fresh mackerel that Chris was going to have purchased... got chatting with Eddie and Mick, who both felt that the fishing had died off in the past few weeks, not only from the shore but for the boats as well, apart from the odd decent fish here and there .... some comfort at least to know we were not the only ones having a rough time of it....
Drove over to Chris and then on to Boulay Bay for around 5pm .... decided not to fish the pier as there were already people there and it can get a little cramped at times, as of course do many of the small piers.... as a result we plumbed for L'Islet, a group of rocks south-east of the pier, and accessible from the beach with a little bit of rock-hopping and team work...
Started off plugging, with both Chris and Karen also setting up for float-fishing and ledgering.. things seemed good with clear skies and a light north-westerly wind..... only problem was that we would be forced to fish the tide down with low water due around 11.40pm....
5.50pm ... Chris had a take on his plug, but lost the fish very quickly as his reel jammed.... not a happy bunny!!!!!!
Not long after Chris got snagged up on one of the many lobster pots and lost a plug as a result ..... soon after I had a problem with my braid, and whilst sorting it out managed to get the plug jammed in the rocks below ... had to cut the braid, and retrieve the lure about an hour or so later, once the water level had dropped to allow me safe access to do so....
The falling tide also brought a lot of weed with it off the beaches, which really put pay to plugging... so I switched to dropping a single hook baited with rag to see if I could tempt the local population of wrasse.....
7.15pm ...... having had a number of bites but failing to connect with the perpetrators, I finally hooked into a fish ... but it turned out to be a small pollack of around 10"
7.20pm ...... small wrasse of 9" took the bait this time......
7.30pm.... larger pollack of 14"
8.05pm ..... small 8" wrasse.... Karen was having no joy ledgering so I suggested she try the same tactics in the hope of something larger turning up, whilst I went back to plugging.....
8.20pm ..... Karen took a 10" wrasse.....
8.35pm.... Karen had a small pollack of 12" .....
8.50pm.... Karen had another pollack.... smaller this time at around 10"...
By 9pm it was starting to get dark, so I gave up plugging and switched over to ledgering some squid, of squid and rag as the mood took me.....
Had a couple of bites, but really it was all very, very quiet again.... had a bit of entertainment when a spear-fisherman swam by, but couldn't see if he'd had any more success than we'd had!!!
Towards 11pm we'd had enough, things seemed to be dead ..... brought the tackle in, only to find a 10" pout that I'd not even seen take a bite.....
packed-up, and rock-hopped back to the car...... we talked about the lack of fish ... neap tides, lack of sandeels, overfishing, etc, etc.... who knows??!!!!!